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1 Hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony...................................................................................................................................................................1
Hegemony..........................................................................................1 ***Uniqueness***.............................................................................7 ***Uniqueness***.............................................................................7
2 Hegemony
K2 Heg Humanitarianism......................................................................................................................................38
K2 Heg Humanitarianism..............................................................38
K2 Heg Poverty......................................................................................................................................................39
K2 Heg Poverty.............................................................................39
K2 Heg Multilateralism.........................................................................................................................................40
K2 Heg Multilateralism.................................................................40
3 Hegemony
K2 Multilateralism Unilateralism..........................................................................................................................47
K2 Multilateralism Unilateralism..................................................47 ***No Balancing***........................................................................48 ***No Balancing***........................................................................48
Counterbalancing Down...........................................................................................................................................49
Counterbalancing Down...................................................................49
No Balancing Russia/EU.......................................................................................................................................51
No Balancing Russia/EU...............................................................51
***Yes Balancing***...............................................................................................................................................55
***Yes Balancing***......................................................................55
Counterbalancing Up................................................................................................................................................56
Counterbalancing Up.......................................................................56
Multipolarity Now.....................................................................................................................................................57
Multipolarity Now...........................................................................57
Nonpolarity Now.......................................................................................................................................................58
Nonpolarity Now.............................................................................58
4 Hegemony
***Heg Good***......................................................................................................................................................73
***Heg Good***.............................................................................73
5 Hegemony
***Heg Bad***.........................................................................................................................................................89
***Heg Bad***...............................................................................89
6 Hegemony
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***Uniqueness***
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determined that there has been an overall decline in military readiness and there remains a significant risk that the U.S. military might not be able to respond effectively if confronted with a new crisis. As dangerous as the world can be, we cannot afford to have a "hollow Army."
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21st century threats At the same time, however, the U.S. military must retain its ability to fight and win conventional wars precisely so that it can prevent such wars from ever happening. Military weakness, after all, is itself a provocation and an invitation to war. This means that the U.S. military requires more money to modernize and more modern defense systems. Yet, for the most part, the Obama administration is subtracting, not adding, to America's military arsenal. And the Army, which is bearing the brunt of the burden in this long war, is being especially hard hit. Indeed, the Army's Fiscal Year 2010 budget request is two percent less than what the service had requested in 2009. Army procurement accounts (which include modernization) are being cut even more dramatically, by some 14 percent or $3.5 billion.
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affecting the power of American hegemonyin military, economic and soft power termswill remain limited [13]. Liu Jianfei sees U.S. influence as indispensable in shaping a new world order and cautions
China about taking too high a profile, or seeking to be a leader of the international system. China still needs more time to develop and open up to the outside world, he says. Many are calling for China to be the new leader in the new world order, but we need to continue down the road of reform and development and not adopt hegemonic tendencies. China also needs the cooperation and trade of the United States and other Western countries in order to succeed [14].
Increased U.S. soft power New Presidency and Jacksons death Hartcher 6/30 (Peter, Heralds International Editor, Soft power: Jackson and a new anthem for American politics,
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/soft-power-jackson-and-a-new-anthem-for-american-politics-20090629-d2ek.html?page=-1, 6/30/09, AD: 7/8/09) JC
Together with the worldwide outpouring of grief ranging from mass dance tributes in a Philippines prison to an Eiffel Tower moonwalk, the death of Michael Jackson has brought an extraordinary collection of tributes from world political figures. Two of the great heroes of the postwar world's struggle for democracy, Nelson
Mandela of South Africa and Kim Dae-jung of South Korea, issued statements of condolences. "We lost a hero to the world," Kim said. The Japanese Prime Minister, Taro Aso, recalled admiring his tapdancing skills, and Britain's Culture Secretary, Ben Bradshaw, said he had played Jackson's Billie Jean as the first dance at his civil union. Most surprising was that the implacable enemy of all things American, Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, although criticising an excess of media coverage, nonetheless called the death "lamentable news". This remarkable moment of worldwide political and popular unity is a reminder of the immensity of American soft power, a dimension of US influence severely damaged by eight years of George Bush. What is soft power? The man who developed the concept, Joe Nye of Harvard University, explains: "Hard power is the ability to coerce others by using carrots or sticks as either bribes or threats. But soft power is the ability to get what we want by attracting others, by getting them to want the things we want. "If I can get what I want because you want it too, it saves me a lot of carrots and sticks," is how Nye put it to the BBC. It includes the power of culture, of values, of example, of desirability. The marketers of designer brands understand the value of the concept because it is the basis of their incomes. It may be soft power, but it is not limp. Nye, who worked as a defence official in the Clinton administration, again: "During the Cold War, military containment prevented Soviet expansion, but the real victory was the transformation of the cultures behind the Iron Curtain by their attraction to Western values. So soft power was essentially the transformative force." Since Nye first wrote about the concept in 1990 it has been embraced by the Chinese regime, which has long pursued ideas of marshalling China's "comprehensive power" to amplify its influence in world affairs. But while the
Chinese launched a campaign offering trade deals and goodwill to its neighbours to build their soft power, the US inflicted terrible damage to its soft power. Nathan Gardels, editor of an international affairs journal,
New Perspectives Quarterly, wrote in 2005: "Since the Iraq invasion and Abu Ghraib, America is nowadays considered guilty until proven innocent. This is new America has lost the protection of its soft power Since World War II this has been the legitimating complement to military might." Kevin Rudd pointedly noted the contrast between China's shrewd pursuit of global credibility and America's reckless squandering of it. When he met Bush in September 2007, Rudd rather cheekily gave him a copy of The Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power Is Transforming The World, by an American journalist, Joshua Kurlantzick. Bush's defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said he did not understand the concept of soft power. The result was obvious. The gratuitous bellicosity and offensive high-handedness of the Bush team sent world regard for the US to its lowest level since at least the Vietnam War. Rumsfeld's successor, Robert Gates, appointed by Bush and now serving under Obama, is a wiser man. "One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win," he said in a 2007 speech to student officers. "My message today is not about the defence budget or military power. My message is that if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former director of the CIA and now as Secretary of Defence, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use soft power and for better integrating it with hard power." The advent of Barack Obama restored
tremendous amounts of US soft power because of the global goodwill that greeted his elevation. Reaction to Jackson's death illustrates anew the reservoir of soft power the US commands.
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Uniqueness Unilateralism Up
Obama acting unilaterally now Wittes and Goldsmith 6/29 (Benjamin and Jack, senior fellow at the Broookings Institution and teaches at
Harvard Law School and served as an assistant attorney general in the Bush administration, Will Obama Follow Bush Or FDR?, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/28/AR2009062802288.html? hpid=opinionsbox1, 6/29/09, AD: 7/8/09) JC Today, President Obama faces much the same choice, and he appears sorely tempted to follow the same road, for the same reasons: "White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible," The Post reported Saturday, and "Congress may try to assert too much control over the process." Obama is considering creating a longterm detention apparatus by presidential executive order based on essentially the same legal authorities the Bush administration used. Obama, to put it bluntly, seems poised for a nearly wholesale adoption of the Bush administration's unilateral approach to detention. The attraction is simple, seductive and familiar. The legal arguments for unilateralism are strong in theory; past presidents in shorter, traditional wars did not seek specific congressional input on detention. Securing such input for our current war, it turns out, is still hard. The unilateral approach, by contrast, lets the president define the rules in ways that are convenient for him and then dares the courts to say no.
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Uniqueness Multilateralism Up
Obama administration embracing multilateralism now Xinhua 6/25 (Chinese news agency, U.S. backs multilateral efforts to tackle global financial crisis, envoy says,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-06/25/content_11596392.htm, 6/25/09, AD: 7/8/09) JC UNITED NATIONS, June 24 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Wednesday voiced its support to the multilateral efforts to promote sustainable development worldwide and recognized the unique role of the United Nations to have voices of countries heard. Suan Rice, the U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, told a high-level UN conference on world financial crisis that "the United States is here to participate in this important conversation, to listen, to exchange, to work with you in a spirit of cooperation." "The United States supports multilateral efforts to increase the coherence of economic, social, and sustainable development policies across the globe," she said. Several global and regional for a now further this goal, such as the UN General Assembly, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, the UN Commission on the Status of Women, the Annual Ministerial Review of the Economic Community of West African States, the Group of Eight industrialized countries, the Group of 20 largest economies in the world, the Development Committee of the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, all have their own strengths and mandate, and all enjoy representation from both developing and developed countries, she said. "The subject that we are here to address is of deep matter to us all," she said. "We understand that this conference is particularly important for addressing the needs of the world's most vulnerable populations." "It offers a truly global platform to discuss how the financial crisis has affected all countries, and it gives us all a chance to exchange views on how to respond," she said. "We recognize that many countries around the world, especially the poorest and the most vulnerable, are struggling to manage and respond effectively to the crisis, and we are working in many venues to address its causes and its consequences," she said. On the UN role, Rice said, "The UN's universal membership and its well-institutionalized intergovernmental process gives it a unique advantage in responding to many dimensions of the crisis." "Our dialogue here should focus on finding practical ways to mitigate the development consequences of the current crisis and to see the UN perform its crucial development roles with new urgency," she said. The UN is a unique forum where all voices -- small and large countries alike -can be heard," she said. "We also believe that we should use every instrument at our disposal to tackle different dimensions of the crisis." Rice made the statement which once again shows that the Obama administration embraces multilateralism, unlike the Bush administration's adherence to unilateralism, attracting criticism from the world.
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desire to pursue action unhindered by the need to build consensus with other states, beginning with the Iraq War. The blame that many in the rest of the world ascribe to the United States for the current global economic crisisthat U.S. economic irresponsibility has inflicted hardship on other countries by dragging down the worlds economy. But there is another shift that has taken place. And it is to see many of the worlds major threats as problems for the United States alone. Few capitals are losing sleep over the prospect, say, of an Iranian or North Korean nuclear weapon detonating on their territories. Most see whatever capabilities Pyongyang and Tehran are acquiring as meant to deter Washingtonnot to threaten the rest of the world. The feeling seems to be that either there is no threat to the global system, or the threat is containable. We are seeing other countries of the world preparing to live with the realities of a nuclear-armed North Korea and an Iran with a significant nuclear infrastructure at its disposal. And foreign governments are not inclined to take much more decisive measures to ensure the deproliferation of either regime. No other country, therefore, seems prepared to do the heavy
lifting needed to exert significant pressure on either Tehran or Pyongyang. Most countries, for instance, believe that the six-party talks on North Korea have failed. And yet, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates met with his counterparts at the Shangri-La Dialogue this past week, there was little agreement about the next steps that should be taken. One of Gates party was quoted in the New York Times as saying, Theres no prescription yet on what to do. The GSA, at least as envisioned by Etzioni in the months after the 9/11 attacks, is dead. And the United States is in no position to unilaterally assume upon itself the functions of the GSA. The fact that Gates left Asia to tour U.S. missile defense sitesand proclaimed both that he had good confidence the system in Alaska could deal with a launch from a rogue state such as North Korea and that the way is opened in the future to add to the number of silos and interceptors up heresignals that Washington could easily pull back to a more defensive position to protect American interests. And what happens if the United States were to decide that it is time to end the free-riding of the rest of the world on American efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Such a proposal was advanced by Stanley Weiss, of Business Executives for National Security, in the New York Times: It is now clear that the United States alone cannot stabilize the situation in Pakistan
or Afghanistan. As President Obama said, it is a regional problem that demands regional solutions. It is time for America to make China, Saudi Arabia, Iran and India an offer they cant refuse: Either join us or we leave. Drawing back from the world or continuing to act (and expend blood and treasure) while others sit on the
sidelines are not attractive options for the administration. But until the world experiences another 9/11-style shock to the system, there is going to be no decisive multilateral action takenon Iran, North Korea, climate change, trade or a whole host of other issues. No
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Uniqueness Credibility Up
Conditions ripe for U.S. credibility now Brooks and Wohlforth 4/24 (Stephen and William, Dartmouth College - Brooks as associate professor of
government, Wohlforth as Daniel Webster professor of government and chair of the Department of Government, Reshaping the World Order, http://www.devex.com/articles/reshaping-the-world-order, 4/24/09, AD: 7/9/09) JC Of course, the ability of the United States to weather such crises of legitimacy in the past hardly guarantees that it can lead the system in the future. But there are reasons for optimism. Some of the apparent damage to U.S. legitimacy might merely be the result of the Bush administration's approach to diplomacy and international institutions. Key underlying conditions remain particularly favorable for sustaining and even enhancing U.S. legitimacy in the years ahead. The United States continues to have a far larger share of the human and material resources for shaping global perceptions than any other state, as well as the unrivaled wherewithal to produce public goods that reinforce the benefits of its global role. No other state has any claim to leadership commensurate with Washington's. And largely because of the power position the United States still occupies, there is no prospect of a counterbalancing coalition emerging anytime soon to challenge it. In the end, the legitimacy of a system's leader hinges on whether the system's members see the leader as acceptable or at least preferable to realistic alternatives. Legitimacy is not necessarily about normative approval: one may dislike the United States but think its leadership is natural under the circumstances or the best that can be expected. Moreover, history provides abundant evidence that past leading states-such as Spain, France, and the United Kingdom-were able to revise the international institutions of their day without the special circumstances Ikenberry and Kagan cite. Spain fashioned both normative and positive laws to legitimize its conquest of indigenous Americans in the early
seventeenth century; France instituted modern concepts of state borders to meet its needs as Europe's preeminent land power in the eighteenth century; and the United Kingdom fostered rules on piracy, neutral shipping, and colonialism to suit its interests as a developing maritime empire in the nineteenth century. As Wilhelm Grewe documents in his magisterial The Epochs of International Law, these states accomplished such feats partly through the unsubtle use of power: bribes, coercion, and the allure of lucrative longterm cooperation. Less obvious but often more important, the bargaining hands of the leading states were often strengthened by the general perception that they could pursue their interests in even less palatable ways-notably, through the naked use of force. Invariably, too, leading states have had the power to set the international agenda, indirectly affecting the development of new rules by defining the problems they were developed to address. Given its naval primacy and global trading interests, the United Kingdom was able to propel the slave trade to the forefront of the world's agenda for several decades after it had itself abolished slavery at home, in 1833. The
bottom line is that the United States today has the necessary legitimacy to shepherd reform of the international system.
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Failed War in Iraq has drastically decreased U.S. heg Haass 8 (President of Council of Foreign Relations) online: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/683c4bb6-0b4c-11dd8ccf-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 US economic policy has played a role as well. President George W. Bush has fought costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, allowed discretionary spending to increase by 8 per cent a year and cut taxes. The US fiscal position declined from a surplus of more than $100bn in 2001 to an estimated deficit of about $250bn in 2007. The ballooning current account deficit is now more than 6 per cent of gross domestic product. This places downward pressure on the dollar, stimulates inflation and contributes to the accumulation of wealth and power elsewhere in the world. Poor regulation of the US mortgage market and the credit crisis it spawned have exacerbated these problems. Iraq has also contributed to the dilution of American primacy. The conflict has proved to be an expensive war of choice - militarily, economically and diplomatically, as well as in human terms. Years ago, the historian Paul Kennedy outlined his thesis about "imperial overstretch", which posited that the US would eventually decline by overreaching, just as other great powers had. Prof Kennedy's theory turned out to apply most immediately to the Soviet Union, but the US - for all its corrective mechanisms and dynamism - has not proved to be immune.
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values, or more accurately the universal values of democracy to which the US adheres, that are more popular and receive greater adherence in Asia than before, in the politics and civil societies of Asian nations such as Indonesia, India, Japan and many others. The overall picture is infinitely more complex than the anti-Bush narrative of the Iraq war would suggest.
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"The Obama administration has taken dramatic steps to avoid a fight with the military," Kohn said, noting that first lady Michelle Obama's first official visit outside Washington, D.C., was to Fort Bragg, N.C. He highlighted the retention of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and nomination of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen for a second term, both holdovers from former President George W. Bush's administration, as a sign to the rest of the military of respect for the senior military leadership and continuity during difficult wartime conditions. However, Kohn said President Barack Obama purposely sought out other former senior military leaders for his administration, including National Security Advisor retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, Secretary of Veterans Affairs retired Gen. Eric Shinseki, and Director of National Intelligence retired Navy Adm. Dennis Blair.
Obama pitch-perfect on civil-military relations now Ackerman 8 (Spencer, Writer for Washington Independent, Productive Obama-Military Relationship Possible,
http://washingtonindependent.com/18335/productive-obama-military-relationship-possible, 11/13/08, AD: 7/10/09) JC
To Peter Feaver, one of the leading scholars of civil-military relations, that comment was auspicious. Obama had it pitch-perfect, said Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University and a national-security staffer for both Clinton and George W. Bush. Obama was right to signal to the military, I want your military advice, and I will factor it into my strategic decisions, where military advice is one of my concerns. Whether a Commander-in-Chief Obama can continue the tone that Candidate Obama sounded in July remains to be seen. According to interviews with active and retired military officers, Obama and the military can have a productive relationship, provided that Obama operates along some simple principles. Consult, dont steamroll and dont capitulate. Be honest about disagreements, and emphasize areas of agreement. Make Petraeus a partner, not an adversary. Similarly, the uniformed military will have to keep certain principles in mind as well. Theres only one commander in chief, and youre not him. Dont substitute military judgment for strategic judgment.
Obama administration focusing on increasing civil military relations now Barton and Unger 9 (Frederick and Noam , Center for Strategic and International Studies and Brookings
Institute, Civil-military relations, fostering development, and expanding civilian capacity, http://csis.org/files/media/csis/pubs/090421_brookingscsiscivmil.pdf, April 2009, AD: 7/10/09) JC This is a critical moment for the United States approach to global engagement. Concerns have been rising over an apparent imbalance in American statecraft, principally resulting from too heavy a reliance on the military. As such, the Obama Administration is launching related policy reviews. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly
noted the decisive role reconstruction, development and conflict prevention play, and he has called for greater resources for civilian agencies. Similarly, upon taking office, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted development as an equal
partner, along with defense and diplomacy, in advancing US national security. She has also announced aims to reverse the migration of the authority and the resources to the Defense Department, and committed to bolster USAID with clear authorities and resources. Her new additional deputy at the State
Department has been charged with boosting the resourcing and effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance. Within this context, on February 11, 2009, more than 40 policy experts and practitioners convened at Brookings to discuss efforts to build civilian stabilization capacity within the U.S. governments international affairs agencies and broader efforts to reform U.S. foreign assistance. The day-long workshop also sought to explore pathways for rebalancing civilian-military roles and to ensure necessary increases in civilian capacity. This event was hosted by Brookings Global Economy and Development and the Center for Strategic and International Studies Post- Conflict Reconstruction Project with the generous support of the Connect US Fund. Workshop participants offered a range of expertise in defense, diplomacy, and development, as well as varying perspectives from the executive branch, Capitol Hill, civil society and the research community.
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hearing from civilian presidential advisors (and in this context, retired General Jim Jones is a civilian presidential advisor) that they should not be candid in their advice lest it tick off the president or the secretary of defense. If Woodward's (and others) earlier reporting on the Bush years is accurate, the military got that impression, at least from Secretary Rumsfeld, and this had a deleterious effect on civilmilitary relations and on policymaking. In my judgment, the notion that President Bush did not want to hear whether the
battlefield commanders believed they needed more troops was false; he did want to hear that advice and would have been appalled if one of his advisors had told the military, "don't ask for this because it will make the President angry." According to Bob Woodward, that is exactly what happened recently in Afghanistan. I expect the Obama team will have to go into some serious damage control to deal with this story. If accurate, what is needed is an unambiguous statement from the President himself: "Give me your candid military advice, even or especially if you think the advice runs counter to what you think I will decide. Let me make the decisions. I will not always approve every request you send my way, but I will never approve of you trying to hide bad news from me because you think it will make me mad."
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***Links***
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Social services key to accountability Cheung and Ngai 8 (Chau-kiu and Steven Sek-yum, Department of Applied Social Studies, City University of
Hong Kong and Department of Social Work, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Surviving Hegemony Through Resistance and Identity Articulation Among Outreaching Social Workers, http://www.springerlink.com/content/2wv6445m08718785/fulltext.pdf, 9/30/08, AD: 7/10/09) JC Accountability Accountability was a frame for governmental hegemony or regulation in that it was necessary to avoid wastage in spending public money and provide the bases for political struggles concerning resource acquisition. In essence, the political environment, which the government helped sustain, fueled the validity of accountability as an ideology to justify the governments hegemony. As the outreaching social work service eventually largely depended on funding by public money, it was obliged to avoid wastage of public money. Demonstrating accountability would benefit each social service agency in acquiring resources. The political environment of Hong Kong emphasized democracy, accountability, and transparency. This environment implicitly required social service agencies to be transparent in demonstrating their performance.
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Obamas strong executive power in domestic policy key to hegemony Cho 3 (Chansoo, Assistant Professor Division of International Studies Kangnam University, HEGEMONY AND
THE VARIETY OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS: EXECUTIVE-LEGISLATIVE RELATIONS AND U.S. FOREIGN ECONOMIC POLICY CHANGE, ASIAN PERSPECTIVE, Vol. 27, No. 2, 2003, pg. 6-7, AD: 7/10/09) JC In this section I argue that the shift to executive politics in the domestic policy process facilitated U.S. hegemonic transition during the period of 1945 to 1960. As shown in the discussion on the New Deal institutional changes, the foundation of executive politics was laid during Roosevelts tenure. Executive politics of the FDR years, however, was constrained by party politics and compromised by intragovernmental as well as sectoral conflicts. In contrast, the postwar rise of executive politics accompanied bipartisanship in foreign policy. The term bipartisanship was coined by Arthur H. Vandenberg, the Republican Senator from Michigan, but its spirit found its best expression in the words of Secretary of State Dean Acheson: [Y]ou cannot run this . . . country under the Constitution any other way except by fixing the whole organization so it doesnt work the way it is supposed to work. Now the way to do that is to say politics stops at the seaboard.57
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K2 Heg Humanitarianism
Hegemonic powers must follow humanitarian law Forsythe 4 (David P, University Professor and Charles J. Mach Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Hegemony and the Laws of War: The Politics of Humanitarian Law and Diplomacy, pg. 1, 2004, AD: 7/9/09) JC The International Committee of the Red Cross and International Humanitarian Law David P. Forsythe 1 No century [compared to the twentieth century] has had better norms and worse realities. --David Rieff: A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), p. 70. Much has changed in international relations after the cold war. We now live in a world of one superpower, one hyperpuisance as the French say, in which the United States clearly displays primacy in military power. It is also the most important economic power. Across much of international relations, the United States is a hegemonic power in the Gramscian sense. Where this is not the case, the United States may choose to dominate, to try to impose its view of order by way of coercion, as the invasion of Iraq demonstrates. But some things have not changed, or have not changed all that much. There is still a law of war, most of this law is international humanitarian law designed to protect a zone of human dignity even in the midst of organized killing, and even the United States is obligated to apply this law. Apparently the phrase international humanitarian law (IHL) was first used by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1953. 2 In this essay I will first show that there remains lack of clarity about the precise scope of IHL. Then I will show that there is often confusion about its relation to international human rights law (HRL). Finally I will show that in relation to IHL the ICRC, which is the guardian of this law, exercises three roles by whatever name: helping to develop the law, helping to disseminate the principles and rules of the law, and helping to apply the law. The central point of this essay is not to provide a legal commentary on the specifics IHL, but rather to discuss its practical relevance to victims of conflicts through the efforts of the ICRC. A theme running throughout this chapter is that one can over-emphasize IHL as a technical legal subject compared to humanitarian diplomacy. Just as some authors, including some law professors, believe that much attention to human rights has become legalistic, with too much attention to legal technicalities, 3 so I believe that 1 This essay is drawn from a book project now in progress, the working title of which is The Humanitarians: the International Committee of the Red Cross. 2 Dietrich Schindler, Significance of the Geneva Conventions for the contemporary world, International Review of the Red Cross, no. 836 (December, 1999), pp. 715-729, note 4. 3 Abdullahi A. An-Naim, The Legal Protection of Human Rights in Africa: How to do More with Less, in Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns, eds., Human Rights: Concepts, Contests, Contingencies,
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K2 Heg Poverty
Economic superiority key to hegemony Pape 3/8 (Robert A, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, Realities and Obama's diplomacy,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-perspec0308diplomacymar08,0,4785661.story, 3/8/09, AD: 7/9/09) JC From Rome to the United States today, the rise and fall of great nations have been driven primarily by economic strength. At any given moment, a state's power depends on the size and quality of its military forces and other power assets. Over time, however, power is a result of economic strengththe prerequisite for building and modernizing military forces. And so the size of the economy relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in international politics. The power position of the U.S. is crucial to the foreign policy aims that it can achieve. Since the Cold War, America has maintained a vast array of overseas commitments, seeking to ensure peace and stability not just in its own neighborhood, the Western hemisphere, but also in Europe, Asia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Maintaining these commitments requires enormous resources, but American leaders in recent years chose to pursue far more ambitious goals than merely maintaining the status quo.
Economic strength key to U.S. heg Fouskas 5 (Vassilis K. , Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Stirling, The New AMERICAN
IMPERIALISM: BUSHS WAR ON TERROR AND BLOOD FOR OIL, 2005, p. 24) Since the United States emerged as the dominant global superpower at the end of World War II, U.S. hegemony has rested on three unchallengeable pillars: overwhelming U.S. military superiority over all its rivals, the superiority of American production methods and the relative strength of the U.S. economy, and control over global economic markets, with the U.S. dollar acting as the reserve currency
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K2 Heg Multilateralism
Working within coalitions and with other governments and NGOs is key to preserve US heg. Khalilzad 95 (Zalmay, US Ambassador to the United Nations. Losing the Moment? The United States and the
World After the Cold War. The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2. pg. 84 Spring 1995) Overextension is a mistake that some of the big powers have made in the past. Such a development can occur if the United States is not judicious in its use of force and gets involved in protracted conflicts in non-critical regions, thereby sapping its energies and undermining support for its global role. And when the United States uses force in critical regions, its preference should be to have its allies and friends contribute their fair share. Having the capability to protect U.S. vital interests unilaterally if necessary can facilitate getting friends and allies of the United States to participate -- especially on terms more to its liking. It is quite possible that if the United States cannot protect its interests without significant participation by allies, it might not be able to protect them at all. For example, in the run-up to the Gulf war, several allies did not favor the use of force to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait. If the military participation of these allies had been indispensable for military success against Iraq, Saddam Hussein's forces might still be in Kuwait and Iraq might now possess nuclear weapons. When it comes to lesser interests the United States should rely on nonmilitary options, especially if the stakes involved do not warrant the military costs. It has many options: arming and training the victims of aggression; providing technical assistance and logistic support for peacekeeping by the United Nations, regional organizations, or other powers; and economic instruments such as sanctions and positive incentives. The effectiveness of these non-military options can be enhanced by skillful diplomacy.
While Multilateralism is effective, the US must be involved Serfaty 3 ("Studies Renewing the Transatlantic Partnership" Simon Serfaty director of European Studies CSIS
May http://www.nato.int/docu/conf/2003/030718_bxl/serfati-transatlpart.pdf) Whatever its inspiration, multilateralism served the United States and its allies well. Indifference to the postwar world was no longer an option for either side of the Atlantic. In most European countries, the imperative of U.S. support for reconstruction, protection, and reconciliation limited any debate on their fading role in the world. Whatever doubts some of these countries harbored were overcome by U.S. policies that were all the more effective as they showed enough flexibility to respond to and alleviate these doubts.
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More evi. Edgeworth 3 (Brendan, Senior Lecturer, Law, modernity, postmodernity, pg 92, 2003, AD: 7/10/09) JC
The new primacy of cognitive over normative considerations, that is, the importance of fitting rules to the changing empirical context in which they are to operate (always typical of legislative activity) imposes analogous demands on the judicial and executive branches of the state. It is reflected in the case of judicial reasoning, for instance, by a keener attention to the purposes lying behind the law to see if they can be effectively carried out by instant decisions in an increasingly volatile social environment. This sovereignty of purpose is reflected in the waning of artificial reason, in the form of the tradition, deontological style of legal interpretation more concerned to look to the formal meanings of terms (Nonet and Selznick, 1978: 78, 83). This development also appears in the growing need for legislators and law reform agencies to make use of other knowledges (economics, sociology, politics) in order to understand the interaction between ,and interdependence of, law and other social domains.
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Economic power doesnt guarantee international power Rusmich and Sachs 4 (Ladislav and Stephen, MD, Lessons from the Failure of the Communist Economic
System, pg 147-148, 2004, AD: 7/10/09) JC Aside from market defects, some additional causes appear that vitiate our idyllic picture of the market mediation of the social usefulness of power agents activity. It is the plain fact that economic power is not the sole force acting in society. In order to draw the picture more realistically, we must take into account political power, which substantially affects economic decision making in a corporate society. Orthodox models of free market and perfect competition premise a historically equal position of the market participants regardless of the type (or ripeness) of the market, as well as among the individual suppliers and consumers as between the two sides of the market as such. The authors of these models traditionally refuse to admit any type of dominance of one economic agent over another as a systemic feature of economy. However, their views cannot be accepted as a realistic look at the present corporate society with all its formal and informal coalitions, alliances, treaties, and agreements between the different actors in economic life and with its typical lobbying. Economic and political powers grow together with, and through, the increase in the mutual influence and dependence of the respective subjects.
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Multilateralism only drags America down Krauthammer 4(Charles, Winner of the Bradley Prize for Promotion of Liberal Democracy, "Democratic
Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World" American Enterprise Institute) Historically, multilateralism is a way for weak countries to multiply their power by attaching themselves to stronger ones. But multilateralism imposed on Great Powers, and particularly on a unipolar power, is intended to restrain that power. Which is precisely why France is an ardent multilateralist. But why should America be? Why, in the end, does liberal internationalism want to tie down Gulliver, to blunt the pursuit of American national interests by making them subordinate to a myriad of other interests? In the immediate post-Vietnam era, this aversion to national interest might have been attributed to self-doubt and self-loathing. I dont know. What I do know is that today it is a mistake to see liberal foreign policy as deriving from anti-Americanism or lack of patriotism or a late efflorescence of 1960s radicalism.
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K2 Multilateralism Unilateralism
Unilateralism inevitably leads to multilateralism Krauthammer 4 (Charles, Winner of the Bradley Prize for Promotion of Liberal Democracy, "Democratic
Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World" American Enterprise Institute) Moreover, unilateralism is often the very road to multilateralism. As we learned from the Gulf War, it is the leadership of the United Statesindeed, its willingness to act unilaterally if necessarythat galvanized the Gulf War coalition into existence. Without the president of the United States declaring This will not stand about the invasion of Kuwaitand making it clear that America would go it alone if it had tothere never would have been the great wall-to-wall coalition that is now so retroactively applauded and held up as a model of multilateralism.
US unipolarity encourages states to help the US solve global issues rather than start them Wohlforth 99 (William, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown. International Security, Summer 19 99. "The Stability of a Unipolar World.") Neither the Beijing-Moscow "strategic partnership" nor the "European troika" of Russia, Germany, and France entailed any costly commitments or serious risks of confrontation with Washington. For many states, the optimal policy is ambiguity: to work closely with the United States on the issues most important to Washington while talking about creating a counterpoise. Such policies generate a paper trail suggesting strong dissatisfaction with the US.- led world order and a legacy of actual behavior that amounts to bandwagoning. These states are seeking the best bargains for themselves given the distribution of power. That process necessitates a degree of politicking that may remind people faintly of the power politics of bygone eras. But until the distribution of power changes substantially, this bargaining will resemble real-politik in form but not content.
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***No Balancing***
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Counterbalancing Down
Nations dont have the power to counterbalance global institutions like the United States now Smolchenko 6/13 (Anna, Associated Free Press, Emerging big four economies flaunt power at summit,
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ie-Cbti6FYBb4IznPXZ0qCVDCN5w, 6/13/09, AD: 7/8/09) JC MOSCOW (AFP) Brazil, Russia, India and China flaunt their unity against more established powers this week as the four emerging economic giants hold the first summit of their grouping, known as BRIC. But while they will express determination to act together during the current economic crisis and beyond, they are years away from being a counterbalance to established global institutions, analysts say.
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No Balancing Russia/EU
Russia cant balance its headed for disappearance. Khanna 8 (Parag, America Strategy Program sr. fellow, 1/27, p. 1,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
In exploring just a small sample of the second world, we should start perhaps with the hardest case: Russia. Apparently stabilized and resurgent under the Kremlin-Gazprom oligarchy, why is Russia not a superpower but rather the ultimate second-world swing state? For all its muscle flexing, Russia is also disappearing. Its population decline is a staggering half
million citizens per year or more, meaning it will be not much larger than Turkey by 2025 or so spread across a land so vast that it no longer even makes sense as a country. Travel across Russia today, and youll find, as during Soviet times, city after city of crumbling, heatless apartment blocks and neglected elderly citizens whose value to the state diminishes with distance from Moscow. The forced Siberian migrations of the Soviet era are being voluntarily reversed as children move west to more tolerable and modern climes. Filling the vacuum they have left behind are hundreds of thousands of Chinese, literally gobbling up, plundering, outright buying and more or less annexing Russias Far East for its timber and other natural
resources. Already during the cold war it was joked that there were no disturbances on the Sino-Finnish border, a prophecy that seems ever closer to fulfillment. Russia lost its western satellites almost two decades ago, and Europe, while
appearing to be bullied by Russias oil-dependent diplomacy, is staging a long-term buyout of Russia, whose economy remains roughly the size of Frances. The more Europe gets its gas from North Africa and oil from Azerbaijan, the less it will rely on Russia, all the while holding the lever of being by far Russias largest investor. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development provides the kinds of loans that help build an alternative, less corrupt private sector from below, while London and Berlin welcome Russias billionaires, allowing the likes of Boris Berezovsky to openly campaign against Putin. The E.U. and U.S. also finance and train a pugnacious second-world block of Baltic and Balkan nations, whose activists agitate from Belarus to Uzbekistan. Privately, some E.U. officials say that annexing Russia is perfectly doable; its just a matter of time. In the coming decades, far from restoring its Soviet-era might, Russia will have to decide whether it wishes to exist peacefully as an asset to Europe or the alternative becoming a petro-vassal of China.
is the geopolitical posturing of French presidents who wanted to act as a counterbalance to American power. Instead, speaking
the week after the Irish voted down the Treaty of Lisbon, Sarkozy promised that France would remain "a great military power," and presented collective defense as the key to greater unity. The clearest outline of Sarkozy's foreign-policy and defense ambitions came in the speech he delivered to the French military elite last week, in which he shifted priorities away from resisting invasion, which ceased to be a threat 15 years ago, and emphasized flexibility in an uncertain world where dangers have become "diverse and ever-changing." By slashing the number of soldiers to 225,000 over the next half-dozen years and focusing on a smaller, lighter military, he hopes to be able to finance better intelligence gathering that anticipates threats, whether from terrorists, failed states, nuclear proliferators, cyberwarriors or climate change. Rather than manning garrisons left over from colonial days in Francophone Africa, France will prepare for action in what Defense Minister Herv Morin has called "an arc of crisis going from Mauritania to Afghanistan." And with more modern equipment, Sarkozy wants to be able to deploy 30,000 combat forces quickly and efficiently to the far corners of the world while dealing effectively with catastrophic events at home. "The French are realizing that not even they are able to go it alone, and he is putting the French military back in the business of dealing with threats that really matter," says Tomas Valasek of the Centre for European Reform.Sarkozy
has also made it clear that next year France will rejoin NATO's integrated command structure for the first time since President Charles De
Gaulle pulled out of it in 1966. As part of his plan for greater EU defense cooperation both inside and outside NATO, Sarkozy proposed a complete restructuring and unification of Europe's defense industries, a vast exchange program for officer training, perhaps even a European military college and unified headquarters. Sarkozy telegraphed his contempt for geopolitical game-
playing in the style of his predecessors well before his election last year. He has praised the United States unabashedly, and embraced Israel enthusiastically, unlike previous French presidents who tended to worry about the sensibilities of rich
Arab tyrants. "All democracies are accountable for Israel's security, which is nonnegotiable," Sarkozy wrote in 2006, and since he took office, relations with Jerusalem have looked like a love-in. "You are a great and positive gush of wind in French politics," Israeli President Shimon Peres told him on a visit in March.
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No Balancing India
India cant balance the US socio-economic problems prevent its ascendence. Nielsen 8 (Jens, poli-sci Ph.D., 2/18, http://kaalhauge.weblogs.asb.dk/2008/02/18/india-will-rise-%E2%80%93but-how-far-can-one-rise-on-clay-feet/) The basic problem is that the current boom doesnt touch on the basic structural fallacies in India. Of these fallacies, there are two, which is most devastating. The first is the deplorable elementary school system in India. The second is that the boom has not triggered any major grow of a low-skilled labour intensive industry in India, which are strongly needed if the huge unskilled masses in India shall find appropriate employment. Generally, India is characterized by low labour-elasticity vis-a-vis its growth rate, which means that India is a very jobless economy. However, in a country, where approximately 13 million is added to the workforce every year, this is a problem of the highest cardinal importance. The relative few jobs, which are created during the current boom, are generally job for higher educated professionals or higher skilled workers. In other words the job-pattern of the current boom has nothing or little to offer the majority of Indian workers, including the wave of the coming generation of lowskilled workers, which multiply every year in alarming numbers. The problem is that there is nothing, which really indicates that India seriously is trying to deal with these two cardinal problems. The much talk about Indias becoming urbanization ignores the fact that the jobs, which should facilitate this process of urbanization is simply not there. It is true that the new financial budget is allocating more money to the elementary school level but the problem of the elementary school system is entangled in cultural attitudes, caste-habits, teacher-privileges and fundamental institutional weaknesses and its solutions is not simply a matter of financing. So before India begin to dream of racing with China, it will be well advised to start solving those basic structural problems, which India so far have ignored for the last 60 years. India will not be able to establish any sustainable growth before it has solved these fundamental problems. Naturally, the current boom in India is real in the sense that a few Indian states and some segments of the population experience real growth. (It is not the growth, which is in question but the issue regarding its institutional and structural functions). But the function of this growth will not be an answer for India as a whole and will increasing split India into two radically separated worlds, which have little other than the noun India in common. Do not believe in the hype of Indias as the next economic superpower; it is a play on empty rhetoric. The current appearance of progress is misleading. The reality is that India cannot find jobs to its rapid growing masses and the majority of these masses is and will remain low-skilled and to a large degree illiterates. The number of main workers out of the total Indian population is constantly falling although the Indian population become younger and younger. Since more and more Indian factories are increasingly automating, then it is clear that the solution to the problem hardly comes from the established industry. Indeed, Stephen Roach of the Morgan Stanley, once, wondered how India would create jobs, when its factories are more heavily populated by robots than human workers. Indeed, from 19912001, the fraction of Indians in the actual workforce is supposed to have fallen from approximately 34 to 30% (so much for the demographic dividend). Especially, the number of women in the workforce in India is record low. Jobless India is also a tale of an increased gender-bias, which again is reflected in the relative few women who take a higher education in India. India is increasingly squeezed between its growing masses of unemployed (and underemployed) and its inability to produce the necessary low-skilled labour intensive industries. In other words, India is marching down the path of major social conflicts, and the lack of a sufficient elementary school-system has make sure that there is no end to the supply of this misery.
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Rising Asian influence doesnt constrain the US Twining 7 (Transatlantic Fellow based in Oxford and New Delhi and concurrently the Fulbright/Oxford Scholar
at the University of Oxford. The Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Washington Quarterly. Americas Grand Design in Asia) Accelerating the rise of friendly, independent centers of power in Asia may allow the United States to maintain its privileged position within an asymmetrically multipolar Asian security order characterized by multiple power centersChina, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and ASEANthat makes it naturally resistant to Chinese domination. Nonetheless, the implications for the United States of trends in Asia are inescapable. Relative U.S. power will wane as China and India rise. Its not possible to pretend that [China] is just another player, said Singapores former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, in 1993. This is the biggest player in the history of man. The size of Chinas displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance within a few decades. The United States is pursuing a grand design to shape that new balance in ways that preserve its interests in a pluralistic security order that is dominated by no one regional power and that aligns it increasingly closely with democratic and like-minded centers of strength is a rising Asia.
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***Yes Balancing***
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Counterbalancing Up
Russia, China, India and Brazil are counterbalancing the United States now Walberg 6/25 (Eric, Journalist for Al-Ahram Weekly, Reinventing the wheel,
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/953/in2.htm, 6/25/09, AD: 7/8/09) JC Yekaterinburg, famous tragically as the spot Lenin chose to have the Tsar and his family executed in 1918, and ironically as the fiefdom of Boris Yeltsin, who finished off the Russian revolution itself in 1991, witnessed something no less remarkable last week when leaders of the so- called BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) held their first summit, following the yearly meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The BRIC countries comprise 15 per cent of the world economy, 40 per cent of global currency reserves and half the world's population. Brazil, India and China have also weathered the financial crisis better than the world as a whole. Holding the two meetings together meant that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh attended the SCO for the first time. The SCO, Russian and China's Eurasian security organisation, has become a key counterweight to US hegemony in the world, and Russia and China are eager to have India upgrade its position of observer to member. This summit appeared to have coaxed India a step closer, as the SCO security agenda has shifted to emphasise dealing with growing security threats from Afghanistan, which satisfies the more pro- US India. But the headlinestealer was the BRIC summit. While the US plays its tiresome geopolitical games on Russia's eastern borders, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev was busy charting a new economic and political reality in the heart of Eurasia. "The artificially maintained unipolar system", he lectured, is based on "one big centre of consumption, financed by a growing deficit and... one formerly strong reserve currency." At the root of the global financial crisis, he concluded, is that the US makes too little and spends too much. Especially upsetting for Russia is its continued military largesse to Georgia, the missile shield in Eastern Europe and the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. "The summit must create the conditions for a fairer world order," he read out, as Presidents Hu Jintao of China, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil and the Indian prime minister looked on approvingly. China backs Russia's two big gripes with the US: "The security of some states cannot be ensured at the expense of others, including the expansion of militarypolitical alliances or the creation of global or regional missile defence systems," the joint Chinese-Russian statement says. Chinese leader Hu Jintao also joined Medvedev in denouncing US plans to militarise outer space: "Russia and China advocate peaceful uses of outer space and oppose the prospect of it being turned into a new area for deploying weapons... The sides will actively facilitate practical work on a draft treaty on the prevention of the deployment of weapons in outer space, and of the use of force or threats to use force against space facilities."
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Multipolarity Now
The world is now multipolar. Khanna 8 (Parag, America Strategy Program sr. fellow, 1/27, p. 1,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) At best, Americas unipolar moment lasted through the 1990s, but that was also a decade adrift. The post-cold-war peace dividend was never converted into a global liberal order under American leadership. So now, rather than bestriding the globe, we are competing and losing in a geopolitical marketplace alongside the worlds other superpowers: the European Union and China. This is geopolitics in the 21st century: the new Big Three. Not Russia, an increasingly depopulated expanse run by Gazprom.gov; not an incoherent Islam embroiled in internal wars; and not India, lagging decades behind China in both development and strategic appetite. The Big Three make the rules their own rules without any one of them dominating. And the others are left to choose their suitors in this postAmerican world. The more we appreciate the differences among the American, European and Chinese worldviews, the more we will see the
planetary stakes of the new global game. Previous eras of balance of power have been among European powers sharing a common culture. The cold war, too, was not truly an East-West struggle; it remained essentially a contest over Europe. What we have today, for the first time in history, is a global,
In Europes capital, Brussels, technocrats, strategists and legislators increasingly see their role as being the global balancer between America and China. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German member of the European Parliament, calls it European patriotism. The
multicivilizational, multipolar battle. Europeans play both sides, and if they do it well, they profit handsomely. Its a trend that will outlast both President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, the selfdescribed friend of America, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, regardless of her visiting the Crawford ranch. It may comfort American conservatives to point out that Europe still lacks a common army; the only problem is that it doesnt really need one. Europeans use intelligence and the police to apprehend radical Islamists, social policy to try to integrate restive Muslim populations and economic strength to incorporate the former Soviet Union and gradually subdue Russia. Each year European investment in Turkey grows as well, binding it closer to the E.U. even if it never becomes a member. And each year a new pipeline route opens transporting oil and gas from Libya, Algeria or Azerbaijan to Europe. What other superpower grows by an average of one country per year, with others waiting in line and begging to join? Robert Kagan famously said that America hails from Mars and Europe
The E.U.s market is the worlds largest, European technologies more and more set the global standard and European countries give the most development assistance. And if America and China fight, the worlds money will be safely invested in European banks. Many Americans scoffed at the introduction of the euro, claiming it was an overreach that would bring the collapse of the
from Venus, but in reality, Europe is more like Mercury carrying a big wallet. European project. Yet today, Persian Gulf oil exporters are diversifying their currency holdings into euros, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has proposed that OPEC no longer price its oil in worthless dollars. President Hugo Chvez of Venezuela went on to suggest euros. It doesnt help that Congress revealed its true protectionist colors by essentially blocking the Dubai ports deal in 2006. With London taking over (again) as the worlds financial capital for stock listing, its no surprise that Chinas new state investment fund intends to locate its main Western offices there instead of New York. Meanwhile, Americas share of global exchange reserves has dropped to 65 percent. Gisele Bndchen demands to be paid in euros, while Jay-Z drowns in
American soft power seems on the wane even at home. And Europes influence grows at Americas expense. While America fumbles at nation-building, Europe spends its money and political capital on locking peripheral countries into its orbit. Many poor regions of the world have realized that they want the European dream, not the American dream. Africa wants a real African Union like the E.U.; we offer no equivalent. Activists in the Middle East want parliamentary democracy like Europes, not American-style presidential strongman rule. Many of the foreign students we shunned after 9/11 are now in London and Berlin: twice as many Chinese study in Europe as in the U.S. We didnt educate them, so we have no claims on their brains or loyalties as we have in decades past. More broadly, America controls legacy institutions few seem to want like the International Monetary Fund while Europe excels at building new and sophisticated ones modeled on itself. The U.S.
500 euro notes in a recent video. has a hard time getting its way even when it dominates summit meetings consider the ill-fated Free Trade Area of the Americas let alone when its not even invited, as with the new East Asian Community, the regions answer to Americas Apec. The East Asian Community is but one example of how
China is also too busy restoring its place as the worlds Middle Kingdom to be distracted by the Middle Eastern disturbances that so preoccupy the United States. In Americas own hemisphere, from Canada to Cuba to Chvezs Venezuela, China is cutting massive resource and investment deals. Across
the globe, it is deploying tens of thousands of its own engineers, aid workers, dam-builders and covert military personnel. In Africa, China is not only securing energy supplies; it is also making major strategic investments in the financial sector. The whole world is abetting Chinas spectacular rise as evidenced by the ballooning share of trade in its gross domestic product and China is exporting weapons at a rate reminiscent of the Soviet Union during the cold war, pinning America down while filling whatever power vacuums it can find.
Every country in the world currently considered a rogue state by the U.S. now enjoys a diplomatic, economic or strategic lifeline from China, Iran being the most prominent example.
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Nonpolarity Now
The world is nonpolar. Haas 8 (Richard, CFR pres., May/June, http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080501faessay87304/richard-n-haass/theage-of-nonpolarity.html) The principal characteristic of twenty-first-century international relations is turning out to be nonpolarity: a world dominated not by one or two or even several states but rather by dozens of actors possessing and exercising various kinds of power. This represents a tectonic shift from the past. The twentieth century
started out distinctly multipolar. But after almost 50 years, two world wars, and many smaller conflicts, a bipolar system emerged. Then,
with the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union, bipolarity gave way to unipolarity -an international system dominated by one power, in this case the United States. But today power is diffuse, and the onset of nonpolarity raises a number of important questions. How does nonpolarity differ from other forms of
international order? How and why did it materialize? What are its likely consequences? And how should the United States respond? NEWER WORLD ORDER In contrast to multipolarity -- which involves several distinct poles or concentrations of power -- a nonpolar international system is characterized by numerous centers with meaningful power. In a multipolar system, no power dominates, or the system will become unipolar. Nor do concentrations of power revolve around two positions, or the system will become bipolar. Multipolar systems can be cooperative, even assuming the form of a concert of powers, in which a few major powers work together on setting the rules of the game and disciplining those who violate them. They can also be more competitive, revolving around a balance of power, or conflictual, when the balance breaks down. At first glance, the world today may appear to be multipolar. The
major powers -- China, the European Union (EU), India, Japan, Russia, and the United States -contain just over half the world's people and account for 75 percent of global GDP and 80 percent of global defense spending. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Today's world differs in a fundamental way from one of classic multipolarity: there are many more power centers, and quite a few of these poles are not nation-states. Indeed, one of the cardinal features of the contemporary international system is that nation-states have lost their monopoly on power and in some domains their preeminence as well. States are being challenged from above, by regional and global organizations; from below, by militias; and from the side, by a variety of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations. Power is now found in many hands and in many places. In addition to the six major world powers, there are numerous regional powers: Brazil and, arguably, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela in Latin America; Nigeria and South Africa in Africa; Egypt, Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East; Pakistan in South Asia; Australia, Indonesia, and South Korea in East Asia and Oceania. A good many organizations would be on the list of power centers, including those that are global (the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Bank), those that are regional (the African Union, the Arab League, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the EU, the Organization of American States, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation), and those that are functional (the International
Energy Agency, OPEC, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the World Health Organization). So, too, would states within nationstates, such as California and India's Uttar Pradesh, and cities, such as New York, So Paulo, and Shanghai. Then there are the
large global companies, including those that dominate the worlds of energy, finance, and manufacturing. Other entities deserving inclusion would be global media outlets (al Jazeera, the BBC, CNN), militias (Hamas, Hezbollah, the Mahdi Army, the Taliban), political parties, religious institutions and movements, terrorist organizations (al Qaeda), drug cartels, and NGOs of a more benign sort (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace). Today's world is increasingly one of distributed, rather than concentrated, power.
59 Trade-Off DA
Yes Balancing EU
The EU is successfully balancing the US. Khanna 8 (Parag, America Strategy Program sr. fellow, 1/27, p. 1,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin) In Europes capital, Brussels, technocrats, strategists and legislators increasingly see their role as being the global balancer between America and China. Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a German member of the European Parliament, calls
it European patriotism. The Europeans play both sides, and if they do it well, they profit handsomely. Its a trend that will outlast both President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, the self-described friend of America, and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, regardless of her visiting the Crawford ranch. It may comfort American conservatives to point out that Europe still lacks a
common army; the only problem is that it doesnt really need one. Europeans use intelligence and the police to apprehend radical Islamists, social policy to try to integrate restive Muslim populations and economic strength to incorporate the former Soviet Union and gradually subdue Russia. Each year European investment in Turkey grows as well, binding it closer to the E.U. even if it never becomes a member. And each year a new pipeline route opens transporting oil and gas from Libya, Algeria or Azerbaijan to Europe. What other superpower grows by an average of one country per year, with others waiting in line and begging to join? Robert Kagan famously said that America hails from Mars and Europe from Venus, but in reality, Europe is more like Mercury carrying a big wallet. The E.U.s market is the worlds largest, European technologies more and more set the global standard and European countries give the most development assistance. And if America and China fight, the worlds money will be safely invested in European banks. Many Americans scoffed at the introduction of the euro, claiming it was an overreach that would bring the collapse of the European project. Yet today, Persian Gulf oil exporters are diversifying their currency holdings into euros, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has proposed that OPEC no longer price its oil in worthless dollars. President Hugo Chvez of Venezuela went on to suggest euros. It doesnt help that Congress revealed its true protectionist colors by essentially blocking the Dubai ports deal in 2006. With London taking over (again) as the worlds financial capital for stock listing, its no surprise that Chinas new state investment fund intends to locate its main Western offices there instead of New York. Meanwhile, Americas share of global exchange reserves has dropped to 65 percent. Gisele Bndchen demands to be paid in euros, while Jay-Z drowns in 500 euro notes in a recent video. American soft power seems on the wane even at home. And Europes influence grows at Americas expense. While America fumbles at nation-building, Europe spends its money and political capital on locking peripheral countries into its orbit. Many poor regions of the world have realized that they want the European dream, not the American dream. Africa wants a real African Union like the E.U.; we offer no equivalent. Activists in the Middle East want parliamentary democracy like Europes, not American-style presidential strongman rule. Many of the foreign students we shunned after 9/11 are now in London and Berlin: twice as many Chinese study in Europe as in the U.S. We didnt educate them, so we have no claims on their brains or loyalties as we have in decades past. More broadly, America controls legacy institutions few seem to want like the International Monetary Fund while Europe excels at building new and sophisticated ones modeled on itself. The U.S. has a hard time getting its way even when
it dominates summit meetings consider the ill-fated Free Trade Area of the Americas let alone when its not even invited, as with the new East Asian Community, the regions answer to Americas Apec.
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Sino-Russian relations are high, allowing them to counterbalance the US. MSN News 8 (5/23, http://news.in.msn.com/international/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1414630)
Beijing: Chinese President Hu Jintao thanked Russia's new president Dmitry Medvedev, who is visiting China for offering speedy aid after last week's powerful earthquake, as the two began meetings Friday to bolster their partnership with expanded nuclear cooperation. The trip is Dmitry Medvedev's first since his inauguration earlier this month as the hand-picked successor to Vladimir Putin, underscoring the importance the two countries place on a relationship that both see as a counterbalance to U.S. dominance. But continued friction between the neighboring giants remains _ especially over oil and gas in Central Asia. At the start of their talks, Hu thanked both Medvedev and Putin _ now prime minister _ for assistance offered after the May 12 quake that struck central China. Russia sent rescue crews and a mobile hospital to the disaster area in central Sichuan province. ''Your visit to China is very important and will allow us to not only preserve but to advance all the good undertakings we have had,'' Hu said. ''We are sure that it will give a powerful impulse to the development of strategic partnership and cooperation.'' Medvedev offered his condolences to quake victims and relatives of more than 55,000 dead. "Russia is ready to provide all the necessary assistance and aid to our Chinese friends," he said."You must have no doubt that we will do everything necessary." The two leaders' talks were to conclude later Friday with a series of agreements including a US$1 billion (?630 million) deal on Russian help building a uranium enrichment facility for electricity generation and regular shipments of low-enriched uranium to China. ''We are ready to conduct general dialogue on all aspects of our strategic partnership,'' Medvedev said. Medvedev came to China from a stop in neighboring Kazakhstan, where he was seeking to preserve his country's clout in energy-rich central Asia and send a message to both Beijing and the West that Moscow continues to see the region as its home turf. China already has won a cut of the region's riches, reaching an oil pipeline deal with Kazakhstan and negotiating a gas agreement with Turkmenistan. There is also rich symbolism in Medvedev's choice of China as the main destination of his first foreign trip. When his predecessor Putin went abroad for the first time as president in 2000, he traveled to London _ via Belarus _ with a message Russia wanted closer ties to the West. In recent years, China and Russia have made highly symbolic political overtures to one another, holding joint military maneuvers and engaging in high-level talks on creating a "multi-polar world". They have taken a coordinated stance on several global issues, sharing opposition to Kosovo's independence and U.S. missile defense plans, and taking a similar approach to the Iran nuclear issue. Putin greatly strengthened relations with China, reaching a long-delayed agreement on demarcation of the 2,700 mile (4,300-kilometer) border.
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the hegemon's capabilities rather than its intentions, the ability of the United States to reassure others is limited by its formidableand uncheckedcapabilities, which always are at least a latent threat to other states. 55
This is not to say that the United States is powerless to shape others' perceptions of whether it is a threat. But doing so is difficult because in a unipolar world, the burden of proof is on the hegemon to demonstrate to others that its power is not threatening. 56 Even in a unipolar world, not all of the other major powers will believe themselves to be threatened (or to be equally threatened) by the hegemon. Eventually, however, some are bound to regard the hegemon's power as menacing. For example, although primacists assert that U.S. hegemony is nonthreatening because U.S. power is "offshore," this manifestly is not the case. On the contrary, in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East, American power is both onshore (or lurking just over the horizon in the case of East Asia) and in the faces of Russia, China, and the Islamic world. Far from being an
offshore balancer that is "stopped by water" from dominating regions beyond the Western Hemisphere, the United States has acquired the means to project massive military power into, and around, Eurasia, and thereby to establish extraregional hegemony in Europe, East Asia, and the Persian Gulf. 57
There is no such thing as a benevolent hegemon. Layne 6 (Christopher, Associate Professor of Bush School of Government and Public Service @ Texas A&M U, 2006, The Unipolar
Illusion Revisted: The Coming of the United StatesUnipolar Moment, International Security 31.2, 7-41, Project Muse) In international politics there are no benevolent hegemons. In today's world, other states dread
both the overconcentration of geopolitical influence in the United States' favor and the purposes for which it may be used. As Paul Sharp writes, "No great power has a monopoly on virtue and, although some may have a great deal more virtue than others, virtue imposed on others is not seen as such by them. All great powers are capable of exercising a measure of self-restraint, but they are tempted not to and the choice to practice restraint is made easier by the existence of countervailing power and the possibility of it [End Page 27] being exercised." 74 While Washington's self-proclaimed benevolence is inherently ephemeral, the hard fist of U.S. power is tangible.
US democracy doesnt make heg benevolentdemocracy doesnt decrease international fear of US hegemonic power Layne 6 (Christopher, Associate Professor of Bush School of Government and Public Service @ Texas A&M U, 2006, The Unipolar
Illusion Revisted: The Coming of the United StatesUnipolar Moment, International Security 31.2, 7-41, Project Muse) Many primacists believe that the United States can be a successful, benevolent hegemon because it is a liberal democracy. This argument rests on wobbly reasoning. Certainly, there is a considerable literature purporting to show that the quality of international politics among democracies differs from that between democracies and nondemocracies; that is, democracies cooperate with each other, constitute a "pluralistic security community," accord each other respect, and conduct their affairs based on shared values and norms (transparency, give-and-take, live and let live, compromise, and peaceful dispute resolution). These ideas comport with the Wilsonian ideology that drives U.S. grand strategic behavior, but there is powerful evidence demonstrating that democracies do not behave better toward each other than toward nondemocracies. The mere fact that the United States is a democracy does not negate the possibility that other states will fear its hegemonic power. First, theories that posit a special democratic (or liberal) peace are contradicted by the historical record. When important geopolitical interests are at stake, realpolitiknot regime typedetermines great power policies. 69 Contrary to liberal theory, democracies (and liberal states) have threatened to use military force against each other to resolve diplomatic crises and have even gone to the brink of war. Indeed, democracies have not just teetered on the brink; they have gone over it. The most notable example of a war among democracies occurred in 1914 when democratic Britain and France went to war against democratic Germany. 70 Today, the gross imbalance
of U.S. power means that whenever the United States believes its interests are threatened, it will act like other hegemons typically have acted, notwithstanding that it is a democracy. 71 [End Page 26] Second, the term "democracy" itself is subjective; democracy has many differentcontestedmeanings. 72 To say that two states are democracies may conceal more than it reveals.
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Soft power is key to hegemony avoids backlash and provides staying power. Nye 4 (Joseph S, Soft Power and American Foreign Policy, Harvard IR prof., vol. 119, no. 2, p. 261)
Ironically, however, the only way to achieve the type of transformation that the neoconservatives seek is by working with others and avoiding the backlash that arises when the United States appears on the world stage as an imperial power acting unilaterally. What is more, because democracy cannot be imposed by force and requires a considerable time to take root, the most likely way to obtain staying power from the American public is through developing interna- tional legitimacy and burden sharing with allies and institutions. For Jacksoni- ans like Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, this may not matter. They would pre- fer to punish the dictator and come home rather than engage in tedious nation building. For example, in September 2003, Rumsfeld said of Iraq, "I don't be- heve it's our job to reconstruct the country."^' But for serious neoconservatives, like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, their impatience with institutions and allies may undercut their own objectives. They understand the importance of soft power but fail to appreciate all its dimensions and dynamics.
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Soft power is key to sustain US hegemony. Shuja 8 (Sharif, Monash U Global Terrorism Research Unit Honorary Research Associate, Why America Can Not Ignore Soft Power,
3/22, p. 16-17)
However, it would be in the interests of the United States to create internal mechanisms for a more consistent and stable foreign policy, one that is consis- tent with the long-term policy goals of the State Department. Inconsistent uni- lateral actions, using hard power, by the United States both caused distrust by allies and increased suspicions by many nations who believe that the United States masks evil goals behind the rhetoric of idealism. On May 3, 2007, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong stated in Washington that in this tumultuous period, America's leadership and purpose has become more critical than ever. I cannot help but fully endorse the sentiments of Prime Minister Lee. There is an urgent need for the US to evolve and develop an overall foreign policy which has coherent principles and acknowledges the merits of soft power.In contrast to hard power that rests on coercion and is derived from military and economic might, soft power rests, not on coercion, but on the ability of a nation to co-opt others to follow its will through the attractiveness of its culture, values, ideas and institutions. When a state can persuade and influ- ence others to aspire to share such values, it can lead by example and foster cooperation. Soft power includes propaganda, but is considerably broader. It is much more than 'image, public relations and ephemeral popularity'. It contains very real power - an ability to gain objectives.
Soft power is increasingly critical to leadership. Shuja 8 (Sharif, Monash U Global Terrorism Research Unit Honorary Research Associate, Why America Can Not Ignore Soft Power,
3/22, p. 19)
Soft power has always been an important element of leadership. For example, the Cold War was won with a strategy of containment that used soft power along with hard power. However, in the global information age, we are seeing the increase in the importance of soft power. Communication technology is shrinking the world and creating ideal conditions for projecting soft power through the control of information.
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Soft power is key to solve terrorism. Cristo 5 (Danna A, Pace U, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics,
http://www.questiaschool.com/read/5012336040?title=Soft%20Power%3A%20The%20Means%20to%20Success %20in%20World%20Politics, 2005,AD: 7/10/09) JC Although worthwhile, the strategy assessment of the US's use of soft power is not a new or novel idea. The management and psychology literature has long touted the benefits of using referent power (soft power) over coercive power (hard power). In their classic article, "The Bases of Social Power," Raven and French (1959), describe the five bases of power: reward, coercive, legitimate, referent, and expert. Referent power is based on identification and attraction, and yields the greatest influence in relation to the other bases along as this strong attraction exists. The authors point out that referent power has the broadest range of power. The most negative power is coercion, which decreases attraction, and thus referent power. In relation to the rest of the world, there are some and individuals that are attracted to the US and its culture and others that are not. This is especially true of Islamic fundamentalists who believe that the US's secular culture is evil and corrupt. Moreover, many European countries have long shared feelings that their cultures are far superior to that of the US. The major failure of the Bush administration in gaining broad support for the war against Iraq may in fact be a failure in assessing the strength of the referent power of the US, which had been eroding for many years prior to the administration. Although it would have been best to move ahead with broad support using soft power, the US could not use what they did not have. The fault of the Bush administration could lie in their immediate use of coercive power without the exploration of the other bases of power before declaring war. But it is important to note that France, Germany, and Russia had their own self-interest in mind when they opposed the war against Iraq. These countries had a long history of trying to weaken the containment of Iraq to ensure that they could have good trading relations with it.
Soft power is critical to solve terrorism. Shuja 8 (Sharif, Monash U Global Terrorism Research Unit Honorary Research Associate, Why America Can Not Ignore Soft Power,
3/22, p. 19)
It is argued that both hard and soft power are important in US foreign policy and in the fight against terrorism. The suppression of terrorism, and the achievement of a variety of other objectives including efforts to promote democracy overseas, require the willing assistance of other nations and peo- ples. There are places where the US cannot go in search of terrorist leaders. It needs broad cooperation for intelligence gathering and the restriction of ter- rorist finances. The hard power of military and economic strength is, of course, essential, but the use of 'carrot and stick' alone cannot achieve these objectives. America's neglect of soft power is undermining its ability to persuade and influence others.
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Soft power solves terrorism and democracy promotion. Nye 4 (Joseph S, Soft Power and American Foreign Policy, Harvard IR prof., vol. 119, no. 2, p. 257)
According to the National Security Strategy, the greatest threats the American people face are transnational terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and particularly their combination. Yet, meeting the challenge posed by trans- national military organizations that could acquire weapons of mass destruction requires the cooperation of other countriesand cooperation is strengthened by soft power. Similarly, efforts to promote democracy in Iraq and elsewhere will require the help of others. Reconstruction in Iraq and peacekeeping in failed states are far more likely to succeed and to be less costly if shared with others rather than appearing as American imperial occupation. The fact that the United States squandered its soft power in the way that it went to war meant that the aftermath turned out to be much more costly than it need have been.
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Soft power is key to solve climate change and terrorism. Khanna 8 (Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in the American Strategy
Program at the New America Foundation. Council on Foreign Relations: The United States and Shifting Global Power Dynamics) online: http://www.cfr.org/publication/16002/united_states_and_shifting_global_power_dynamics.html To the extent that our grand strategy will involve elements of promoting good governance and democracy, we will have to become far more irresistible as a political partner, offering incentives greater than those of other powers who do not attach any strings to their relationships. Even if you are agnostic on this issue, we are all aware that this is a perennial plank of American diplomacy and if we want to be even remotely effective at it, we have to up our ante in this arena of rising powers. This I believe is part of what you would call non-military spending on national security, a course of action I strongly advocate for the Middle East and Central Asia.
An equally important component of grand strategy will have to be a realistic division of labor with these rising powers, something both of us clearly emphasize. Whether the issue is climate change, public health, poverty reduction, post-conflict reconstruction, or counterterrorism, we do not have the capacity to solve these problems alonenor can any other power. I argue that we need serious issue-based summit diplomacy among concerned powers (and other actors such as corporations and NGOs) to get moving quickly on these questions rather than (or in parallel to) allowing things to drag through their course in cumbersome multilateral fora. This last point is crucial: the missing ingredient to a globalized grand strategy is the U.S. foreign policy community cleverly leveraging the strengths, activities, and global footprint of the U.S. private sector and NGO communities into what I call a diplomatic-industrial complex. It is in changing our foreign policy process, as much as some of the
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Hard power is key soft power approaches dont solve terrorism. Hirsh 2 (Michael, former Newsweek foreign editor, Sept./Oct., http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20020901faessay9731/michael-hirsh/bush-andthe-world.html)
The hegemonists are right about one thing: hard power is necessary to break the back of radical Islamic groups and to force the Islamic world into fundamental change. Bin Laden said it well himself: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like a strong horse." The United States must be seen as the strong horse. The reluctant U.S. interventionism of the 1990s made no headway against this implacable enemy. Clinton's policy of offering his and NATO's credibility to save Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo won Washington little goodwill in the Islamic world.
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***Heg Good***
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The countries surrounding the Caspian Sea -- Russia to the north, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to the east, Iran to the south, and
Azerbaijan to the west -- hold some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world. And together with neighboring Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan, they represent important economic, political, and strategic interests for the United States. To advance those interests, Washington should strengthen its policy toward the Caspian by giving the highest level of support to the cooperative development of regional energy reserves and pipelines. In particular, it should encourage the construction of multiple pipelines to ensure diverse and reliable transportation of Caspian energy to regional and international markets.Although the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will continue to dominate the global energy market for decades to come, oil and gas development in the Caspian basin could help diversify, secure, and stabilize world energy supplies in the future, as resources from the North Sea have done in the past. The proven and possible energy reserves in or adjacent to the Caspian region -- including at least 115 billion barrels of oil -- are in fact many times greater than those of the North Sea and should increase significantly with continuing exploration. Such plentiful resources could generate huge returns for U.S. companies and their shareholders. American firms have already acquired 75 percent of Kazakhstan's mammoth Tengiz oil field, which is now valued at more than $10 billion. Over time, as the capital generated from Caspian energy development spreads to other sectors, U.S. firms in other industries -- from infrastructure to telecommunications to transportation and other
the United States has important political and strategic stakes in the Caspian region -- including a NATO ally in Turkey, a former adversary in Russia, a currently turbulent regime in Iran, and several fragile new states. Located at the crossroads of western Europe, eastern Asia, and the Middle East, the Caspian serves as a trafficking area for weapons of mass destruction, terrorists, and narcotics -- a role enhanced by the weakness of the region's governments.
services -- could also benefit. In addition to these energy-related and commercial interests,
With few exceptions, the fledgling Caspian republics are plagued with pervasive corruption, political repression, and the virtual absence of the rule of law. Even if they can muster the political will to attempt reform themselves, the attempt will
fail so long as they lack the resources to build strong economic and political institutions. And until they build close, substantive relations with the West, they will remain vulnerable to Russia's hegemonic impulses. The cooperative development of regional energy reserves and pipelines -- independent of their huge neighbors to the north and the south -- thus represents not only a boon for the United States and the world at large, but also the surest way to provide for the Caspian nations' own security and prosperity.
Second Failure to contain Russian would destabilize all of Eurasia, spark nuclear wars and put a stranglehold on the west. Cohen 96 (Ariel, PhD, Heritage Foundation, The New Great Game: Oil Politics in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Backgrounder, no.
1065, p. lexis)
Much is at stake in Eurasia for the U.S. and its allies. Attempts to restore its empire will doom Russias transition to a democracy and free-market economy. The ongoing war in Chechnya alone has cost Russia $6 billion to date (equal to Russias IMF and World Bank loans for 1995). Moreover, it has extracted a tremendous price from Russian society. The wars which would be required to restore the Russian empire would prove much more costly not just for Russia and the region, but for peace, world stability, and security. As the former Soviet arsenals are spread throughout the NIS, these conflicts may escalate to include the use of weapons of mass destruction. Scenarios including unauthorized missile launches are especially threatening. Moreover, if successful, a reconstituted Russian empire would become a major destabilizing influence both in Eurasia and throughout the world. It would endanger not only Russias neighbors, but also the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Middle East. And, of course, a neo-imperialist Russia could imperil the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf.15 Domination of the
Caucasus would bring Russia closer to the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Middle East. Russian imperialists, such as radical nationalist Vladimir
If Russia succeeds in establishing its domination in the south, the threat to Ukraine, Turkey, Iran, and Afganistan will increase. The
Zhirinovsky, have resurrected the old dream of obtaining a warm port on the Indian Ocean.
independence of pro-Western Georgia and Azerbaijan already has been undermined by pressures from the Russian armed forces and covert actions by the intelligence and security services, in addition to which Russian hegemony would make Western political and economic efforts to stave off Islamic militancy more difficult. Eurasian oil resources are pivotal to economic
development in the early 21st century. The supply of Middle Eastern oil would become precarious if Saudi Arabia became unstable, or if Iran or Iraq provoked another military conflict in the area. Eurasian oil is also key to the economic development of the southern NIS. Only with oil revenues can these countries sever their dependence on Moscow and develop modern market economies and free societies. Moreover, if these vast oil reserves were tapped and developed, tens of thousands of U.S. and Western jobs would be created. The U.S. should ensure free access to these reserves for the benefit of both Western and local economies.
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Second, failure to deter an invasion sparks a global nuclear war. Chicago Tribune 96 (staff, China Prepares New Show of Strength, Feb. 6, p. lexis)
While a peaceful solution remains a priority, both the politburo and the Peoples Liberation Army have pledged to use force if necessary to regain the island on which the Nationalists settled after losing the civil war to Mao Tse-tung in 1949.A PLA analysis--leaked to Western media--suggests that in the event of war with Taiwan, the U.S. would not intervene because U.S. commercial interests in China would be damaged and any intervention could lead to a new Sino-Russian alliance.The document, circulated among officers, concludes that even if the U.S. intervened, Washington could only retard--but not reverse--the defeat of Taiwan, and a Sino-U.S. conflict might lead to a global nuclear holocaust.
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Second, democratic consolidation is key to preventing nuclear war. CARNEGIE COMMISSION ON PREVENTING DEADLY CONFLICT 95 (staff, Promoting
Democracy in the 1990s, Oct, p. online: http://www.carnegie.org/sub/pubs/deadly/dia95_01.html lexis) This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
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Political inaction creates vacuums, which can suck in states to fill the void. Although the United States does not want to be the world's sheriff, living in a world without law and order is not an auspicious prospect. This said, it must be emphasized that the United States ought not intervene militarily in every conflict or humanitarian crisis. Indeed, it should pick its interventions with great care. Offering
Washington's good offices to mediate disputes in distant corners is one thing; dispatching armed forces to far-flung deserts, jungles, or mountains is quite another. A global doctrine setting forth all-inclusive guidelines is difficult to cast in stone. Containment, the doctrine articulated in response to Soviet global ambitions, offered a realistic guideline for policymakers. A similar response to rogue states cannot be easily cloned for each contingency but may require the United States to corral allies or partners into a unified policy, as circumstances dictate. But watching rogue behavior with complacency or relying on the United Nations courts disaster in the age of weapons of mass destruction. Most incidents of civil turmoil need not engage U.S. military forces. Regrettable as the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka is, it demands no American intervention, for the ethnic conflict between the secessionist Tamil minority and the Sinhalese majority is largely an internal affair. Political turmoil in Cambodia is largely a domestic problem. Even the civil war in the Congo, which has drawn in small military forces from Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, and Zimbabwe, is a Central African affair. Aside from international prodding, the simmering Congolese fighting is better left to Africans to resolve than to outsiders. In the case of the decades-long slaughter in southern Sudan, the United States can serve a humanitarian cause by calling international attention to Khartoum's genocide of Christian and animist peoples. These types of conflicts, however, do not endanger U.S. strategic interests, undermine regional order, threaten global commercial relationships, or, realistically, call for direct humanitarian intervention. No weapons of mass destruction menace surrounding peoples or allies. Thus, there is no compelling reason for U.S. military deployment.
Terrorist rogue states, in contrast, must be confronted with robust measures, or the world will go down the same path as it did in the 1930s, when Europe and the United States allowed Nazi Germany to propagate its ideology across half a dozen states, to rearm for a war of conquest, and to intimidate the democracies into appeasement. Rogue states push the world toward anarchy and away from stability. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security adviser to President Carter, cited preventing global anarchy as one of the two goals of "America's global engagement, namely, that of forging an enduring framework of global geopolitical cooperation." The other key goal is "impeding the emergence of a power rival."(4)
Second, Failure to deter Rogues sparks a nuclear crises and war Boot 4 (Max Boot, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Neocons. (Think Again), FOREIGN POLICY,
January/February 2004, n. 140 p. 20 lexis) True. The greatest danger to the United States today is the possibility that some rogue state will develop nuclear weapons and then share them with terrorist groups. Iran and North Korea are the two likeliest culprits. Neither would be willing to negotiate away its nuclear arsenal; no treaty would be any trustworthier than the 1994 Agreed Framework that North Korea violated. Neocons think the only way to ensure U.S. security is to topple the tyrannical regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran. This objective does not mean, however, that neocons are agitating for preemptive war. They do not rule out force if necessary. But their preferred solution is to use political, diplomatic, economic, and military pressure, short of actual war, to bring down these dictators--the same strategy the United States followed with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The Iranian and North Korean peoples want to be free; the United States should help them by every means possible, while doing nothing to provide support for their oppressors. Regime change may seem like a radical policy but it is actually the best way to prevent a nuclear crisis that could lead to war. Endless negotiating with these governments--the preferred strategy of self-described pragmatists and moderates--is likely to bring about the very crisis it is meant to avert.
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Second, increasing Asian nuclearization runs the risk of wild-fire proliferation and armsracing, leading to miscalculation and nuclear war. Friedburg 94 (Aaron, Professor of International Relations at Princeton University International Security, Winter,
p. 8, p. lexis) Assuming, for the moment that an Asia with more nuclear powers would be more stable than one with fewer, there would still be serious difficulties involved in negotiating the transition to such a world. As in other regions, small, nascent nuclear forces will be especially vulnerable to preemption. In Japan the prevailing nuclear allergy could lead first to delays in acquiring deterrent forces and then to a desperate and dangerous scramble for nuclear weapons. In Asia, the prospects for a peaceful transition may be further complicated by the fact that the present and potential nuclear powers are both numerous and strategically intertwined. The nuclearization of Korea (North, South or, whether through reunification or competitive arms programs, both together) could lead to a similar development in Japan, which might cause China to accelerate and expand its nuclear programs, which could then have an impact on the defense policies of Taiwan, India (and through it, Pakistan) and Russia (which would also be affected by events in Japan and Korea). All of this would influence the behavior of the United States. Similar shockwaves could also travel through the system in different directions (for example, from India to China to Japan to Korea). A rapid, multifaceted expansion in nuclear capabilities could increase the dangers of misperception, miscalculation, and war.
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Second, A global economic collapse would escalate to full scale conflict and rapid extinction Bearden 2k (Thomas, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis, Free Republic, June 24, lexis)
History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate Chinawhose long-range nuclear missiles (some) can reach the United States-attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is this side of the MAD coin that is almost never discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs. Today, a great percent of the WMD arsenals that will be unleashed, are already on site within the United States itself. The resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
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Iraqi instablity spills over and causes terrorism. The National Interest 7 (Keeping the Lid On, Lexisnexis, May-June 2007)
THE COLLAPSE of Iraq into all-out civil war would mean more than just a humanitarian tragedy that could easily claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and produce millions of refugees. Such a conflict is unlikely to contain itself. In other similar cases of all-out civil war the resulting spillover has fostered terrorism, created refugee flows that can destabilize the entire neighborhood, radicalized the populations of surrounding states and even sparked civil wars in other, neighboring states or transformed domestic strife into regional war. Terrorists frequently find a home in states in civil war, as Al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan. However, civil wars just as often breed new terrorist groups-Hizballah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat of Algeria, and the Tamil Tigers were all born of civil wars. Many such groups start by focusing on local targets but then shift to international attacks-starting with those they believe are aiding their enemies in the civil war.
Terrorism risks extinction Kirkus Reviews, 99 (Book Review on The New Terrorism: Fanatiscism and the Arms of Mass Destruction,
http://www.amazon.com/New-Terrorism-Fanaticism-Arms-Destruction/dp/product-description/0195118162) Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a ``nuisance'' to ``one of the gravest dangers facing mankind.'' First terroristsbe they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible permutationsseem to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are willing to do, who and how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in the future may threaten the very foundations of modern civilizations.
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- to believe that a reliance on international cooperation and foreign aid will soothe the ire of Iran, al Qaeda in Iraq and their ideological supporters and pave the way for political and social progress. Absent active and engaged U.S. leadership Iraq will become a longterm failed state and a terrorist sanctuary. With respect to Iraq, the Democrats have always preferred to plow the easy field of
political expediency instead of laboring in the difficult field of policy. Now the party of the donkey is being joined by some Republicans who are prepared to ignore reality in favor of mythical rhetoric. On July 5, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote, As evidence mounts that the surge is failing to make Iraq more secure, we cannot wait until the Administrations September report before we change course. President Bush and the Iraqis must move now to finally accept a measure of accountability for this war transition the mission for our combat troops and start bringing them home from an intractable civil war. First, Reid and his political brethren have spent far too much time trying to make the case that what is transpiring in Iraq is a civil war. However one defines the conflict it is a key battleground and the aftermath of the fighting will dictate what forces sink their roots deep into the Middle Easts future. Second, despite Reids hyperventilating, there is no evidence that the surge is failing. In fact, U.S.
the opposite. On July 6, the day after Reids misguided missive, Army Major General Rick Lynch, commander of Multinational Division Center and the 3rd Army Division said U.S. and Iraqi forces are making significant progress in
destroying insurgent sanctuaries. General Lynch said the surge forces are giving us the capability we have now to take the fight to the enemy. The enemy only responds to force and we now have that force. Lynch explained, We can conduct detailed kinetic strikes, we can do cordon and searches, and we can deny the enemy sanctuaries. If those surge forces go away that capability goes away and the Iraqi security forces arent ready yet to do that (mission). The general said if U.S. forces begin an untimely departure, Youd find the enemy regaining ground, reestablishing sanctuaries, building more IEDs (and) carrying those IEDs to Baghdad, and the violence would escalate.
Middle Eastern instability sky rockets oil prices, causing economic collapse. Islam Online.Net 6 (Frequently Asked Questions About Iraq,
http://www.islamonline.net/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/topic_15.shtml, March 21, 2006)
Oil is the lifeblood of the global economy. The Middle East has about 65% of the worlds total oil resources. With this in mind, it becomes clear that any instability in the Middle East would threaten the global oil trade. If the global oil trade were disrupted, it would cause a shortage in supply which would cause oil prices to skyrocket. Skyrocketing oil prices hamper global economic growth and threaten the worlds economies. At worst, it could cause a recession in many of the worlds oil dependent countries.
Economic collapse causes global nuclear war and extinction. Bearden 2k (Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, 2000, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, 2000,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-Medicine/message/642) (PDAF0842) Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As the collapse of the Western economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations as the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat Aspects History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions. Prior to the final economic collapse, the
stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea, including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China - whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that, under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never
discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all, is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed . The resulting great Armageddon will
destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
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regional balance of power is not on the cards. Instead, a structure of deterrence appears to be in the making. Deterrence is directed at the intentions of opponents: if the existence of deterrent forces are seen to prevent the opponent from achieving gains through aggression, the opponent will refrain from attack. Thus, the power-projection capabilities of the various states are constrained by a mutual display of force between the United States and the Southeast Asian states on the one hand, and China on the other. A structure of deterrence does not operate on the basis of cooperation between opposing powers. Nor can deterrence be equated with violence and volatility. On the contrary, the consolidation of a structure of deterrence in the South China Sea may provide Southeast Asia with the level of military security and reassurance necessary to allow for the development of stronger co-operative ties with China.
Second, conflict in the SCS culminated into a global nuclear war. Strait Times 95 (staff, Choose Your Own Style of Democracy, May 21, p. proquest)
In his speech, Dr Mahathir also painted three scenarios for Asia. In the first -the worst possible scenario -Asian countries would go to war against each other, he said. It might start with clashes between Asian countries over the Spratly Islands because of China's insistence that the South China Sea belonged to it along with all the islands, reefs and seabed minerals. In this scenario, the United States would offer to help and would be welcomed by Asean, he said. The Pacific Fleet begins to patrol the South China Sea. Clashes occur between the Chinese navy and the US Navy. China declares war on the US and a fullscale war breaks out with both sides resorting to nuclear weapons.
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Second, this leads to global nuclear war. Hitchens 3 (Theresa, Editor of Defense News, Director of Center for Defense Information, Former director of
British American Security Information Council -think tank based in Washington and London. October 2. http://www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1745) The negative consequences of a space arms race are hard to exaggerate, given the inherent offensedominant nature of space warfare. Space weapons, like anything else on orbit, are inherently vulnerable and, therefore, best exploited as first-strike weapons. Thus, as Michael Krepon and Chris Clary argue in their monograph, Space Assurance or Space Dominance, the hair-trigger postures of the nuclear competition between the United States and Russia during the Cold War would be elevated to the ultimate high ground of space. Furthermore, any conflict involving ASAT use is likely to highly escalatory, in particular among nuclear weapons states, as the objective of an attacker would be to eliminate the other sides capabilities to respond either in kind or on the ground by taking out satellites providing surveillance, communications and targeting. Indeed, U.S. Air Force officials participating in space wargames have discovered that war in space rapidly deteriorates into all-out nuclear war, precisely because it quickly becomes impossible to know if the other side has gone nuclear. Aviation Week and Space Technology quoted one gamer as saying simply: [If] I dont know whats going on, I have no choice but to hit everything, using everything I have. This should not be surprising to anyone the United States and the Soviet Union found this out very early in the Cold War, and thus took measures to ensure transparency, such as placing emphasis on early warning radars, developing the hotline and pledging to non-interference with national technical means of verification under arms control treaties.
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US leadership is key to solve warming. Maybee 8 (Sean C, US Navy commander, p. 98, http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Press/jfq_pages/i49.htm)
The national security implications of GCC pose unique challenges for the United States in part because it is best suited to lead counter-GCC efforts. The Nation has the economic and informational power to develop and resource effective methods and the international status to foster global cooperation and implementation. The U.S. military already has a robust capacity to respond and could continue to develop and use it to help other nations to build that capacity. In addition, by addressing environmental security, the United States may foster trust and cooperation while beginning to anticipate some GCC effects.
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US primacy prevents the outbreak of global hegemonic war. Walt 2 (Stephen, Professor of International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "American
Primacy: Its Prospects and Pitfalls." Naval War College Review, Vol. 55, Iss. 2. pg. 9 (20 pages) Spring 2002. Proquest) A second consequence of U.S. primacy is a decreased danger of great-power rivalry and a higher level of overall international tranquility. Ironically, those who argue that primacy is no longer important, because the danger of war is slight, overlook the fact that the extent of American primacy is one of the main reasons why the risk of great-power war is as low as it is. For most of the past four centuries, relations among the major powers have been intensely competitive, often punctuated by major wars and occasionally by all-out struggles for hegemony. In the first half of the twentieth century, for example, great-power wars killed over eighty million people. Today, however, the dominant position of the United States places significant limits on the possibility of great-power competition, for at least two reasons. One reason is that because the United States is currently so far ahead, other major powers are not inclined to challenge its dominant position. Not only is there no possibility of a "hegemonic war" (because there is no potential hegemon to mount a challenge), but the risk of war via miscalculation is reduced by the overwhelming gap between the United States and the other major powers. Miscalculation is more likely to lead to war when the balance of power is fairly even, because in this situation both sides can convince themselves that they might be able to win. When the balance of power is heavily skewed, however, the leading state does not need to go to war and weaker states dare not try.8 The second reason is that the continued deployment of roughly two hundred thousand troops in Europe and in Asia provides a further barrier to conflict in each region. So long as U.S. troops are committed abroad, regional powers know that launching a war is likely to lead to a confrontation with the United States. Thus, states within these regions do not worry as much about each other, because the U.S. presence effectively prevents regional conflicts from breaking out. What Joseph Joffe has termed the "American pacifier" is not the only barrier to conflict in Europe and Asia, but it is an important one. This tranquilizing effect is not lost on America's allies in Europe and Asia. They resent U.S. dominance and dislike playing host to American troops, but they also do not want "Uncle Sam" to leave.9 Thus, U.S. primacy is of benefit to the United States, and to other countries as well, because it dampens the overall level of international insecurity. World politics might be more interesting if the United States were weaker and if other states were forced to compete with each other more actively, but a more exciting world is not necessarily a better one. A comparatively boring era may provide few opportunities for genuine heroism, but it is probably a good deal more pleasant to live in than "interesting" decades like the 1930s or 1940s.
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Unipolarity, by design, avoids conflict Wohlforth 99 (William, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown. International Security, Summer 19 99. "The Stability of a Unipolar World.") To appreciate the sources of conflict that unipolarity avoids, consider the two periods already discussed in which leading states scored very highly on aggregate measures of power: the Pax Britannica and the Cold War. Because those concentrations of power were not unipolar, both periods witnessed security competition and hegemonic rivalry. The Crimean War is a case in point. The war unfolded in a system in which two states shared leadership and three states were plausibly capable of bidding for hegemony.41 Partly as a result, neither the statesmen of the time nor
historians over the last century and a half have been able to settle the debate over the origins of the conflict. The problem is that even those who agree that the war arose from a threat to the European balance of power cannot agree on whether the threat emanated from France, Russia, or Britain. Determining which state really did threaten the equilib- rium-or indeed whether
any of them did-is less important than the fact that the power gap among them was small enough to make all three threats seem plausible at the time and in retrospect. No such uncertainty-and hence no such conflict-is remotely possible in a unipolar system.
Unipolarity solves the roots of the worlds issues, security and competition Wohlforth 99 (William, Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Edmund Walsh School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown. International Security, Summer 19 99. "The Stability of a Unipolar World.") Third, we should not exaggerate the costs. The clearer the underlying distribution of power is, the less likely it is that states will need to test it in arms races or crises. Because the current concentration of power in the United States is unprecedentedly clear and comprehensive, states are likely to share the expectation that counterbalancing would be a costly and probably doomed venture. As a result, they face incentives to keep their military budgets under control until they observe fundamental changes in the capability of the United States to fulfill its role. The whole system can thus be run at comparatively low costs to both the sole pole and the other major powers. Unipolarity can be made to seem expensive and dangerous if it is equated with a global empire demanding U.S. involvement in all issues everywhere. In reality, unipolarity is a distribution of capabilities among the world's great powers. It does not solve all the world's problems. Rather, it minimizes two major problems- security and prestige competition-that confronted the great powers of the past. Maintaining unipolarity does not require limitless commitments. It involves managing the central security regimes in Europe and Asia, and maintaining the expectation on the part of other states that any geopolitical challenge to the United States is futile. As long as that is the expectation, states will likely refrain from trying, and the system can be maintained at little extra cost.
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US Military too overstretched for empire Economist 8 (3/29, Power and Peril, 00130613, 3/29/2008, Vol. 386, Issue 8573)
These days the word "imperial" is usually followed by "overstretch". The bookshops Nobody doubts America's unparalleled ability to project its military power into every corner of the world, but blowing things up is not the same as establishing an "imperium". Enthusiasm for empire has been replaced by worries about exhaustion and vulnerability. Americans are concerned that the army has been stretched to breaking point, and that their country remains a terrorist target. If George Bush wanted to "fight them over there" so that Americans do not have to "fight them over here", his successor will have to face the possibility that, in fighting them over there, America has overstrained its army while leaving the home front vulnerable.
What a difference a bungled war makes. are full of titles cautioning against the folly of empire (Cullen Murphey's "Are We Rome?", Amy Chua's "Day of Empire").
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***Heg Bad***
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The link between hegemony and terrorism is air-tight. Johnson 4 (Chalmers, President of Japan Policy Research Institute, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of
American Empire, 2K4, p. xvi-xvii, lexis) If drug blowback is hard to trace to its source, bomb attacks, whether on U.S. embassies in Africa, the World Trade Center in New York City, or an apartment complex in Saudi Arabia that housed U.S. servicemen, are another matter. One man's terrorist is, of course, another man's free- dom fighter, and what U.S. officials
denounce as unprovoked terrorist attacks on its innocent citizens are often meant as retaliation for previ- ous American imperial actions.
Terrorists attack innocent and unde- fended American targets precisely because American soldiers and sailors firing cruise missiles from ships at sea or sitting in B-52 bombers at extremely high altitudes or supporting brutal and repressive regimes from Washington seem invulnerable. As members of the Defense Science Board wrote in a 1997 report to the undersecretary of defense for acqui- sition and technology, "Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. In addition, the military asymmetry that denies nation states the ability to engage in overt attacks against the United States drives the use of transnational actors [that is, terrorists from one country attacking in another."
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Azerbaijan also borders Iran, which has the possibility of becoming a flashpoint in the coming year because of questions concerning Tehran's nuclear weapons program. At this point, Moscow must understand that
the U.S. has no intention of limiting or even leveling its presence in the region and will no doubt be reacting to this inevitability.
US Influence cannot prevent conflict over the Caspian Sea Aras 2K (BLENT, Professor Political Science Faith University Istanbul, www.bulentaras.com/files/caspian.pdf)
The patterns of development pursued by the Caspian states seem to follow an analogous line. The reliance on the prospective fruits of natural resources, rather than on socio-political reform and institution-building, recalls the historical experiences of the Middle Eastern countries, further confirming the fateful alignment of these two regions in strategic thinking. Most of the countries in the Middle East acquired their statehood following the colonial period, a fact evidenced by the artificial boundaries separating them. Their state-building experiences were driven largely by their oil-centered socio-economic structure. The recurring instabilities in the region stem from this over-dependence on oil revenues without a genuine industrial production base and from the lack of a firm legacy of state tradition. Similar processes might be experienced in the Caspian region, though in no worse conditions. The Caspian states emerged from the formal disintegration of the Soviet empire in a manner analogous to the end of colonial rule in the Middle East. In dealing with the state-building problems, the Caspian states are also oriented more toward the promises of natural riches than toward institutionalized reform. Given the diminishing returns of a volatile oil market and the declining oil prices predicted for the following decades, this kind of attitude and policy can easily result in chronic internal tensions within the Caspian states as well as in the Gulf. Furthermore, neither these indigenous countries nor the United States, which is the prime security manager in the region, are prepared for these growing internal instabilities. In handling inter-state clashes in these regions the United States proved itself well, but as the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the bloody conflicts in the Balkansespecially in Bosniaindicate, U.S. initiative cannot resolve mature internal instabilities easily.18 In this sense, the Caspians wealth in natural resources may turn into a self-destructive possession.
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of strong Russian opposition and in the absence of a United Nations Security Council resolution.
Currently, it is pursuing plans to place 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic to construct a limited missile defense shield against countries such as Iran. Russian alarm grew. On February 10, 2007, President Putin made a
seminal speech that detailed his objections to the Neoconservatives Unipolar vision and U.S. uniltateralism. Excerpts from Putins speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy detail his views and follow: The history of humanity certainly has gone through unipolar periods and seen aspirations to world supremacy. And what hasnt happened in world history? However, what is a unipolar world? It is [a] world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in todays world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in todaysand precisely in todaysworld, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilization. Along with this, what is happening in todays worldis a tentative to introduce precisely this concept into international affairs, the concept of a unipolar world. And with which results? Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of forcemilitary forcein international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible. Putin explicitly blamed the United States for such developments. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way, he charged, This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. A full-fledged rupture in U.S.-Russia relations is still avoidable. In fact, the relationship can still be repaired fairly easily, as unilateralism, and not a clash of critical interests between the two nations, is at the root of the worsening relationship. A pragmatic, interest-driven U.S. foreign policy that restores primacy to diplomacy, eliminates idealistic Regime Change, and returns emphasis to relations between allies and great powers can overturn the unilateralism that is currently harming the relationship.
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and bleed Americas economy and its military and federal budgets, and the overextension could hasten the decline of the United States as a superpower, as it did the Soviet Union and Great Britain. The strategy could also have the opposite effect from what its proponents claim it would have; that is, it would alarm other nations and peoples and thus provoke counterbalancing behavior and create incentives for other nations to acquire weapons of mass destruction as an insurance policy against American military might.
US spending to maintain hegemonic power is huge Eland 2 (Ivan, Director of defense policy studies Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 459- The Empire Strikes Out: The New Imperialism
and Its Fatal Flaws, November 26, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa459.pdf)
The United States accounts for about 40 percent of total worldwide defense spending, up from 28 percent in
the mid-1980s, the height of the Reagan military buildup. Thats two and a half times the combined spending of all its potential rivals.79 But, as an indication of its overextension, the United States accounts for only 29 percent of the worlds GDP. Another comparison indicates that U.S. allies are free riding: although the U.S. economy is larger than the next three largest economies on the planetthose of Japan, Germany, and the United KingdomU.S. defense
spending is larger than that of the next 15 highest defense spending nations, most of which are rich U.S. allies.
US spending on security is increasing Eland 2 (Ivan, Director of defense policy studies Cato Institute, Policy Analysis No. 459- The Empire Strikes Out: The New Imperialism and
Its Fatal Flaws, November 26, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa459.pdf) With the war on terrorism, the Bush administration has already requested an additional $45.5 billion for bringing the total to $396 billion, an increase of 13 percent. In all, the administration plans to spend $2.1 trillion
2003, on the military over the next five years, which will raise annual U.S defense spending 15 percent above the Cold War average. How much more the strategy of empire will cost is unclear. Also, foreign aid, nation building, and other activities related to the strategy are not free. The Bush administration recently pledged to
substantially increase Americas core development assistance by 50 percent. And American efforts at nation building in tiny Bosnia and Kosovo have cost U.S. taxpayers an estimated $21 billion so far. The more dependents and protectorates Washington takes on, the greater the burden on the U.S. economy will be.
Hegemony will bankrupt the US Hoke 6 (Zlatica, Voice Of America News, June 8, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-06/AmericasRole2006-06-08-voa60.cfm?
CFID=31442881&CFTOKEN=75492258) But U.S. services to the rest of
the world are not cheap. According to the Congressional Research Service, for example, the U.S. cost of war and reconstruction in Iraq is approaching 200 billion dollars. The United States gave
more than 16 billion dollars in aid to developing countries in 2003, almost twice as much as the next biggest donor, Japan. And in 2004, the U.S. budget deficit exceeded 400 billion dollars, reaching an all-time high. So the question for many observers is whether America can continue to afford its leadership role in world affairs. Robert Guest, Washington Bureau Chief for The Economist magazine, suspects it may not. "There is nothing unforeseen about this whatsoever.
When empires run out of money, they either run out of the will to fight or they tend to retreat into themselves. And the looming gap that you see with the retirement of the 'baby boomers' [i.e., Americans born between 1946 and 1964], bringing Medicare, Social Security and, to a lesser degree, Medicaid fairly rapidly into bankruptcy is the single greatest threat to American global hegemony," says Guest.
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What is most striking in my view is the continuity of the effort to sustain American domination of Iraq
through the permanent stationing of 138,000 US troops supplemented by allied troops and US mercenaries, and the farflung base structure designed to support US primacy in the region. This, together with the dismantling of much of the previous
Iraq administrative structure, the tieing of the hands of the present administration by a series of neoliberal policies that deny fiscal authority to the government, and the transfer of many of the most lucrative sectors of the Iraq economy to American firms, has created a situation that ties the hands of any Iraq administration. Policies that sharply reduced US domination of Iraq, including the systematic withdrawal of US forces and elimination of US bases, coupled with a stronger international presence, including the United Nations and European nations, both governments and NGOs, might create more hopeful conditions for relief, reconstruction and reform agendas that will be essential for the reconstruction of Iraq and a reduction of international tensions in a region that is super charged. It
seems certain that if that multinational presence is predominantly military, the needs of the Iraqi people and society are unlikely to be met. Whatever the changes, we should not of course expect peace and development to reign any time soon. What can be said with confidence is that the US has embarked on a course that has brought disaster to Iraq and the region and disgrace to the United States. The Bush administration's attempt to hide the fact that fundamental elements of its
flawed policies remain in place seems certain to add fuel to the fire.
Iraqi instablity spills over and causes terrorism. The National Interest 7 (Keeping the Lid On, Lexisnexis, May-June 2007)
THE COLLAPSE of Iraq into all-out civil war would mean more than just a humanitarian tragedy that could easily claim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and produce millions of refugees. Such a conflict is unlikely to contain itself. In other similar cases of all-out civil war the resulting spillover has fostered terrorism, created refugee flows that can destabilize the entire neighborhood, radicalized the populations of surrounding states and even sparked civil wars in other, neighboring states or transformed domestic strife into regional war. Terrorists frequently find a home in states in civil war, as Al-Qaeda did in Afghanistan. However, civil wars just as often breed new terrorist groups-Hizballah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat of Algeria, and the Tamil Tigers were all born of civil wars. Many such groups start by focusing on local targets but then shift to international attacks-starting with those they believe are aiding their enemies in the civil war.
Terrorism risks extinction Kirkus Reviews, 99 (Book Review on The New Terrorism: Fanatiscism and the Arms of Mass Destruction,
http://www.amazon.com/New-Terrorism-Fanaticism-Arms-Destruction/dp/product-description/0195118162) Today two things have changed that together transform terrorism from a ``nuisance'' to ``one of the gravest dangers facing mankind.'' First terroristsbe they Islamic extremists in the Middle East, ultranationalists in the US, or any number of other possible
permutationsseem to have changed from organized groups with clear ideological motives to small clusters of the paranoid and hateful bent on vengeance and destruction for their own sake. There are no longer any moral limitations on what terrorists are willing to do, who and how many they are willing to kill. Second, these unhinged collectivities now have ready access to weapons of mass destruction. The technological skills are not that complex and the resources needed not too rare for terrorists to employ nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons where and when they wish. The consequences of such weapons in the hands of ruthless, rootless fanatics are not difficult to imagine. In addition to the destruction of countless lives, panic can grip any targeted society, unleashing retaliatory action which in turn can lead to conflagrations perhaps on a world scale. To combat such terrorist activities, states may come to rely more and more on dictatorial and authoritarian measures. In short, terrorism in the future may threaten the very foundations of
modern civilizations
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Second, Nuclear weapons in the Middle East would lead to regional nuclear war. Military Review 6 (Military Planning for a Middle East Stockpiled With Nuclear Weapons,
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-155824168.html, November 1, 2K6) The bad news is that these experts probably are dead wrong. The theory is appealing, but theory rarely, if ever, conforms to reality. States armed with nuclear weapons in the Middle East might well wage war against one another under a variety of strategic circumstances. Iran might undertake conventional military operations against neighboring states calculating that its nuclear deterrent would prevent a retaliatory American or Arab Gulf state response. Saudi Arabia, in turn, fearing its conventional forces are inferior, could resort to the tactical use of nuclear weapons to blunt Iranian conventional assaults in the Gulf, much as NATO had planned to do against Warsaw Pact forces in cold-war Europe. Egypt had no nuclear
weapons in 1973, but this did not stop it from attacking Israeli forces in the Sinai. Along with other Arab states, Egypt could use conventional forces in saber rattling against Israel, and conventional clashes could erupt into a general war. Right now, American forces cannot deter a Syria without nuclear weapons from sponsoring jihadist operations against U.S. forces in Iraq. A Syria armed with
a nuclear deterrent might be emboldened to undertake even more aggressive sponsorship of guerrilla war against U.S. and Israeli forces, and this could tip a crisis into open warfare. Sitting on hair triggers in the narrow geographic confines of the Middle East, states armed with nuclear weapons would be under strong incentives to use them or lose them and to fire nuclear ballistic missiles in a crisis. At the height of a regional crisis, Iran, for example, might launch huge salvos of ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons against Israel in order to overwhelm Israeli ballistic missile defenses, decapitate the Israeli civilian
and military leadership, and reduce the chances of Israeli nuclear retaliation. During the cold war, the United States and the Soviet Union had about 30 minutes of breathing time from the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles to their impact. That was 30 potential minutes of precious time to determine whether warnings of launches were real. In the Middle East, there would be only a handful of such warning minutes, and regimes would feel even more vulnerable than the United States and the Soviet Union did during the cold war. Many nation-states in the Middle East resemble city-states more than industrialized nations; they have much less time to hide their leaders from enemy attack and fewer places to hide them. Nuclear-armed states in the Middle East could also transfer nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. Iran is the top concern on this score. Over the past two decades, Tehran has nurtured Hezbollah with arms, training, logistics, ideological support, and money to enable it to serve as an appendage of Iranian foreign policy. Iranian support helped Hezbollah destroy the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in the early 1980s and kill about 250 Marines. (4) According to a former director of the FBI, senior Iranian government officials ordered Saudi Hezbollah to bomb Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in 1996. (5) The explosion killed 19 U.S. airmen. Iran has used Hezbollah to do its dirty work and maintained "plausible deniability" to reduce the chances of American retaliatory actions. The strategy worked because the United States has yet to retaliate militarily against Iran. Calculating that its nuclear weapons would deter conventional retaliation against it, a nuclear-
armed Iran would be emboldened to sponsor even more aggressive and devastating attacks to push American forces out of the Middle East.
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survive? [1] We must stop believing that problems can be solved by applying offensive military force. That only encourages others to pay back in kind. Policing to stop criminals and defense against a foreign attack are justified, but not military interventions abroad. [2] Thirty-seven years after signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is time for the nuclear powers to fulfill their commitment to nuclear disarmament. We also need a vastly more open world, where all nuclear weapons are verifiably destroyed, and the manufacturing of
new ones cannot be hidden. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can now inspect only sites that member countries voluntarily place under its supervision. If a suspected weapons smuggler could tell a border guard, "You may check under my seat, but don't open the trunk," such an "inspection" would be meaningless. The IAEA must have the power to inspect any suspected nuclear facilities, anywhere in the world, without advance warning, otherwise it is impossible to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. The governments that now possess nuclear weapons object to such intrusive inspections as a "violation of their sovereignty." Yet many airline passengers also protested at first against having their luggage searched for guns or explosives, when such searches were introduced after a series of fatal hijackings. Today, passengers realize that such inspections protect their own security. Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. Sooner or later, governments will reach the same conclusion. The question is only
whether this will happen before or after the first terrorist nuclear bomb explodes. [3] We need to address the root causes of terrorism: long festering unresolved conflicts. Peaceful conflict transformation is a skill that can be taught and learned. Johan Galtung, widely regarded as founder of the field of
peace research, was able to help end a longstanding border conflict between Ecuador and Peru over which they had fought four wars by suggesting to make the disputed territory into a "binational zone with a natural park", jointly administered. This peaceful intervention cost nearly nothing compared with a military peacekeeping operation. We need a UN Organization for Mediation, with several hundred trained mediators who can help prevent conflicts from erupting into violence. This is a very inexpensive, worthwhile investment in human survival, compared with the trillion dollars the world spends each year to arm millions of troops, which only make the world collectively less secure. If we cling to obsolete ways of thinking--that threatening others will make us safe--
we face extinction as a human species, like other species that failed to adapt to new conditions.
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Nuclear proliferation leads to nuclear warsomeone will pull the trigger Seaquist 3 (Larry, former US Navy warship captain, has been the custodian of nuclear weapons at sea and a
contributor to nuclear deterrence strategy in the Pentagon, April 3, 2003 (Listen to the Nuclear Chatter, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0403/p11s02-coop.html) The pattern of nuclear proliferation is shifting, and with it the dynamics of deterrence. Formerly we worried about countries like Iraq and Iran making their weapons from scratch. But in the future, we'll deal also with shadowy networks of terrorists who buy their weapons on the underground market. Where does a superpower fly a squadron of bombers if it wants to grab the attention of a covert terrorist organization like Al Qaeda, with scattered cells all over the globe? At heart, nuclear signaling is much more than just writing diplomatic notes on a warhead. By threatening catastrophe, each party hopes to extract a measure of safety from the mutual standoff. That's the theory. But instead of calming the situation, nuclear threats ricocheting among today's players may lead one of the smaller, inexperienced parties to panic and shoot. Regardless of who pulls the trigger or why, a nuclear detonation would be a disaster. A mushroom cloud rising over the dead in any city could thrust civilization into an era of unlimited violence just when bio-weapons are creeping into our mass-killing capabilities. Clearly, humankind must steer in the other direction, toward managing disagreements with less deadly methods.
US primacy fails to protect against the proliferation of WMDs Krepon 2 (Michael, Founding President Henry L. Stimson Center, arms control and asymmetric warfare,
disarmament.un.org/rcpd/pdf/5cnfkrepon.pdf) This is not a good time to adhere to Cold War formulations for and against arms control. The incoming Bush administration took office with fixed views about the efficacy of treaties, nuclear weapons, and missile defenses and with many questions about the efficacy of CTR programs. The administrations reassessment has wisely led to a reaffirmation of the value of these programs, but its approach remains unbalanced in significant respects. US primacy is insufficient to reduce the dangers associated with proliferation, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism. When primacy is accompanied by the unraveling of treaty regimes, security is weakened.
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Second, conflict in the SCS culminated into a global nuclear war. Strait Times 95 (staff, Choose Your Own Style of Democracy, May 21, p. proquest)
In his speech, Dr Mahathir also painted three scenarios for Asia. In the first -the worst possible scenario -Asian countries would go to war against each other, he said. It might start with clashes between Asian countries over the Spratly Islands because of China's insistence that the South China Sea belonged to it along with all the islands, reefs and seabed minerals. In this scenario, the United States would offer to help and would be welcomed by Asean, he said. The Pacific Fleet begins to patrol the South China Sea. Clashes occur between the Chinese navy and the US Navy. China declares war on the US and a fullscale war breaks out with both sides resorting to nuclear weapons.
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US space weaponization leads to WWIII Reynolds 89 (Glenn Harlan. Outer Space: Problems of Law and Policy. New York, NY: Westview Press, 1989.)
Not only does the proliferation of space debris pose a threat to space activities, but it could pose an even greater threat to those of us on earth. The United States and the Soviet Union (together with, increasingly, other powers) depend greatly on space resources to support military intelligence, early-warning, communications, and other functions. If, in a crisis, a key satellite were to be accidentally lost, that loss could be blamed on an adversary and could lead to a potentially disastrous response. As space analyst Daniel Deudney has said, "The Archduke Francis Ferdinand of World War III may well be a critical U.S. or Soviet reconnaissance satellite hit by a piece of space junk during time of crisis."
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Second, Terrorism leads to nuclear war Thompson 4 (John, President of the Mackenzie Institute which studies political instability and terrorism, March
8, 2004 (More Reasons to Fear the Bomb, http://www.mackenzieinstitute.com/2004/terror030204.htm) Sometime, possibly very soon, some terrorist group is going to use a nuclear bomb. When that day comes, there will be much more to worry about than merely the damage of the attack; fear that inevitable day for three reasons. Making a nuke is no great trick - the Americans constructed the first weapons sixty years ago, and the science isnt complicated. Making a big hydrogen bomb rather than an atomic bomb is somewhat trickier, and shrinking the whole package down to a manageable size requires really expensive engineering and really costly machinery; but North Korea, Pakistan, and Iran are showing that bomb building 101 isnt too difficult. Between these three of states, and some of the more blurred records for the old Soviet inventory, a nuclear weapon will someday trickle down into the hands of some non-state actor who is prepared to use them. Al Qaeda will probably be the first to use an atomic weapon in an act of terrorism, and it need not be complicated or large. The emerging nuclear states know that fissionable materials are too expensive to let too much out of their hands, and a 20 kiloton package would be adequate for terrorism anyway.
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US hegemony provoked the social context for radical Muslims to embrace fundamentalism vented in terrorism. Segell 5 (Glen M., Director of the Institute of Security Policy, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, March
2005 (Wahabism/Hegemony and Agenic Man/Heroic Masculinity, Strategic Insights, Issue 4.3, http://www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Mar/segellMar05.asp#author) Explicitly the decline of Islamic hegemony and the rise of Western hegemony provoked the socialhistorical context for an Islamic minority to embrace fundamentalism vented in terrorism. A Senate Judiciary subcommittee on terrorism has taken evidence that the 9/11 attacks were an expression of anger and rage expressing sentiments that embraced martyrdom rooted in an especially strict austere minority Islamism traced back to the fanatical Puritanism of the Bedouin zealots known as the Wahabis.[5] This article takes Wahabism through hegemony showing it as the systemic context key to unlocking 9/11 as acceptance by the perpetrators that the ultimate sacrifice of a soldier is to give his life for a cause. The cause was perceived to have been fueled by Wahabi fundamentalist sentiments, where jihad or holy war, became a compensatory, default position. The Al-Quaeda terrorist network found this tolerable given the historical Islamic suicide wars of AfIt. This gave substance to justify terrorism as a means where a warrior legacy of heroic masculinity was resurrected within a framework of an anti-modern and anti-Western holy war. The choice of America as the target is indicative of its hegemonic role expressing military asymmetrysmall players can harm the powerful easily.[6]
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The self-deluding universalism of the American imperium -- that the world inherently needs a single leader and that American liberal ideology must be accepted as the basis of global order -- has paradoxically resulted in America quickly becoming an ever-lonelier superpower. Just as there is a geopolitical marketplace, there is a marketplace of models of success for the second world to emulate, not least the Chinese model of economic growth without political liberalization (itself an affront to Western modernization theory). As the historian Arnold Toynbee observed half a century ago, Western imperialism united the globe, but it did not assure that the West would dominate forever -- materially or morally. Despite the "mirage of immortality" that afflicts global empires, the only reliable rule of history is its cycles of imperial rise and decline, and as Toynbee also pithily noted, the only direction to go from the apogee of power is down.
EU, china, and US will balance each other in the event of declined US supremacy Khanna 8 (Parag, expert on geopolitics and global governance, Director of the Global Governance Initiative and Senior Research Fellow in
the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony". http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/waving_goodbye_hegemony_6604, January 27)
Would the world not be more stable if America could be reaccepted as its organizing principle and leader? It's very much too late to be asking, because the answer is unfolding before our eyes. Neither China nor the E.U. will replace the U.S. as the world's sole leader; rather all three will constantly struggle to gain influence on their own and balance one another. Europe will promote its supranational integration model as a path to resolving Mideast disputes and organizing Africa, while China will push a Beijing consensus based on respect for sovereignty and mutual economic benefit. America must make itself irresistible to stay in the game.
Vacuum after US falls will be filled by multipolarity Haass 8 (Richard N, 4/16, President of Council on Foreign Relations, Financial Times.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/16026/what_follows_american_dominion.html) All of this raises a critical question: if unipolarity is gone, what will take its place? Some predict a return to the bipolarity that characterised international relations during the cold war. This is unlikely. Chinas military strength does not approximate that of the US; more important, its focus will remain on economic growth, a choice that leads it to seek economic integration and avoid conflict. Russia may be more inclined towards re-creating a bipolar world, but it too has a stake in cooperation and, in any event, lacks the capacity to challenge the US. Still others predict the emergence of a modern multipolar world, one in which China, Europe, India, Japan and Russia join the US as dominant influences. This view ignores how the world has changed. There are literally dozens of meaningful power centres, including regional powers, international organisations, companies, media outlets, religious movements, terrorist organisations, drug cartels and non-governmental organisations. Todays world is
increasingly one of distributed, rather than concentrated, power. The successor to unipolarity is neither bipolarity or multipolarity. It is non-polarity. Those who welcome Americas comeuppance and unipolaritys replacement by non-polarity should hold their applause. Forging collective responses to global problems and making institutions work will be more
Relationships will be more difficult to build and sustain. The US will no longer have the luxury of a Youre either with us or against us foreign policy. But neither will anyone else. Only diplomacy that is more focused, creative and collective will prevent a non-polar world from becoming more disorderly anddangerous.
difficult. Threats will multiply.