Woodrow Wilson FP

Terminal Impact D Miro Furtado

So whats the impact?
1
1

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
2 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

2

Terminal Impacts

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
3 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

3


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
4 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

4

AIDS

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
5 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

5

Extinction

The spread of AIDS causes mutations that risk extinction
Ehrlich and Erlich 90 Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Professors of Population studies at Stanford University,
THE POPULATION EXPLOSION, 1990, p. 147-8
Whether or not AIDS can be contained will depend primarily on how rapidly the spread of HIV can be slowed through public
education and other measures, on when and if the medical community can find satisfactory preventatives or treatments, and
to a large extent on luck. The virus has already shown itself to be highly mutable, and laboratory strains
resistant to the one drug, AZT, that seems to slow its lethal course have already been reported." A virus that infects
many millions of novel hosts, in this case people, might evolve new transmission characteristics. To do so,
however, would almost certainly involve changes in its lethality. If, for instance, the virus became more common in the
blood (permitting insects to transmit it readily), the very process would almost certainly make it more lethal. Unlike the
current version of AIDS, which can take ten years or more to kill its victims, the new strain might cause death in
days or weeks. Infected individuals then would have less time to spread the virus to others, and there would be strong
selection in favor of less lethal strains (as happened in the case of myxopatomis). What this would mean epidemiologically is
not clear, but it could temporarily increase the transmission rate and reduce life expectancy of infected
persons until the system once again equilibrated. If the ability of the AIDS virus to grow in the cells of
the skin or the membranes of the mouth, the lungs, or the intestines were increased, the virus might be
spread by casual contact or through eating contaminated food. But it is likely, as Temin points out, that acquiring
those abilities would so change the virus that it no longer efficiently infected the kinds of cells it now does and so would no
longer cause AIDS. In effect it would produce an entirely different disease. We hope Temin is correct but another
Nobel laureate, Joshua Lederberg, is worried that a relatively minor mutation could lead to the virus infecting a type of white
blood cell commonly present in the lungs. If so, it might be transmissible through coughs.

AIDS spread and mutations will cause extinction
Lederberg 91(Joshua Lederberg, Molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner in 1958, 1991
In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic Disease, p 35-6)

Will Aids mutate further ? Already known, a vexing feature of AIDS is its antigenic variability, further complicating the task of
developing a vaccine. So we know that HIV is still evolving. Its global spread has meant there is far more
HIV on earth today than ever before in history. What are the odds of its learning the tricks of airborne transmission? The
short is, No one can be sure. But we could make the same attribution about any virus; alternatively the next
influenza or chicken pox may mutate to an unprecedented lethality. As time passes, and HIV seems settled in a
certain groove, that is momentary reassurance in itself. However, given its other ugly attributes, it is hard to imagine a
worse threat to humanity than an airborne variant of AIDS. No rule of nature contradicts such a possibility; the
proliferation of AIDS cases with secondary pneumonia multiplies the odds of such a mutant, as an
analogue to the emergence of pneumonic plague.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
6 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

6


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
7 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

7

AIDS Military Readiness
AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes govt control
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12,
no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security
http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike other diseases, AIDS has an
incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it will produce significant casualties on the front lines of a
war. It will still, however, deplete force strength in many states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed forces in sub-Saharan
countries are HIV-positive, and in a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe, it may be as high as 80
percent.147 In high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes military readiness, directly threatening national security.
Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related illnesses are now the leading cause of
death in the army and police forces of these countries, accounting for more than 50% of inservice and post-service
mortalities. In badly infected countries, AIDS patients occupy 75% of military hospital beds and the disease is responsible for
more admissions than battlefield injuries. The high rate of HIV infection has meant that some African armies have been
unable to deploy a full contingent, or even half of their troops, at short notice.. [In South Africa, because] participation in
peace-support operations outside the country is voluntary, the S[outh] A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling
with the problem of how to ensure the availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even t he
use of members for internal crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse conditions or stationing in
areas where local in- frastructure is limited, presents certain problems. Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea and the common
cold, can be serious enough to require the hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in some cases, can prove
fatal if they are not treated immediately.148 Armed forces in severely affected states will be unable to recruit and train
soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying colleagues, the potential recruitment pool itself will dwindle, and
officers corps will be decimated. Military budgets will be sapped, military blood supplies tainted, and organizational
structures strained to accommodate unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also threaten civilians at home and
abroad. Increased levels of sexual activity among military forces in wartime means that the military risk of becoming infected
with HIV is as much as 100 times that of the civilian risk. It also means that members of the armed forces comprise a key
means of transmitting the virus to the general population; with sex and transport workers, the military is considered one of
the three core transmission groups in Africa.149 For this reason, conflict-ridden states may become reluctant to accept
peacekeepers from countries with high HIV rates. Rather than contributing directly to military defeat in many countries,
however, AIDS in the military is more likely to have longer term implications for national security. First, IDs theoretically
could deter military action and impede access to strategic resources or areas. Tropical diseases erected a formidable, although
obviously not insurmountable, obstacle to colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French and later American
efforts to open the Panama Canal, similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control efforts effectively checked yellow fever
and malaria. Second, in many countries AIDS already strains military medical systems and their budgets, and it only promises
to divert further spending away from defense toward both military and civilian health. Third, AIDS in the military promises to
have its greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further destabilizing the state.
Terminally ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their government, and their government may be in more need of
defending as AIDS siphons funds from housing, education, police, and administration. Finally, high military HIV/AIDS rates
could alter regional balances of power. Perhaps 40.50 percent of South Africa.s soldiers are HIV-infected. Despite the
disease.s negative impact on South Africa.s absolute power, Price-Smith notes, AIDS may increase that nation.s power relative
to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with potentially important regional consequences.150 AIDS poses obvious threats to
the military forces of many countries, particularly in sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not present the same immediate security
problems for the United States. The authors of a Reagan-era report on the effects of economic and demographic trends on
security worried about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education, and funding on the defense budget,151 but a decade
of relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These surpluses have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS spending
have not reappeared and are unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, given the relatively low levels of HIV-infection in the
United States. AIDS presents other challenges, including prevention education and measures to limit infection of U.S. soldiers
and peacekeepers stationed abroad, particularly in high risk settings, and HIV transmission by these forces to the general
population. These concerns could limit U.S. actions where American interests are at stake.152

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
8 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

8


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
9 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

9

Air Pollution
Air pollution will lead to extinction
Driesen 03
(David, Associate Professor, Syracuse University College of Law. J.D. Yale Law School, 1989, Fall/Spring, 10 Buff.
Envt'l. L.J. 25, p. 26-8)
Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon which all life depends and
harming the health of both future and present generations. The Rio Declaration articulates six key principles that
are relevant to air pollution. These principles can also be understood as goals, because they describe a state of affairs that is
worth achieving. Agenda 21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between them, they aid
understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first principle is that "human beings. . . are entitled
to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature", because they are "at the center of concerns for sustainable
development." While the Rio Declaration refers to human health, its reference to life "in harmony with nature" also reflects a
concern about the natural environment. Since air pollution damages both human health and the environment, air
quality implicates both of these concerns. Lead, carbon monoxide, particulate, tropospheric ozone, sulfur dioxide, and
nitrogen oxides have historically threatened urban air quality in the United States. This review will focus upon tropospheric
ozone, particulate, and carbon monoxide, because these pollutants present the most widespread of the remaining urban air
problems, and did so at the time of the earth summit. 6 Tropospheric ozone refers to ozone fairly near to the ground, as
opposed to stratospheric ozone high in the atmosphere. The stratospheric ozone layer protects human health and the
environment from ultraviolet radiation, and its depletion causes problems. By contrast, tropospheric ozone damages human
health and the environment. 8 In the United States, the pollutants causing "urban" air quality problems also affect human
health and the environment well beyond urban boundaries. Yet, the health problems these pollutants present remain most
acute in urban and suburban areas. Ozone, carbon monoxide, and particulate cause very serious public health
problems that have been well recognized for a long time. Ozone forms in the atmosphere from a reaction between volatile
organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, and sunlight. Volatile organic compounds include a large number of hazardous air
pollutants. Nitrogen oxides, as discussed below, also play a role in acidifying ecosystems. Ozone damages lung tissue. It
plays a role in triggering asthma attacks, sending thousands to the hospital every summer. It effects young children and
people engaged in heavy exercise especially severely. Particulate pollution, or soot, consists of combinations of a wide
variety of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide contribute to formation of fine particulate, which is associated with
the most serious health problems. 13 Studies link particulate to tens of thousands of annual premature deaths in the United
States. Like ozone it contributes to respiratory illness, but it also seems to play a [*29] role in triggering heart attacks among
the elderly. The data suggest that fine particulate, which EPA did not regulate explicitly until recently, plays a major role in
these problems. 16 Health researchers have associated carbon monoxide with various types of neurological symptoms, such
as visual impairment, reduced work capacity, reduced manual dexterity, poor learning ability, and difficulty in performing
complex tasks. The same pollution problems causing current urban health problems also contribute to long lasting
ecological problems. Ozone harms crops and trees. These harms affect ecosystems and future generations. Similarly,
particulate precursors, including nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, contribute to acid rain, which is not easily reversible. To
address these problems, Agenda 21 recommends the adoption of national programs to reduce health risks from air pollution,
including urban air pollution. These programs are to include development of "appropriate pollution control technology . . . for
the introduction of environmentally sound production processes." It calls for this development "on the basis of risk
assessment and epidemiological research." It also recommends development of "air pollution control capacities in large cities
emphasizing enforcement programs using monitoring networks as appropriate." A second principle, the precautionary
principle, provides support for the first. As stated in the Rio Declaration, the precautionary principle means that "lack of full
scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental
degradation" when "there are threats of serious or irreversible damage." Thus, lack of complete certainty about the adverse
environmental and human health effects of air pollutants does not, by itself, provide a reason for tolerating them. Put
differently, governments need to address air pollution on a precautionary basis to ensure that humans can
life a healthy and productive life.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
10 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

10


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
11 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

11

Anthrax

A small amount of anthrax could be effective in killing millions of people
Wake, 01
Ben Wake The Ottawa Citizen October 13, 2001 Saturday Final EDITION
http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T7030650745&form
at=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T7030641352&cisb=22_T7030650748&treeMax=true&tree
Width=0&csi=8363&docNo=4
. The potential impact on a city can be estimated by looking at the effectiveness of an aerosol in producing downwind
casualties. The World Health Organization in 1970 modeled the results of a hypothetical dissemination of 50 kg of agent
along a 2-km line upwind of a large population center. Anthrax and tularemia are predicted to cause the highest number
of dead and incapacitated, as well as the greatest downwind spread. A government study estimated that about 200
pounds of anthrax released upwind of Washington, D.C., could kill up to 3 million people. Here is a list of all of the
recognized Biological Weapons.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
12 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

12

Biodiversity
Biodiversity is key to preventing extinction
Madgoluis 96
(Richard Margoluis, Biodiversity Support Program, 1996,
http://www.bsponline.org/publications/showhtml.php3?10)
Biodiversity not only provides direct benefits like food, medicine, and energy; it also affords us a "life
support system." Biodiversity is required for the recycling of essential elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and
nitrogen. It is also responsible for mitigating pollution, protecting watersheds, and combating soil erosion.
Because biodiversity acts as a buffer against excessive variations in weather and climate, it protects us from catastrophic
events beyond human control. The importance of biodiversity to a healthy environment has become
increasingly clear. We have learned that the future well-being of all humanity depends on our stewardship
of the Earth. When we overexploit living resources, we threaten our own survival.

Biodiversity loss outweighs all impacts
Tobin 90
(Richard Tobin, THE EXPENDABLE FUTURE, 1990, p. 22 )

Norman Meyers observes, no other form of environmental degradation is anywhere so significant as the
fallout of species. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less modest in assessing the relative consequences of
human-caused extinctions. To Wilson, the worst thing that will happen to earth is not economic collapse,
the depletion of energy supplies, or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events might be, Wilson
reasons that they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoingthat will take
millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
13 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

13


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
14 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

14

Bioterror

Bioterror will cause extinction
Steinbrenner 97, Brookings Senior Fellow, 1997 [John D. , Foreign Policy, "Biological weapons: a plague upon all houses," Winter, InfoTrac]
Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential
weapons of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are alive,
weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently
engage in adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has immense
implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay
rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the
extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning. The
use of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. For
most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few
pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the
other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable
of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population.
The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit. Nobody really knows how
serious a possibility this might be, since there is no way to measure it reliably.

Bioterror is the only impact that risks extinction
Ochs 02 (Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002 Biological Weapons must be Abolished Immediately, June 9,
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure
or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or
deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a
massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they
are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent
anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts
can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in
comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill
millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical
weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized
chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of
thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by
the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could
persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues
with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION
IS NOW POSSIBLE.

Biological terrorism can cause extinction
Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002
[Biological Weapons must be Abolished Immediately, June 9,
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_.../abolish.html]

Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a known cure or
vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
15 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

15

pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter,"
resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely
compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get
out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of
these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown
to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage
bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of
people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized.
Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment.
Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the
killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually
forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even
greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example
of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN
EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
16 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

16


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
17 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

17

Bird Flu

Bird Flu goes global, killing billions
[Ethne Barnes, Research Assistant in Paleopathology, Wichita State, 2005, Diseases and human evolution, p. 427-8]

Human history is riddled with accounts of epidemics wreaking similar havoc among human populations around the world,
though not as severe as the rabbit myxomatosis introduced into Australia. Even the great influenza pandemic in the early
twentieth century did not come close to killing off a significant portion of the global population. However, a more deadly
influenza pandemic is all too likely. Influenza virus exemplifies the ideal predator for reducing human
populations. It is airborne and travels the globe easily and quickly, capable of infecting all age groups in
repeated waves within a short time span. Influenza type A viruses are unstable and continuously evolving. Global
movements of people and viruses at a rapid pace make gene swapping possible among previously
isolated strains. Hybrid virus produced by such gene swapping could result in a deadly strain that targets the lower
branches of the bronchial tubes and the lungs. Severe viral pneumonia and death within twenty-four hours would follow.
The new influenza virus could easily move around the globe within days and kill over half the human
population (Ryan, 1997). Crowded cities, especially megacities, could suffer up to 90 percent fatalities within days or
weeks.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
18 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

18


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
19 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

19

Constitution

The Constitution is the most important thing to preserve
Eidmoe 92 (John A. Eidsmoe is a Constitutional Attorney, Professor of Law at Thomas Goode Jones School of Law
and Colonel with the USAF, 1992 3 USAFA J. Leg. Stud. 35, p. 57-9)
Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our
commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may
replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were
but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be
all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished
government? Who shall rear again the wellproportioned columns of constitutional liberty? Who shall frame
together the skilful architecture which united national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns
fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality.
Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them, than were ever shed over the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of
constitutional American liberty. It is possible that a constitutional convention could take place and none of
these drastic consequences would come to pass. It is possible to play Russian roulette and emerge
without a scratch; in fact, with only one bullet in the chamber, the odds of being shot are only one in six. But when the stakes are as
high as one's life, or the constitutional system that has shaped this nation into what it is today, these odds
are too great to take the risk.

We have a moral obligation to prevent violations of the constitution whenever possible
Levinson 2k
Daryl Levinson, professor of law at University of Virginia, Spring 2000 UC Law Review
Extending a majority rule analysis of optimal deterrence to constitutional torts requires some explanation, for we do not usually think of violations of
constitutional rights in terms of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency. Quite the opposite, constitutional rights are most commonly
conceived as deontological side-constraints that trump even utility-maximizing government action.
Alternatively, constitutional rights might be understood as serving rule-utilitarian purposes. If the disutility to
victims of constitutional violations often exceeds the social benefits derived from the rights-violating activity, or if rights violations create
long-term costs that outweigh short-term social benefits, then constitutional rights can be justified as
tending to maximize global utility, even though this requires local utility-decreasing steps. Both the deontological and
rule-utilitarian descriptions imply that the optimal level of constitutional violations is zero; that is,
society would be better off, by whatever measure, if constitutional rights were never violated.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
20 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

20


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
21 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

21

Democracy
Democracy preserves human life
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict 95
(October, "Promoting Democracy in the 1990's," http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)

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.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
22 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

22


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
23 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

23

Democracy Good- Democide

Democratization solves Democide
Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, 2001 (R.J., International Journal on World
Peace, September, proquest)
There is a feeling among many that since democide (genocide and mass murder) and war have always been with us,
they always will be; that such violence is in our bones, part of the human condition. After all, year after year, as far
back as one looks in history, some part of the world has suffered war or genocide. And, even today, this is going on
in many countries and regions, such as in the Sudan, Burma, China, North Korea, and the Middle East. By democide
alone, during the last century about 174 million people were murdered by government, over four times the some 38
million combat dead in all the century's domestic and foreign wars.
Nonetheless, there is much hope to eradicate war and democide. Consider that from the perspective of the
eighteenth century, slavery also looked to the humanist as democide and war do to us today: an evil that has always
been part of human society. Now slavery is virtually ended, and eventually the same may be true of war and
democide. Why this is true and how to foster this end to democide and war is the subject of this essay.
There are many complex considerations and theoretical issues to the problem of war and democide. There are the
questions of general and immediate causation, and of aggravating and inhibiting conditions. There are the practical
questions of how to gather timely intelligence about them and inform decision makers about what is known, how to
influence the political process through which intervention against democide is decided, and how to give democide
and war elsewhere the required prominence in the complex of perceived national interests. With regard to
intervening to stop democide, there are questions concerning the national mix of the necessary troops, their
weapons, and the rules of engagement.
Many of the answers to these questions will fall into place if we recognize three facts and one practical necessity
that cut through the jumble of questions and problems involved. The one fact is that democracies by far have had
the least domestic democide, and now with their extensive liberalization, have virtually none. Therefore,
democratization (not just electoral democracies, but liberal democratization in terms of civil and political rights and
liberties) provides the long-run hope for the elimination of democide.
The second fact is that democracies do not make war on each other and that the more democratic two governments, the less
the likelihood of violence between them. Not only is democracy a solution to democide, but globalizing democracy is also a
solution to war. That the world is progressively becoming more democratic, with 22 democracies in 1950 to something like
120 democracies today (about 88 of them liberal democracies), it is increasingly likely that in the long run the twin horrors of
democide and war will be eliminated from human society.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
24 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

24


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
25 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

25

Dehumanization
Dehumanization outweighs all other impacts
Berube, 1997
(Berube, David. Professor. English. University of South Carolina. Nanotechnological
Prolongevity: The Down Side. 1997.
http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm.)

Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant
worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would involve valuing people
as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the current
ones, humans would never be able to escape their treatment as means to an always
further and distant end. This means-ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's
treatise on the dehumanization of humanity. They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater
than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the
quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason this sickness
of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse.... Behind the
genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants
and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man...
(Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may never be possible to quantify the impact
dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of
humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone. When we calculate the
actual losses and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than
any tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war,
environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people become things, they become
dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be justified. Once justified,
they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful
weapon.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
26 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

26


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
27 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

27

Disease

Disease causes extinction
South China Morning Post 96
(Avi Mensa, 1-4-1996, Leading the way to a cure for AIDS, P. Lexis)

Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There
is a much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a
virus deadlier than HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it.
AIDS, the Ebola outbreak which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now
affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two
decades of intensive study and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and
man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV.
"An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from
anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain reaction and
it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen."That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film,
but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted
the impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the
deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a
chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong.
It could happen anytime in the next 20 years - theoretically, it could happen tomorrow.The shock of the AIDS epidemic has
prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak
is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the
problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human
species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for viruses
to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how
viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World and
rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises
the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a
large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.
Drug resistant diseases threaten human extinction.
Discover 2000 (Twenty Ways the World Could End by Corey Powell in Discover Magazine, October 2000,
http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld)
If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always
coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during
the 14th century; influenza took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar
death toll and is still going strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from
infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new
resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens.
International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease
expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim
against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that
spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our
stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
28 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

28

Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans
helped transport as they migrated into the New World.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
29 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

29


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
30 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

30

Disease turns military readiness
Pandemics kill military readiness
Major Hesko, 6 (Gerald, Air Command And Staff College Pandemic Influenza: Military Operational Readiness
Implications April 2006)

There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of the past century with
the potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult
to accurately predict, scientists theorize that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
is imminent.
If a pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community, the number of
Americans affected could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in untold suffering and deaths. Although
an influenza pandemic, if it occurs, has the potential to devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming
consequence is the effects it could have on the operational readiness of the United States military establishment.
With our current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with other smaller engagements world-wide, if an
influenza pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational readiness, preparedness and ability to defend
our vital national interests could be decreased or threaten. As a result of the pending threat of an influenza
pandemic, the United States military, must take decisive actions to mitigate the potential devastation an influenza
pandemic might have on operational readiness.

Disease turns military readiness
Suburban Emergency Management Project, 7 (Disease Outbreak Readiness Update, U.S. Department of
Defense
Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=449)

An infectious disease pandemic could impair the militarys readiness, jeopardize ongoing military operations abroad,
and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel
reporting sick or being absent during a pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007).
Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House
of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation. (1) The 40% number (above) comes from the Homeland
Security Councils estimate that 40% of the U.S. workforce might not be at work due to illness, the need to care for
family members who are sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military and civilian personnel and contractors
would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.

Aids kills military readiness
Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the 21st Century Trust, World
Policy Journal, Global Public Health Trumps the Nation-State Volume XXI, No 3, Fall 2004,
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)

The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS pandemic has the
potential to derail the economic prospects of billions of peopleparticularly in Russia, China, and Indiaand to
thereby alter the global military balance.
5
Eurasia (defined as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the worlds
population, and its combined GNP is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more
importantly, the region includes four of the worlds five militaries with over one million members and four declared
nuclear states. Since HIV has a relatively long incubation period, its effects on military readiness are unusually harsh.
Officers who contract the disease early in their military careers do not typically die until they have amassed
significant training and expertise, so armed forces are faced with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace
officers.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
31 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

31

Diseases kill military readiness- empirically proven
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12,
no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security
http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and outcome of military conflict by
eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond notes, .All those military histories glorifying great generals
oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons,
but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies..142 During the European conquest of the
Americas, the conquistadors shared numerous lethal microbes with their native American foes, who had few or no deadly
diseases to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez and his men first attacked the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520, they
left behind smallpox that wiped out half the Aztec population. Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their
vulnerability to a disease that appeared harmless to the Europeans, and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in
conquering the Aztec nation.143 Spanish conquest of the Incan empire in South America followed a similar pattern: In 1532
Francisco Pizarro and his army of 168 Spaniards defeated the Incan army of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had
killed the Incan emperor and his heir, producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to
defeat a large, but divided enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the ability of military forces to
prosecute and win a war. The German Army chief of staff in the First World War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed
Germany.s loss of that war at least partly on the negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German
troops.145 In the Second World War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in certain areas than did military action.146
Throughout history, then, IDs have had a significant potential to decimate armies and alter military history.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
32 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

32

Economy
Economic collapse causes a global nuclear exchange
Mead 92
(Walter Russell, Mead, Senior Fellow Council on Foreign Relations, NEW PERSPECTIVES QUARTERLY,
Summer, 1992, p. 30)
The failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of worldwide depression- will open their eyes
to their folly. Hundreds of millions-billions-of people around the world have pinned their hopes on the
international market economy. They and their leaders have embraced market principles-and drawn closer to the West-
because they believe that our system can work for them. But what if it can't? What if the global economy stagnates,
or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international conflict: South against North,
rich against poor. Russia. China. India-these countries with their billions of people and their nuclear
weapons will pose a much greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 1930's.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
33 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

33

Economic slowdown will cause WWIII
Bearden 2k
(Liutenant Colonel Bearden, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can Solve It, 2000,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-Medicine/message/642

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.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
34 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

34

Econ- US Key
U.S. economic collapse leads to an economic depression globally.
(Walter Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 04 04, Americas Sticky Power,
Foreign Policy, Proquest, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_
id=2504&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/ cms.php?story_id=2504&page=2)

Similarly, in the last 60 years, as foreigners have acquired a greater value in the United States-government and
private bonds, direct and portfolio private investments-more and more of them have acquired an interest in
maintaining the strength of the U.S.-led system. A collapse of the U.S. economy and the ruin of the dollar would do
more than dent the prosperity of the United States. Without their best customer, countries including China and
Japan would fall into depressions. The financial strength of every country would be severely shaken should the
United States collapse. Under those circumstances, debt becomes a strength, not a weakness, and other countries
fear to break with the United States because they need its market and own its securities. Of course, pressed too far,
a large national debt can turn from a source of strength to a crippling liability, and the United States must continue
to justify other countries' faith by maintaining its long-term record of meeting its financial obligations. But, like
Samson in the temple of the Philistines, a collapsing U.S. economy would inflict enormous, unacceptable damage on
the rest of the world.

A drop in the U.S. economy causes a global recession.

(Anthony Faiola, staff writer of Washington Post, 01 30 08, U.S. Downturn effects may ease
worldwide, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/auth/checkbrowser.do?ipcounter=1&co
okieState=0&rand=0.2947196325707201&bhcp=1)

Analysts caution that a sharper drop in the U.S. economy something widely feared, as evidenced by the global
route on stock markets from Paris to Tokyo last week could yet plunge the world economy below the 2.5 to 3
percent growth range that constitutes a global recession. And around the world, billions of dollars in losses from
Americas subprime mortage morass are still being accounted for, with experts predicting it will take a deeper
financial toll.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
35 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

35

Econ- developing countries
A global economic crisis has a hard effect on growing economies and provides significantly reduced funds
for families living in these countries.

(Luska Times, 12 24 08, Global Economic crisis shows effects on families,
http://www.lusakatimes.com/?p=6713)

Effects of the global economic crisis have already started showing a negative impact on growing economies, such as
Zambia, with only a few people managing to spend for Christmas. According to a survey carried out this morning by
ZANIS, people said it is hard to do shopping because there are no funds to meet the needs of many families. Most
people expressed concern about lack of funds to do shopping because prices have been hiked so much, making it
difficult for many people to buy gifts for their beloved ones. Alfonsaias Haamanjanti said people should not over-
spend unnecessarily but consider critical things such as school fees and uniforms for children when schools reopen.
Mr Haamanjati said it is important to budget for the things that one needs by writing a list and follow it. He pointed
out that the global financial crisis may not be felt now, saying there is need to save money and shop only when it is
necessary. He said the global financial crisis may be felt so much next year, adding that most Zambians should
consider saving their money and use it when there is real need.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
36 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

36

Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution

U.S. economic collapse will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S. into six pieces.
(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministrys academy for future diplomats, expert on U.S.-
Russia relations, 12 29 08, As if Things werent bad enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For
most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war
and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media. In
recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin.
"But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger." Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former
KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin
receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations. But
it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed
Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit
neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness
of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into
separate territories. A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But
he warns that the outlook for them is dire. "There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he
says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best
scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would
suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S. Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that
mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the
dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting
to Russian control.

Economic and financial problems in the U.S will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S.
(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministrys academy for future diplomats, expert on U.S.-
Russia relations, 12 29 08, As if Things werent bad enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. Mr. Panarin predicts that
economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets
tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the
union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign
powers will move in. California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of
China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to
Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that
may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North
American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into
Russia. "It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A
framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall.
"It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin. Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an
article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a
pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's role as a global financial regulator.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
37 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

37

Econ Collapse Bad
Global economic collapse results in nuclear war causes North Korean aggression, Afghanistan
collapse, Russian adventurism, and American isolationism
Friedberg and Schenfeld, 8 (Aaron Friedberg-professor of politics and international relations at the Woodrow
Wilson School, and Gabriel Schoenfeld-visiting scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, 10/21/2008, The Dangers of
a Diminished America, The Wall Street Journal, p.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades
now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar,
and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we
counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible
in the future?
Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist
affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and
Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless
rise also give cause for concern.
If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing
effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position as defender of last resort for
Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk.
In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful
democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of
economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever
more reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability.
The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than
they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose
economic performance hinges on high oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even
more fragile, its economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will
now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political
legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity.
None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal
travails with external adventures.
As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with
decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism,
Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical
power.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
38 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

38

Econ interdependence prevents war
Economic interdependence prevents war
Griswold, 7 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, 4/20/2007, Trade, Democracy and Peace,
http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)

A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say."
In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the number of armed conflicts
around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have
dropped from 33 to 17, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest report found that
2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another. What a remarkable and
wonderful fact.
The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press report, "The number killed in battle
has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure.
Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Current estimates of people killed by war are down
sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during
the Korean War.
Many causes lie behind the good news--the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them--but
expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace. Far from stoking a
"World on Fire," as one misguided American author argued in a forgettable book, growing commercial ties between
nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would argue that free trade and globalization have
promoted peace in three main ways.
First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and
democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's
countries today are democracies--a record high. Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less
likely to fight wars. While it's true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare
occurrence for democracies to engage in wars with non-democracies. We can still hope that as more countries turn
to democracy, there will be fewer provocations for war by non-democracies.
A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting more economic integration. As
national economies become more intertwined with each other, those nations have more to lose should war break
out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and
investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the
economic cost of war.
The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on "Economic Freedom and Peace"
by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia University. Dr. Gartzke compares the propensity of
countries to engage in wars and their level of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including
the freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with
another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, "Making economies freer translates into making
countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as the most
free."
By the way, Dr. Gartzke's analysis found that economic freedom was a far more important variable in determining a
countries propensity to go to war than democracy.
A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it allows nations to acquire wealth through production and
exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in
terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In
contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in a high-tech, service
economy. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can
acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best at home. In short, globalization and the
development it has spurred have rendered the spoils of war less valuable.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
39 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

39

Impacts Economic Decline Nuclear War

Prolonged Recession yields nuclear war- must avert it now- empirically proven
Sean ODonnell Staff Writer, Baltimore Examiner, B.A. in History from the University of Maryland 2/26, Will this
recession lead to World War II, http://www.examiner.com/x-3108-Baltimore-Republican-
Examiner~y2009m2d26-Will-this-recession-lead-to-World-War-III

Could the current economic crisis affecting this country and the world lead to another world war? The answer may
be found by looking back in history. One of the causes of World War I was the economic rivalry that existed
between the nations of Europe. In the 19th century France and Great Britain became wealthy through colonialism
and the control of foreign resources. This forced other up-and-coming nations (such as Germany) to be more
competitive in world trade which led to rivalries and ultimately, to war. After the Great Depression ruined the
economies of Europe in the 1930s, fascist movements arose to seek economic and social control. From there fanatics
like Hitler and Mussolini took over Germany and Italy and led them both into World War II. With most of North
America and Western Europe currently experiencing a recession, will competition for resources and economic
rivalries with the Middle East, Asia, or South American cause another world war? Add in nuclear weapons and
Islamic fundamentalism and things look even worse. Hopefully the economy gets better before it gets worse and the
terrifying possibility of World War III is averted. However sometimes history repeats itself.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
40 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

40

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

The US is key to global econ rest of the world failing
Kaczmarek, Editor-in-Chief of the SAIS Review of International Affairs and M.A. Candidate, 08
(Matthew D. Kaczmarek, Editor-in-Chief of the SAIS Review of International Affairs and M.A. Candidate of 2000, Summer-
Fall 2008, The SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 28, Number 2, pp. 207-209)

While the economic policy of the U.S. Government can no longer be printed on IMF letterhead and declared global
consensus ipso facto, it is wrong to assume that the United States has somehow relinquished its mandate to
lead. The world is awash in conflicting bilateral trade agreements, varying degrees of capital
mobility, and wildly inconsistent access within nations to the fruits of global development. If there is a
time for the United States to demonstrate sober global leadership while responsibly advancing its own
interests and ideals, it is now. With the Doha round stagnating and the Bank and Fund deep into an
identity crisis, but with the memories of the economic turbulence of the 1980s and 90s still fresh in the
mind, an uncertain world continues to look toward the United States to show a willingness to step up to
engage the recalcitrant global economy. The process of reengagement is difficult and will undoubtedly prove frustrating
for the next administration. The G-8 is no longer a useful forum for building global economic consensus
unless it moves more quickly to include emerging economic powers. The IMF must continue in its
reform mission as well as embrace the need to become the explicit lender of last resort to sovereign
nations. The next administration should develop clear and thoughtful goals for engagement with each global region, and
build ties, embrace, and nurture mutually beneficial relationships with emerging regional leaders. The days of proxy wars for
spheres of influence are long gone, while the flood of economic support in exchange for political-security cooperation is
showing no faster diminishing returns than in Pakistan and Iraq. The authors in the preceding pages of this volume have
debated the costs, effectiveness, and opportunities for multilateral engagement across a wide range of specific issues. Where
the United States continues to hold absolute supremacy, such as military power, and where ideological objectives are
concerned, such as the continuing War on Terror, the U.S. enjoys the luxury to choose whether or not to
engage the rest of the world in a multilateral discussion and debate. On economic development, there is
no such choice. The future prosperity of billions of low and middle income citizens around the world, and
the continued success of todays leading economies depends on a sound and stable global economic
architecture, and the deferential respect afforded the U.S. in the global economy begs for its reengagement.

American consumption key to global economic growth other nations cant replace the US spot
Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners-Capital Management, 7-2
Ajbinder Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners Capital Management, 7-2-09, The Financial Post,
The US Consumer: Engine of the Global Economy Gears Down

Over the years, the world the world has looked to the US consumer to lead the way out of economic
downturns. Currently, the US consumer accounts for almost 70% of the American economy and about 15 -
17% of the global economy. Economists had long derided the Spend! Spend! Spend! ways of Americans. Credit was
a means to an end. The rising real estate prices that had lasted for much of this decade allowed consumers to cash out some of
the equity from their homes to continue the odyssey of lifestyle improvement. This gave way to the notion that US consumers
were using their homes as ATM machines. But a funny thing has happened during the current economic slowdown.
US consumers have retrenched from vigorous consumption in order to save more. As the chart below shows,
savings rates in the US have gone from a negative rate (consumers adding debt to consume) to positive. Current statistics
show that the savings rate in the US is on track to approach a level of about 7% later this year. This change in behavior is
both positive and negative. The negative case for this change is that it means that other countries will have to
bolster their own consumption and investment as an offset. This will not be easy as Asian nations have a
higher rate of savings. Europes economy will likely take much longer to get moving as is usually the
case after economic slowdowns. For the financial markets this means that any excessive optimism should be tempered

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
41 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

41

with this realization that the coming economic recovery will be different than any we have seen in quite some time. The
positive side to this change is that it will mean less reliance by the US on foreign capital to help fund the budget deficit.
These rising savings rates are ending up in the US banking system and will provide more fuel for the US banking system to
lend a helping hand to the US economy. Not to mention - helpful to the US dollar. The irony is that just as the world
would welcome the US consumer going back to old habits of spending and consuming, Americans have
realized that a little savings can go a long way. The price of this change in behavior is that global
economic growth will not rebound as fast and as much as the markets might be hoping for.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
42 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

42

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

US economic decline hits other nations unsettles global financial markets
Lynch, Graduate of Wesleyan University and M.A. International Relations at Yale, 07
David J. Lynch, Graduate of Wesleyan University and M.A. International Relations at Yale, 12-10-07, USA Today, Slowing
US Economy Inflicts Pain around the World
The extent to which other economies have "decoupled" from their traditional dependence upon the U.S. economic engine,
however, remains a topic of debate. On one hand, three countries China, India and Russia accounted for more than
half of global economic growth over the past year, according to the IMF. So emerging markets are expected to shoulder
principal responsibility for keeping the global economy moving forward in 2008. But the U.S. economy remains the
world's largest, and a sharp fall in demand here for others' goods will reverberate. Canada and
Mexico, sending 81% of their exports to the USA, are the USA's top trading partners and the countries
most exposed to a serious U.S. downturn. Economic weakness in the USA can hit other countries
both by unsettling global financial markets, thus curbing access to capital, and by depressing
trade. "The U.S. and Asian economies are not decoupled, and a slowdown here is likely to produce
ripple effects lowering growth there," says Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Whether the rest of the world can, in fact, shrug off slower U.S. growth remains to be demonstrated. But the remedies
central banks are choosing to fight the credit crunch are putting strains on other parts of the global
financial system, which could ultimately damage growth in some emerging markets. Central banks in the
USA, United Kingdom and Canada have cut interest rates in recent weeks, trying to counteract banks' reluctance to make
new loans. On Tuesday, the Federal Reserve, which already has trimmed the target for its benchmark rate by three-quarters of
a percentage point since September, is widely expected to cut rates again. The Fed's actions ricochet from Beijing to Dubai.
Countries such as China and the oil producers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which link their
currencies to the level of the U.S. dollar to varying degrees, face a choice between setting interest rates according to
the needs of their domestic economies or tailoring rates to maintain stable exchange rates. That means keeping their
exchange rates stable against the dollar and importing inflation or raising their interest rates to head off
inflation at the cost of seeing their currencies appreciate. So far, the quasi-dollar-linked countries are swallowing
higher prices and the potential for overheating. In Qatar, for example, inflation runs at an annual rate of almost 13%. Current
monetary policies and exchange rates are "completely out of kilter with what these countries need and might actually
encourage the bubble in emerging markets to get bigger. It is really only a question of time before we have this regime
change in the global monetary system," says George Magnus, senior economic adviser of UBS (UBS) in London. That said,
most economists expect the global economy to pull through unless another unexpected shock hits. "We're in this window
of vulnerability. If something else comes along, we don't have a lot of padding," says Harvard's Rogoff. "We're very
vulnerable."


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
43 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

43

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

The US is essential to the global economy no other country is close to US production.
Fisher, President of the federal reserve bank, 06 Richard W. Fisher, President of the Federal Reserve
Bank in Dallas. 2/6/06. The United States: Still the Growth Engine for the World Economy?

My kind hosts, who had no idea that this event would follow so closely on the heels of the meager growth estimate reported
for last years fourth quarter, have asked me to address the question: Is the United States still the growth engine for the
world? The answer is yes. Let me explain why. The American economy has been on an upswing for more than four years. Growth advanced briskly
at 4.2 percent in 2004. It slowed to a still solid 3.5 percent in 2005, although I would not be surprised if GDP were revised upward when we take a more
definitive look at the fourth quarter. In January, the U.S. economy employed 134.6 million people, up 2.2 million in a year. Unemployment stood at a four-
year low of 4.7 percent, which compares with the latest reading of 8.4 percent for Europe and even higher rates for some of the continents major economies.
We have weathered hurricanes fury and record-high energy prices while continuing to grow and keep inflation under
control. The statement the Federal Open Market Committee released Tuesday quite summed up our current situation succinctly: Although recent
economic data have been uneven, the expansion in economic activity appears solid. This is especially true in what I call the growth riman arc of
population centers with favorable demographics that begins in Virginia, runs down the southeastern seaboard through Georgia to Florida, then through the
megastate of Texas and on to the uberstate of California and up to Seattle. I use mega and uber to describe the two largest states for a reason: to illustrate
the depth and breadth of our economy. In dollar terms, Texas produces 20 percent more than India, and California produces
roughly the same output as China. To the extent there is weakness in the U.S. economy, it is in the Northeast and North Central states. Netting all
this out, the consensus of most economic forecasters is that growth in the first quarter will rebound to a rate well above 4 percent. To understand what this
kind of growth means, we need only follow Margaret Thatchers wise hectoring to do the math. The United States produces $12.6 trillion a year in goods
and services. Be conservativeonce again, Lady Thatcher would like itand assume that in 2006 we grow at last years preliminary rate of 3.5 percent. The
math tells us we would add $440 billion in incremental activityin a single year. That is a big number. What we add in new economic activity
in a given year exceeds the entire output of all but 15 other countries. Every year, we create the economic equivalent of a
Swedenor two Irelands or three Argentinas. In dollar terms, a growth rate of 3.5 percent in the U.S. is equivalent to
surges of 16 percent in Germany, 20 percent in the U.K., 26 percent in China and 70 percent in India. Of course, our
growth is driven by consumption, a significant portion of which is fed by imports, which totaled $2 trillion last year. Again,
do the math: Our annual import volumewhat we buy in a single year from abroadexceeds the GDP of all but four
other countriesJapan, Germany, Britain and France. So, yes, the United States is the growth engine for the world
economy. And it is important that it remain so because no other country appears poised to pick up the torch if the
U.S. economy stumbles or tires

The US is key to the global economy.
New Zealand Herald 07 The New Zealand Herald, 3-20-2007, Can world weather slow down in US?
p. Lexis

The ability of other countries to emerge from the US economy's long shadow may reflect more wishful
thinking than logic. No doubt, it will eventually happen, especially as some of the bigger emerging countries mature.
Right now, the world still needs the US consumer. The global economy is too dependent on exports to
the US, whose trade deficit was $765.3 billion in 2006, while Asia and Europe lack sufficient domestic demand
to offset reduced US spending on overseas goods, says Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley in New
York. China's Reverberations The US accounts for 24% of Japan's total exports, 84% of Canada's, 86% of Mexico's and
about 40% of China's, Mr Roach says. Just as China is dependent on the US, other countries rely on Asia's
second-largest economy. So a US slowdown that hurts China will reverberate in Japan, Taiwan, South Korea
and commodity producers such as Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Brazil. From 2001 through 2006, the US
and China combined contributed an average of 43% to global growth, measured on the basis of purchasing-
power parity, according to Mr Roach. And there may be more fallout from a US decline. ''Allowing for trade linkages, the
total effects could be larger than 60%,'' he says. ''Globalisation makes decoupling from such a concentrated
growth dynamic especially difficult.'' As the US economy faltered in early 2001, many Wall Street
gurus predicted that Europe would outpace the US. European Vulnerability ''It didn't happen _ a
lesson investors should bear in mind today,'' says Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America Capital
Management in New York. Even though only about 8% of European exports go to the US, Europe is
vulnerable to a US slowdown through its businesses abroad. The earnings of European companies' US units

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
44 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

44

plunged 64% in 2001, according to Mr Quinlan. Those declines in the biggest and most-profitable market for many German,
UK, French and Dutch enterprises resulted in reduced orders, lower profit, slower job growth and weak business
confidence. After expanding 3.9% in 2000, euro-area growth shrank to 1.9% in 2001, 0.9% in 2002 and 0.8% in 2003. ''As
the US economy decelerates and as the dollar continues its slide, Europe will sink or swim with the US
in 2007,'' Mr Quinlan says

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
45 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

45

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

US depression causes Global collapse
Niall Ferguson, Professor of Economic History at Harvard, How a local squall might become a global tempest,
2008, http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/ArticleItem.aspx?pageid=184

The question is whether or not this American hurricane is about to run into two other macroeconomic weather systems. Up
until now the global impact of the crisis has been limited. Indeed, strong global growth has been the main reason the US
recession did not start sooner. With the dollar weakened as an indirect consequence of the Feds open-handed lending policy,
US exports have surged. According to Morgan Stanley, net exports accounted for all but 30 basis points of the 1.8 per cent
growth in US output over the past year. The downside of this, however, was a rise in commodity prices as strong Asian
demand coincided with a depreciating dollar. For a time, this coincidence of a US slowdown and soaring oil prices revived
unhappy memories of 1970s stagflation. But now a new and colder front is crossing the macroeconomic weather map: the
prospect of a global slowdown. Admittedly the forecasts do not sound too alarming. A reduction in global growth from 4.1
per cent this year to 3.6 per cent next year could positively help damp inflationary pressures. Optimists such as Jim ONeill at
Goldman Sachs celebrate the decoupling of China from the US, pointing out that nearly all Chinas growth is accounted for
by domestic demand, not exports. Yet there are four reasons to be less cheerful. First, Europe has clearly not decoupled from
America. Indeed, partly because of the strength of the euro, the eurozone is now growing more slowly than the US. And
remember: the European Unions economy is still more than five times larger than Chinas. It also matters a great deal more
to US exporters. Second, the commodity price rise has generated inflationary pressures in many emerging markets that will
not recede overnight. According to Joachim Fels of Morgan Stanley, 50 of the 190 countries in the world currently have
double-digit inflation. The World Bank has identified 33 countries where high food prices have already generated civil
unrest. Third, decoupling is not a cause for celebration if, on closer inspection, it is a synonym for deglobalisation. The
growth of the world economy since 1980 has owed much to lower trade barriers. Unfortunately, the recent breakdown of the
Doha round of global trade talks sent a worrying signal that commitment to free trade is weakening. It was troubling, too,
how many governments responded to the jump in rice prices by imposing export restrictions. One year on, what began as a
US crisis is fast becoming a world crisis. Small wonder only a handful of global equity markets are in positive territory
relative to August 2007, while more than half have declined by between 10 and 40 per cent. The US slowdown will also
affect many emerging markets less reliant on exports than China. At the same time, the global slowdown is about to kick
away the last prop keeping the US recession at bay. No, this is not the Great Depression 2.0; the Fed and the Treasury are
seeing to that. But, as in the 1930s, the critical phase is not the US phase. It is when the crisis goes global that the term credit
crunch will no longer suffice.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
46 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

46

US key to global economy no other country comes
close
Arora & Vamvakidis 05 (Vivek & Athanasios, IMF Senior Resident Representatives, Economic Spillovers
Finance and Development; Sept, Vol 42, No 3; http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/09/arora.htm)

Economists usually see the United States as an engine of the world economy: U.S. and world output are closely correlated,
and movements in U.S. economic growth appear to influence growth in other countries to a significant degree. Certainly,
given its size and close links with the rest of the world, the United States could be expected to have a significant influence
on growth in other countries. In 2004, U.S. GDP accounted for over one-fifth of world GDP on a purchasing power parity
(PPP) basis and for nearly 30 percent of world nominal GDP at market exchange rates. The United States accounted for
nearly a quarter of the expansion in world real GDP during the 1990s. World and U.S. growth have moved closely together
in recent decades, with a correlation coefficient of over 80 percent. Trade with the United States accounts for a substantial
share of total trade in a large number of countries. Estimates of the overall impact of U.S. growth on growth in other
countries during the past two decades, in the context of a standard growth model, suggest that U.S. growth is a significant
determinant of growth in a large panel of industrial and developing countries, with an effect as large as one-for-one in
some cases (Arora and Vamvakidis, 2004). The impact of U.S. growth turns out to be higher than the impact of growth in
the rest of the world. This could be explained by the role of the United States as a major global trading partner. The results
are robust to changes in the sample, the period considered, and the inclusion of other growth determinants, including
common drivers of growth in both the United States and other countries. We also found the impact of U.S. growth on
growth in other countries to be larger than that of other major trading partners. For example, the impact of EU growth on
the rest of the world is significant but smaller than the impact of U.S. growth.
Impacts Econ Turns Heg

Econ Collapse ends US Heg
Friedberg + Schoenfeld, Friedberg is an IR prof at Princeton and Schoenfeld is a scholar at the Witherspoon
Institute, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html

One immediate implication of the crisis that began on Wall Street and spread across the world is that the primary
instruments of U.S. foreign policy will be crimped. The next president will face an entirely new and adverse fiscal
position. Estimates of this year's federal budget deficit already show that it has jumped $237 billion from last year, to $407
billion. With families and businesses hurting, there will be calls for various and expensive domestic relief programs. In the
face of this onrushing river of red ink, both Barack Obama and John McCain have been reluctant to lay out what portions of
their programmatic wish list they might defer or delete. Only Joe Biden has suggested a possible reduction -- foreign aid.
This would be one of the few popular cuts, but in budgetary terms it is a mere grain of sand. Still, Sen. Biden's comment hints
at where we may be headed: toward a major reduction in America's world role, and perhaps even a new era of
financially-induced isolationism. Pressures to cut defense spending, and to dodge the cost of waging two wars, already
intense before this crisis, are likely to mount. Despite the success of the surge, the war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular.
Precipitous withdrawal -- attractive to a sizable swath of the electorate before the financial implosion -- might well become
even more popular with annual war bills running in the hundreds of billions. Protectionist sentiments are sure to grow
stronger as jobs disappear in the coming slowdown. Even before our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports
had begun to gather support among many Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of
protectionism will blow. Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial
architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide
use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as
we counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in the
future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic
terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
47 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

47

Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's
seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will
leave a dangerous power vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe,
and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk. In such
a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground nearly to a halt, the peaceful
democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of
economic disaster exploited their divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more
reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The aftershocks of the financial crisis
will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of
the Russian stock market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil
prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its economic growth depending
heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and
perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None
of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with external
adventures. As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are struggling to deal with
decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan
faces similar challenges. India is still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power. What
does this all mean? There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have before us is between the
potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff price tag of continued American leadership.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
48 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

48

Impacts Econ Turns Heg

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
49 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

49



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
50 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

50

Economy key to leadership

Eiras 04 (Isabel, Senior Policy Analyst for International Economics @ the Heritage Foundation, July 23, ln)
Losing economic freedom has important implications for the pockets of U.S. families, the coffers of the U.S.
economy, and America's ability to remain a strong world leader. If America continues to fall behind, the value of
the U.S. dollar could continue to decline. Americans will then have fewer opportunities to improve their lives
and foreigners will find investing in the United States less and less attractive. As the U.S. economy weakens and
other countries' economies strengthen, the United States' leadership and power in the world decline as well.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
51 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

51

Impacts Econ Turns Prolif

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
52 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

52



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
53 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

53

Economic growth is the surest way to stop prolif
Burrows & Windram 94 (William & Robert, Critical Mass, p. 491-2)

Economics is in many respects proliferations catalyst. As we have noted, economic desperation drives Russia
and some of the former Warsaw Pact nations to peddle weapons and technology. The possibility of considerable
profits or at least balanced international payments also prompts Third World countries like China, Brazil, and
Israel to do the same. Economics, as well as such related issues as overpopulation, drive proliferation just as
surely as do purely political motives. Unfortunately, that subject is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to
say that, all things being equal, well-of, relatively secure societies like todays Japan are less likely to buy or sell
superweapon technology than those that are insecure, needy, or desperate. Ultimately, solving economic
problems, especially as they are driven by population pressure, is the surest way to defuse proliferation and
enhance true national security.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
54 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

54

Impacts Econ Turns Disease

Economic downturns divert funds from disease treatment
Skirble, 9 (Rosanne- reporter for the Voice of America, VOA Economic Downturn Threatens Global Fund for
AIDS, TB, Malaria 04 February 2009, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2009-02/2009-02-04-
voa23.cfm?CFID=256884522&CFTOKEN=31 541345&jsessionid=de307b49f1da35d5dbcd4a1e52696331c2f6)

As world leaders grapple with the global financial crisis, the world's largest source of funds to combat killer diseases
is facing a crisis of its own. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria supplies one-quarter of all AIDS
funding, two-thirds of tuberculosis funding and three-fourths of malaria funding. A $5 billion funding gap now
threatens this institution's worldwide programs. Every year since 2001, leaders from the world's wealthier nations
have renewed their commitments to fund all approved disease treatment, prevention and research programs in
poor countries. According to Jeffrey Sachs, a special United Nations advisor and director of the Earth Institute at
Columbia University, the Global Fund was designed to keep the promises made to the world's poor to help them
fight AIDS, TB and malaria. Sachs says that despite the urgency of its mission, the Global Fund has been forced by
the recession-pinched budgets of its donor countries to cut back or delay funding. "It already cut by 10 percent the
budgets for the approved plans. And it's warned that it would have to cut by 25 percent the second half of those
plans," he says. The current funding cycle has been postponed for several months, which he says, "puts at risk the
malaria control effort." The cutbacks are all the more distressing to Global Fund supporters because in its relatively
short life, the organization has reported remarkable progress against killer diseases. For example, malaria deaths
are down 66 percent in Rwanda and 80 percent in Eritrea over the past five years. Peter Chernin is one of a number
of business leaders who've supported a $100 million campaign to fight the malaria pandemic in Africa. He says the
disease has cost industry on the continent about $12 billion in lost worker productivity. "And [with] just a fraction of
that investment, we can end malaria deaths and remove a major obstacle to economic development." Keeping up
the fight against killer diseases like malaria, TB and AIDS is essential to the economic development of poor nations,
says Sachs. And it's just bad economic policy, he believes, to cut long-term investments in development for near-
term savings. "For Africa to be a full trading partner, one that could be picking up the slack by buying our goods and
being a full productive part of the world economy, [it] requires that these diseases be brought under control. "That
was at least one of the many aspects, including the humanitarian and security aspects, that led to the creation of the
Global Fund in the first place." Sachs argues that the United States, which currently contributes about one third of
the Global Fund's resources, could make a significant dent in the fund's $5 billon shortfall if it so chose. "There is no
shortage of funds at the moment when in three months the rich world has found about $3 trillion of funding for
bank bailouts and in which there have been $18 billion of Christmas bonuses for Wall Street supported by bailout
legislation." Those monies could not "for one moment balance the lives that are at stake." Global Fund Board
Chairman Rajat Gupta agrees that the United States could do more to help the fund out of its financial crisis. He
believes that if the U.S., which has fallen behind on its pledged commitments, were to take on more of a leadership
role, other nations would follow. "One of the good things that has happened before is that each country or different
countries have kind of egged each other on to do more, and now it is the United States' turn to step up and get that
going." Gupta says the Global Fund's progress in the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria must be sustained. He says he
and other health and business leaders who attended the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland were
not asking for a bailout. They were simply calling on donor nations to make good on their pledges, Gupta says, to
improve the world's prosperity and its health. That continued support, Gupta says, could save nearly two million
additional lives in the coming years.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
55 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

55

Impacts Econ Turns Warming/Environment

Economic growth key to solve warming
(Terry L. Anderson, leading resource economist, professor of economics at Montana State University,
Ph.D. in economics, visiting scholar at Oxford, university of Basel, and Cornell University law School,
04, Why Economic Growth is Good for the Environment, http://www.perc.org/articles/article446.php)

Hansen's essay concludes on an optimistic note, saying "the main elements [new technologies] required to halt climate
change have come into being with remarkable rapidity." This statement would not have surprised economist Julian
Simon. He saw the "ultimate resource" to be the human mind and believed it to be best motivated by market forces. Because
of a combination of market forces and technological innovations, we are not running out of natural resources. As a
resource becomes more scarce, prices increase, thus encouraging development of cheaper alternatives and
technological innovations. Just as fossil fuel replaced scarce whale oil, its use will be reduced by new technology and
alternative fuel sources. Market forces also cause economic growth, which in turn leads to environmental
improvements. Put simply, poor people are willing to sacrifice clean water and air, healthy forests, and wildlife
habitat for economic growth. But as their incomes rise above subsistence, "economic growth helps to undo the
damage done in earlier years," says economist Bruce Yandle. "If economic growth is good for the environment,
policies that stimulate growth ought to be good for the environment."


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
56 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

56

Strong economy is the best way to preserve a healthy
environment, avoiding command-and-control policies

Shiller 99 (Erin, Policy Fellow of Environmental Studies @ Pacific Research Institute, Ventura County Star, April
20, ln)
As income levels rise, people begin to demand higher environmental standards. As a society, this effect is cumulative --
thus, we expect even better environmental quality as our economy grows. Until now, environmental policy has relied
almost entirely on command-and-control regulation. While such regulation has had its successes, it also hinders the very
economic growth that has allowed for environmental improvements.
Further, the marginal cost of pollution reduction is continually rising. Stated another way, a smaller aggregate amount of
pollution means that each further reduction is more costly than the last, and the health benefits produced are less
significant and felt by fewer people.
For this reason, environmentalists should not regard economic concerns as a hindrance to effective policy, but should
embrace economic growth as the key to further environmental improvements. Moreover, if Americans want the
improvement that has occurred over the past generation to continue, they will look to innovative new policies that
incorporate and even promote economic growth. Such policies not only best address today's environmental situation, but
provide the most promising future for tomorrow's environment as well.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
57 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

57

Economic decline no protection of the environment

Sanders 90 (Jerry, Univ of Cal Berkley, Academic Coordinator in Peace and Conflict; Global Ecology and
World Economy: Collision Course or Sustainable Future? Pg. 397)
In a period of economic stagnation and trade competition, a declining hegemonic power will think less about maintaining
world order than about shoring up its position relative to new challengers and upstarts. Multilateral cooperation will run up
against simlar constraints, due to suspicions that others may gain at ones expense by free riding on the public goods
provided by environmental protection, trade regulation, or collective security regimes. The tendency will be for states to
withhold the resources and the legitimacy required for supranational structures to work. And left to fend for themselves in
a climate of economic stagnation, individual nations will be little able and even less inclined to end their destabilizing
environmental practices. Thus the groundwork will be laid for a chain reaction of conflicts across a spectrum of relations,
with one nation after another forced into escalating confrontation along several fronts.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
58 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

58


Impacts Econ Turns Famine

Economic collapse exacerbates global food crisis

Cha, Graduate of Columbia and John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and McCrummen,
Washington Post Writer, 08
Ariana Eunjung Cha and Stephanie McCrummen, 10-26-08, Washington Post, Financial Meltdown Worsens Food Crisis;
As Global Prices Soar, More People Go Hungry, Lexis

As shock waves from the credit crisis began to spread around the world last month, China scrambled to protect itself. Among
the most extreme measures it took was to impose new export taxes to keep critical supplies such as grains and fertilizer from
leaving the country. About 5,700 miles away, in Nairobi, farmer Stephen Muchiri is suffering the consequences. It's planting
season now, but he can afford to sow amaranthus and haricot beans on only half of the 10 acres he owns because the cost of
the fertilizer he needs has shot up nearly $50 a bag in a matter of weeks. Muchiri said nearly everyone he knows is cutting
back on planting, which means even less food for a continent where the supply has already been
weakened by drought, political unrest and rising prices. While the world's attention has been focused on rescuing
investment banks and stock markets from collapse, the global food crisis has worsened, a casualty of the growing
financial tumult. Oxfam, the Britain-based aid group, estimates that economic chaos this year has pulled the incomes of an
additional 119 million people below the poverty line. Richer countries from the United States to the Persian Gulf are busy
helping themselves and have been slow to lend a hand. The contrast between the rapid-fire reaction by Western authorities to
the financial crisis and their comparatively modest response to soaring food prices earlier this year has triggered anger among
aid and farming groups. "The amount of money used for the bailouts in the U.S. and Europe -- people here are saying
that money is enough to feed the poor in Africa for the next three years," said Muchiri, head of the Eastern Africa
Farmers Federation. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 923 million people were seriously
undernourished in 2007. Its director-general, Jacques Diouf, said in a recent speech that he worries about cuts in aid to
agriculture in developing countries. He said he is also concerned by protectionist trade measures intended to counteract the
financial turmoil. Although the price of commodities has come down in the past few months, Diouf said, 36 countries still
need emergency assistance for food, and he warned of a looming disaster next year if countries do not make food security a
top priority. "The global financial crisis should not make us forget the food crisis," Diouf said. Commodity
prices have plummeted in recent weeks as investors have shown increasing concern about a global recession and a drop in the
demand for goods. Wheat futures for December delivery closed at $5.1625 on Friday -- down 62 percent from a record set in
February. Corn futures are down 53 percent from their all-time high, and soybean futures are 47 percent lower. Such declines,
while initially welcomed by consumers, could eventually increase deflationary pressures -- lower prices could mean
less incentive for farmers to cultivate crops. That, in turn, could exacerbate the global food shortage. In
June, governments, donors and agencies gathered in Rome to pledge $12.3 billion to address the world's worst food crisis in a
generation. But only $1 billion has been disbursed. An additional $1.3 billion, which had been earmarked by the European
Commission for helping African farmers, is tied up in bureaucracy, with some governments now arguing that they can no
longer afford to give up that money. "The financial crisis is providing an excuse for people across the spectrum
-- governments, multilateral organizations, companies -- to not do the right thing," said Oxfam spokeswoman
Amy Barry. The precarious aid situation is compounded by export taxes and bans imposed this year by a number of grain-
and fertilizer-producing nations, including China, India, Pakistan, Ukraine and Argentina. E.U. Trade Commissioner Peter
Mandelson has criticized export restrictions because they "drive up world prices and cut off supplies of raw materials." Such
restrictions, he said, "invite a cycle of retaliation that is as economically counterproductive as it is politically hard to resist,"
Mandelson said last month. China -- the world's biggest grain and rice producer and the biggest exporter of certain types of
fertilizer -- could see its moves having ripple effects on vulnerable countries. "


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
59 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

59

Impacts Econ Turns Racism

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
60 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

60



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
61 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

61

Growth solves racism
Business Week 11-06-1995 ln
Everyone agrees that it would be a calamity if African Americans economic progress of the past half-century
ground to a halt. These days, economists are focusing on ways to improve public schools, revitalize
neighborhoods, and open up employment for poor and working-class Americans, black and white. What
Washington policymakers have to consider is that no reform can work without strong economic growth.
Robust growth raises income of both whites and blacks. More important, it attacks the pinched economic
conditions that allow racism to flourish.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
62 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

62

Poor economic conditions racism
Progressive 92 (January, p. 7)
That racist and anti-Semitic appeals are more popular during times of economic decline is nothing new; Such
demagoguery is an old and dishonorable tradition in Europe as well as in America. When people are desperate,
they will seek out any politician offering a scapegoat.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
63 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

63

Economic decline hate crimes
Kim 93 (Marlene, Prof of Labor Studies @ Rutgers University, 1993 p. viii)
In addition, anti-immigration sentiment, like hate crimes, ignites when economic times are tough.
During the Great Depression of 1930s, lynchings of African Americans increased and 300,000 Mexican
Americans were forcibly bussed back across the border. Over a hundred years ago, the US prohibited Chinese and
later all Asians from immigrating, sanctions that were not lifted until the 1940s


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
64 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

64

Impacts Econ Turns Russia War

Economic collapse causes Russian war that leads to nuclear extinction
Steven David, Jan/Feb 1999. Prof. of political science at Johns Hopkins. Foreign Affairs, lexis.

If internal war does strike Russia, economic deterioration will be a prime cause. From 1989 to the present, the
GDP has fallen by 50 percent. In a society where, ten years ago, unemployment scarcely existed, it reached 9.5 percent in
1997 with many economists declaring the true figure to be much higher. Twenty-two percent of Russians live below the
official poverty line (earning less than $ 70 a month). Modern Russia can neither collect taxes (it gathers only half the
revenue it is due) nor significantly cut spending. Reformers tout privatization as the country's cure-all, but in a land without
well-defined property rights or contract law and where subsidies remain a way of life, the prospects for transition to an
American-style capitalist economy look remote at best. As the massive devaluation of the ruble and the current political crisis
show, Russia's condition is even worse than most analysts feared. If conditions get worse, even the stoic Russian people will
soon run out of patience. A future conflict would quickly draw in Russia's military. In the Soviet days civilian rule kept the
powerful armed forces in check. But with the Communist Party out of office, what little civilian control remains relies on an
exceedingly fragile foundation -- personal friendships between government leaders and military commanders. Meanwhile, the
morale of Russian soldiers has fallen to a dangerous low. Drastic cuts in spending mean inadequate pay, housing, and
medical care. A new emphasis on domestic missions has created an ideological split between the old and new guard in the
military leadership, increasing the risk that disgruntled generals may enter the political fray and feeding the resentment of
soldiers who dislike being used as a national police force. Newly enhanced ties between military units and local authorities
pose another danger. Soldiers grow ever more dependent on local governments for housing, food, and wages. Draftees serve
closer to home, and new laws have increased local control over the armed forces. Were a conflict to emerge between a
regional power and Moscow, it is not at all clear which side the military would support. Divining the military's allegiance is
crucial, however, since the structure of the Russian Federation makes it virtually certain that regional conflicts will continue
to erupt. Russia's 89 republics, krais, and oblasts grow ever more independent in a system that does little to keep them
together. As the central government finds itself unable to force its will beyond Moscow (if even that far), power devolves to
the periphery. With the economy collapsing, republics feel less and less incentive to pay taxes to Moscow
when they receive so little in return. Three-quarters of them already have their own constitutions, nearly all of which
make some claim to sovereignty. Strong ethnic bonds promoted by shortsighted Soviet policies may motivate non-Russians
to secede from the Federation. Chechnya's successful revolt against Russian control inspired similar movements for
autonomy and independence throughout the country. If these rebellions spread and Moscow responds with force, civil war is
likely. Should Russia succumb to internal war, the consequences for the United States and Europe will be
severe. A major power like Russia -- even though in decline -- does not suffer civil war quietly or alone. An embattled
Russian Federation might provoke opportunistic attacks from enemies such as China. Massive flows of refugees
would pour into central and western Europe. Armed struggles in Russia could easily spill into its neighbors.
Damage from the fighting, particularly attacks on nuclear plants, would poison the environment of much of
Europe and Asia. Within Russia, the consequences would be even worse. Just as the sheer brutality of the last Russian civil
war laid the basis for the privations of Soviet communism, a second civil war might produce another horrific regime. Most
alarming is the real possibility that the violent disintegration of Russia could lead to loss of control over its
nuclear arsenal. No nuclear state has ever fallen victim to civil war, but even without a clear precedent the grim
consequences can be foreseen. Russia retains some 20,000 nuclear weapons and the raw material for tens of
thousands more, in scores of sites scattered throughout the country. So far, the government has managed to prevent the
loss of any weapons or much material. If war erupts, however, Moscow's already weak grip on nuclear sites will
slacken, making weapons and supplies available to a wide range of anti-American groups and states. Such
dispersal of nuclear weapons represents the greatest physical threat America now faces. And it is hard to think
of anything that would increase this threat more than the chaos that would follow a Russian civil war



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
65 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

65

Impacts Econ Solves War

Economic interdependence prevents war
Griswold, 7 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, 4/20/2007, Trade, Democracy and Peace,
http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)

A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, "War declining worldwide, studies say."
In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute found that the number of armed conflicts
around the world has been in decline for the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have
dropped from 33 to 17, with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest report found that
2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another. What a remarkable and
wonderful fact. The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press report, "The number
killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one
measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Current estimates of people killed by war are
down sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951
during the Korean War. Many causes lie behind the good news--the end of the Cold War and the spread of
democracy, among them--but expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting
world peace. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American author argued in a forgettable book,
growing commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would argue
that free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways. First, as I argued a moment ago, trade
and globalization have reinforced the trend toward democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each
other. Thanks in part to globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies--a record
high. Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight wars. While it's true that
democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare occurrence for democracies to engage in wars
with non-democracies. We can still hope that as more countries turn to democracy, there will be fewer provocations
for war by non-democracies. A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting
more economic integration. As national economies become more intertwined with each other, those nations have
more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means human casualties and bigger
government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that impose lasting damage on the economy. In short,
globalization has dramatically raised the economic cost of war.
The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on "Economic Freedom and Peace"
by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia University. Dr. Gartzke compares the propensity of
countries to engage in wars and their level of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including
the freedom to trade, significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with
another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, "Making economies freer translates into making
countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are about 14 times as conflict prone as the most
free." By the way, Dr. Gartzke's analysis found that economic freedom was a far more important variable in
determining a countries propensity to go to war than democracy. A third reason why free trade promotes peace is
because it allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than conquest of territory and
resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual property, financial assets,
and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard assets such as minerals and
farmland are becoming relatively less important in a high-tech, service economy. If people need resources outside
their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what
they can produce best at home. In short, globalization and the development it has spurred have rendered the spoils
of war less valuable.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
66 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

66

Impacts Econ Solves Poverty

Economic growth solves worldwide poverty.
Richard H. Adams, Jr. World Bank Policy Researcher. February 2003. Economic Growth,
Inequality, and Poverty

Why is economic growth so important in reducing poverty? The answer to this question has been broached at several points
in this analysis. Economic growth reduces poverty because first and foremost growth has little impact on. income
inequality. Income distributions do not generally change much over time. Analysis of the 50 countries and the 101
intervals included in the data set shows that income inequality rises on average less than 1.0 percent per year. Moreover,
econometric analysis shows that economic growth has no statistical effect on income distribution: inequality may rise,
fall or remain steady with growth. Since income distributions are relatively stable over time, economic growth - in the sense
of rising incomes - has the general effect of raising incomes for all members of society, including the poor. As noted
above, in many developing countries poverty, as measured by the $1 per person per day standard, tends to be "shallow" in the
sense that many people are clustered right below (and above) the poverty line. Thus, even a modest rate of economic
growth has the effect of "lifting" people out of poverty. Poor people are capable of using economic growth - especially
labor-intensive economic growth which provides more jobs -- to "work" themselves out of poverty. Table 8
underscores these relationships by summarizing the results of recent empirical studies regarding the growth elasticity of
poverty. When growth is measured by survey mean income (consumption), the point estimates of the elasticity of poverty
with respect to growth are remarkably uniform: from a low of -2.12 in Bruno, Ravallion 21 and Squire (1998), to a mid-range
of -2.59 in this study (excluding Eastern Europe and Central Asia), to a high of -3.12 in Ravallion and Chen (1997). In other
words, on average, a 10 -percentage point increase in economic growth (measured by the survey mean) can be
expected to produce between a 21.2 and 31.2 percent decrease in the proportion of people living in poverty ($1 per
person per day). Economic growth reduces poverty in the developing countries of the world because average incomes of
the poor tend to rise proportionately with those of the rest of the population. The fact that economic growth is so
critical in reducing poverty highlights the need to accelerate economic growth throughout the developing world.
Present rates of economic growth in the developing world are simply too low to make a meaningful dent in poverty. As
measured by per capita GDP, the average rate of growth for the 50 low income and lower middle income countries in this
paper was 2.66 percent per year. As measured by mean survey income (consumption), the average rate of growth in these 50
countries was even lower: a slightly negative -0.90 percent per year (Table 3). In the future, these rates of economic growth
need to be significantly increased. In particular, more work needs to be done on identifying the elements used for achieving
successful high rates of economic growth and poverty reduction in certain regions of the developing world (e.g., East Asia
and South Asia), and applying the lessons of this work to the continuing growth and poverty needs in other areas, such as
Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
67 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

67

Impacts War Turns Gender Violence

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
68 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

68



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
69 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

69

War more violence against women
Richards 04 (Cindy, A new vision for V movement Chicago Sun-Times, June 9, ln)

"I think the war, the jobs and the economy are all very connected to violence against women," Ensler said.
"Let's begin with war. I have been outspoken about the war from the very beginning. I see not only consequences of
war toward human beings, but toward women. Let's begin with rape. The rate of violence toward
women escalates in war," said the playwright and activist who has traveled to war-torn regions in Bosnia, Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Kosovo and the Middle East. "War is really about taking what you want when you want it without
consent. It really perpetuates a rape mentality. Take Iraq as an example. Saddam Hussein was as evil as they come.
Under his regime, 1 million died, women were raped, people were tortured. That existed for 30 years and we never
intervened on behalf of the people being tortured and raped. If this were a war about stopping human rights violations, that
was a war that should have been called 20 years ago."


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
70 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

70

Impacts Econ Turns Terrorism

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
71 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

71



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
72 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

72

Economic growth solves terrorism
Wanandi 02 (Jusuf, member of the board of trustees @ Center for Strategic and International Studies, A
Global Coalition against International Terrorism p. 184-9)

A robust global economy is a condition sine qua non in the battle against terrorism. By destroying a root cause
of frustration namely, grinding poverty a healthy economy denies terrorists a fresh source of recruits.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
73 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

73

Economic decline terrorism

Johnson 97 (Bryan T, fellow @ heritage foundation, Defining the US Role in the Global Economy Mandate
for Leadership IV. Feb)
Stagnant economics and declining living standards in many Muslim countries breed a popular discontent that
fuels the growth of radical Islamic fundamentalism. Widespread unemployment in Muslim countries such as
Algeria, Egypt, and Iran has created a mass of disillusioned young men who form a reservoir of potential recruits
for the radical Islamic groups. These restless poor, called the dispossessed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
often join militant groups in search of hope and a sense of personal empowerment. This is causing an increase in
radical Islamic fundamentalism, which often results in increased international terrorism.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
74 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

74

Economic decline turns TB, Malaria, AIDS
Economic downturns divert funds from disease treatment
Skirble, 9 (Rosanne- reporter for the Voice of America, VOA Economic Downturn Threatens Global Fund for
AIDS, TB, Malaria 04 February 2009, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2009-02/2009-02-04-
voa23.cfm?CFID=256884522&CFTOKEN=31 541345&jsessionid=de307b49f1da35d5dbcd4a1e52696331c2f6)
As world leaders grapple with the global financial crisis, the world's largest source of funds to combat killer diseases
is facing a crisis of its own. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria supplies one-quarter of all AIDS
funding, two-thirds of tuberculosis funding and three-fourths of malaria funding. A $5 billion funding gap now
threatens this institution's worldwide programs.
Every year since 2001, leaders from the world's wealthier nations have renewed their commitments to fund all
approved disease treatment, prevention and research programs in poor countries. According to Jeffrey Sachs, a
special United Nations advisor and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Global Fund was
designed to keep the promises made to the world's poor to help them fight AIDS, TB and malaria.
Sachs says that despite the urgency of its mission, the Global Fund has been forced by the recession-pinched
budgets of its donor countries to cut back or delay funding.
"It already cut by 10 percent the budgets for the approved plans. And it's warned that it would have to cut by 25
percent the second half of those plans," he says.
The current funding cycle has been postponed for several months, which he says, "puts at risk the malaria control
effort."
The cutbacks are all the more distressing to Global Fund supporters because in its relatively short life, the
organization has reported remarkable progress against killer diseases. For example, malaria deaths are down 66
percent in Rwanda and 80 percent in Eritrea over the past five years.
Peter Chernin is one of a number of business leaders who've supported a $100 million campaign to fight the malaria
pandemic in Africa. He says the disease has cost industry on the continent about $12 billion in lost worker
productivity.
"And [with] just a fraction of that investment, we can end malaria deaths and remove a major obstacle to economic
development."
Keeping up the fight against killer diseases like malaria, TB and AIDS is essential to the economic development of
poor nations, says Sachs. And it's just bad economic policy, he believes, to cut long-term investments in
development for near-term savings.
"For Africa to be a full trading partner, one that could be picking up the slack by buying our goods and being a full
productive part of the world economy, [it] requires that these diseases be brought under control.
"That was at least one of the many aspects, including the humanitarian and security aspects, that led to the creation
of the Global Fund in the first place."
Sachs argues that the United States, which currently contributes about one third of the Global Fund's resources,
could make a significant dent in the fund's $5 billon shortfall if it so chose.
"There is no shortage of funds at the moment when in three months the rich world has found about $3 trillion of
funding for bank bailouts and in which there have been $18 billion of Christmas bonuses for Wall Street supported
by bailout legislation."
Those monies could not "for one moment balance the lives that are at stake."
Global Fund Board Chairman Rajat Gupta agrees that the United States could do more to help the fund out of its
financial crisis. He believes that if the U.S., which has fallen behind on its pledged commitments, were to take on
more of a leadership role, other nations would follow.
"One of the good things that has happened before is that each country or different countries have kind of egged
each other on to do more, and now it is the United States' turn to step up and get that going."
Gupta says the Global Fund's progress in the fight against AIDS, TB and malaria must be sustained. He says he and
other health and business leaders who attended the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland were not
asking for a bailout. They were simply calling on donor nations to make good on their pledges, Gupta says, to
improve the world's prosperity and its health. That continued support, Gupta says, could save nearly two million
additional lives in the coming years.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
75 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

75

Economic Decline Turns Soft Power
Economic decline undermines soft power
Mason, 8 (David, Professor of Political Science, Butler University, The End of the American Century,
http://books.google.com/books?id=UCNeNPeRF3UC&dq=the+end+of+the+american+century&source=gbs_navli
nks_s, pg 13)
The crux of the American problem is economic decline because much of Americas global power and influence has
been a function of its great economic wealth. In The Rise and fall of the Great Powers, Paul Kennedy puts it bluntly
this way: wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and
protect wealth Furthermore, economic wealth is an important dimension of soft power the ability to influence
other countries without the exercise of raw military force, or hard power. Thus, economic decline can adversely
affect a countrys international influence and standing. As Kennedy points out in his book, however, the relationship
between economic power and international power can also run the other direction. If a great power overreaches in
its international commitments, the home front can suffer both economically and socially.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
76 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

76

Econ turns heg
Hegemony depends on economic strength
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, Empire Falls
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)

Over time, Americas power is fundamentally a result of its economic strength. Productive capacity
defined by indicators such as wealth, technology and population sizeis a prerequisite for building and
modernizing military forces. The United States, like any state, may choose to vary the degree to which its
productive capacities are used to create military assets. But it is the economy as a whole that constrains the
choice. And the size of the economy relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in
international politics. Major assessments of this relative position have long turned heavily on a single
statistic: Americas share of world economic product. Advocates of extending Americas unipolar dominance
are well aware of the central importance of the economic foundations of American power and routinely
present detailed statistics on the U.S. share of world product. The basic notion is simple: take U.S. domestic
product in any year and divide it by the aggregate total of the gross domestic product of all states in the
world. To measure gross domestic product, the unipolar-dominance school prefers to compare every
countrys output in current-year U.S. dollars, a method that tends to show America is much further ahead of
other countries than alternative measures. Indeed, the most recent call for America to exploit its hegemonic
position (published in 2008) rests on the presumption of U.S. dominance based on the current-year dollar
figures.2 By this metric, in 2006 the United States had 28 percent of world product while its nearest most
likely competitor, China, had 6 percent. Looks pretty good for America, right?
Alas, single-year snapshots of Americas relative power are of limited value for assessing the sustainability
of its grand strategy over many years. For grand-strategic concernsespecially how well the United States
can balance its resources and foreign-policy commitmentsthe trajectory of American power compared to
other states is of seminal importance.
For the sake of argument, let us start with the unipolar-dominance schools preferred measure of American
hegemony, but look at the trajectory of the data over time. According to GDP figures in current U.S. dollars
from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States increased its share of world production
during the 1990s, reached its apogee in 2000, and then began to steadily lose ground during the eight years
of the Bush administration, with its relative power ultimately falling by nearly a quarter in the first decade of
the twenty-first century. At the same time, the relative power of China, the state many consider Americas
most likely future rival, has grown consistently. If we look out as far as the IMF can see (2013), things get
even worsewith the United States expected to continue declining and China to continue rising. The United
States has been going through the first decade of the twenty-first century not stronger than before, but
substantially weaker.
How good are the numbers? Economists commonly use two other methods to calculate GDP, constant-dollar
calculations and purchasing power parity.3 Although each offers advantages and disadvantages, for our
purposes what matters is that they form a lower bound of Americas relative decline. And regardless of the
metric, the trend is the same. Again using IMF figures, Table 2 shows the trajectory of the share of world
product for the United States and China using both alternative measures.
Simply put, the United States is now a declining power. This new reality has tremendous implications for the
future of American grand strategy.
The erosion of the underpinnings of U.S. power is the result of uneven rates of economic growth between
America, China and other states in the world. Despite all the pro-economy talk from the Bush administration,
the fact is that since 2000, U.S. growth rates are down almost 50 percent from the Clinton years. This
trajectory is almost sure to be revised further downward as the consequences of the financial crisis in fall
2008 become manifest.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
77 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

77

As Table 3 shows, over the past two decades, the average rate of U.S. growth has fallen considerably, from
nearly 4 percent annually during the Clinton years to just over 2 percent per year under Bush. At the same
time, China has sustained a consistently high rate of growth of 10 percent per yeara truly stunning
performance. Russia has also turned its economic trajectory around, from year after year of losses in the
1990s to significant annual gains since 2000.
Worse, Americas decline was well under way before the economic downturn, which is likely to only further
weaken U.S. power. As the most recent growth estimates (November 2008) by the IMF make clear, although
all major countries are suffering economically, China and Russia are expected to continue growing at a
substantially greater rate than the United States.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
78 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

78

Econ turns heg
Economic decline undermines heg
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, Empire Falls
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)

These estimates suggest that roughly a quarter of Americas relative decline is due to U.S. economic weaknesses
(spending on the Iraq War, tax cuts, current-account deficits, etc.), a sixth to Chinas superior performance and just
over half to the spread of technology to the rest of the world. In other words, self-inflicted wounds of the Bush years
significantly exacerbated Americas decline, both by making the decline steeper and faster and crowding out
productive investment that could have stimulated innovation to improve matters.
All of this has led to one of the most significant declines of any state since the mid-nineteenth century. And when
one examines past declines and their consequences, it becomes clear both that the U.S. fall is remarkable and that
dangerous instability in the international system may lie ahead. If we end up believing in the wishful thinking of
unipolar dominance forever, the costs could be far higher than a simple percentage drop in share of world product.

A strong economy is key to American hegemony
Ferguson, 3 (Niall, Foreign Affairs, Hegemony or Empire?
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59200/niall-ferguson/hegemony-or-empire?page=4,
September/October 2003

The authors' argument about the uniqueness of American hegemony rests on four main pillars. The most obvious is
economic: as they point out, the U.S. economy has outstripped almost all of its competitors for much of the past
century. This point is developed by another of the book's contributors, Angus Maddison, and explored in almost
encyclopedic depth in the chapter by Moses Abramovitz and Paul David. According to these authors, nothing
achieved by the United Kingdom -- not even in the first flush of the Industrial Revolution -- ever compared with the
United States' recent economic predominance.
Second, the authors point to the way the United States has very deliberately used its power to advance multilateral,
mutually balanced tariff reductions under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later the World Trade
Organization). As Robert Gilpin argues in his chapter, the tariff reductions achieved in the 1967 Kennedy Round
negotiations (and subsequently) owed much to "American pressures." Such pressure was classically exerted through
"conditionality" -- that is, the terms under which the Washington-based International Monetary Fund granted its
loans. This deliberate process contrasts markedly with the willy-nilly way free trade spread in the nineteenth
century, as described by O'Brien and Hobson.
The third pillar of American dominance can be found in the way successive U.S. governments sought to take
advantage of the dollar's role as a key currency before and after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods institutions,
which, according to O'Brien, enabled the United States to be "far less restrained ... than all other states by normal
fiscal and foreign exchange constraints when it came to funding whatever foreign or strategic policies Washington
decided to implement." As Robert Gilpin notes, quoting Charles de Gaulle, such policies led to a "hegemony of the
dollar" that gave the U.S. "extravagant privileges." In David Calleo's words, the U.S. government had access to a
"gold mine of paper" and could therefore collect a subsidy from foreigners in the form of seigniorage (the profits
that flow to those who mint or print a depreciating currency).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
79 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

79

US Econ Collapse global
A U.S. economic collapse leads to global economic depression-
Walter Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, March/April, 2004
Americas Sticky Power, Foreign Policy, Proquest
Similarly, in the last 60 years, as foreigners have acquired a greater value in the United States-government and
private bonds, direct and portfolio private investments-more and more of them have acquired an interest in
maintaining the strength of the U.S.-led system. A collapse of the U.S. economy and the ruin of the dollar
would do more than dent the prosperity of the United States. Without their best customer, countries including
China and Japan would fall into depressions. The financial strength of every country would be severely shaken
should the United States collapse. Under those circumstances, debt becomes a strength, not a weakness, and
other countries fear to break with the United States because they need its market and own its securities. Of
course, pressed too far, a large national debt can turn from a source of strength to a crippling liability, and the
United States must continue to justify other countries' faith by maintaining its long-term record of meeting its
financial obligations. But, like Samson in the temple of the Philistines, a collapsing U.S. economy would inflict
enormous, unacceptable damage on the rest of the world.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
80 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

80

Econ growth good- environment
Economic growth is more important and valued by Democrats and Republicans over the environment.

(Frank Newport, Ph. D., Editor in Chief, The Gallup Poll, and author of Polling Matters, 03 19 09,
Americans: Economy takes precedence over environment,
http://www.gallup.com/poll/116962/americans-economy-takes-precedence-environment.aspx

Only 50% of Democrats, who typically have been the most environmentally oriented in their policy positions, opt
for the environmental protection position -- just six points higher than the percentage of Democrats choosing
economic growth. (Republicans and independents are more likely to choose economic growth.) This finding
suggests that the economic crisis may present a real philosophical dilemma to those who ordinarily are strongly
supportive of environmental protection, but who may back off in the face of the perceived need to restore
economic growth.

The partisan spread is somewhat larger for the trade-off question dealing with energy and the environment.
Republicans and Democrats are almost perfect mirror images of each other in response to this question, with two-
thirds of Republicans opting for energy over the protection of the environment, while two-thirds of Democrats
hold the opposite view. There is little question that the current economic crisis poses a significant challenge for the
environmental movement in this country. Previous Gallup research has shown that concern about global warming
has diminished this year, and the research reviewed here shows clearly that Americans are more willing than ever
to forgo protection of the environment if needed in order to ensure economic growth or the production of energy.
With the economy as bad as it has been in recent memory, Americans' preferences have swung even more
strongly in the direction of the economy over the environment

Growth in the economic is beneficial to the environment.

(Terry L. Anderson, leading resource economist, professor of economics at Montana State University,
Ph.D. in economics, visiting scholar at Oxford, university of Basel, and Cornell University law School,
04, Why Economic Growth is Good for the Environment, http://www.perc.org/articles/article446.php)

Hansen's essay concludes on an optimistic note, saying "the main elements [new technologies] required to halt
climate change have come into being with remarkable rapidity." This statement would not have surprised
economist Julian Simon. He saw the "ultimate resource" to be the human mind and believed it to be best motivated
by market forces. Because of a combination of market forces and technological innovations, we are not running
out of natural resources. As a resource becomes more scarce, prices increase, thus encouraging development of
cheaper alternatives and technological innovations. Just as fossil fuel replaced scarce whale oil, its use will be
reduced by new technology and alternative fuel sources. Market forces also cause economic growth, which in turn
leads to environmental improvements. Put simply, poor people are willing to sacrifice clean water and air, healthy
forests, and wildlife habitat for economic growth. But as their incomes rise above subsistence, "economic growth
helps to undo the damage done in earlier years," says economist Bruce Yandle. "If economic growth is good for
the environment, policies that stimulate growth ought to be good for the environment."

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
81 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

81

Econ Growth good- environment
A sustainable development is better achieved through economic growth, because it will lead to a
better environmental quality.

(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, 12 13
99, Apple Daily, Hong Kong http://www.perc.org/articles/article175.php)

As increasing pressure from visiting business leaders and local citizens attests, Hong Kong, like all wealthy
countries, is encountering fears over air quality, clean water, and waste disposal. To meet these challenges Hong
Kong Chief Executive CH Tung has embraced the idea of "sustainable development." In his words this requires"a
fundamental change of mindset," in the way Hong Kong businesses and government operate.

Around the world policies of "sustainable development" rest on the assumption that current economic systems
are bad for the environment and that only through more government control will environmental quality be
improved. Enacting this policy could prove costly not only for Hong Kong's environment but also for its celebrated
economic success.

The good news for Mr. Tung and all of Hong Kong is that the twin goals of environmental protection and increased
prosperity are not as contradictory as many environmentalists would have the public believe.

A recent study by Princeton University economists Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger found that "economic
growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a subsequent phase of improvement." They found, for
instance, that light particulates, a pervasive form of air pollution, tend to increase until a country reaches per
capita income levels of around $9,000. After that air pollution declines as countries become wealthier.

According to Grossman and Krueger "contrary to the alarmist cries of some environmental groups, we find no
evidence that economic growth does unavoidable harm to the natural habitat." This relationship between
economic growth and environmental quality, which resembles an inverted-U, has been found for many other
environmental indices such as water quality and waste disposal-- both important concerns for a city such as Hong
Kong.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
82 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

82

Econ growth good- environment
Countries that practiced Sustainable development actually created a negative impact on economic growth
and environmental quality.

(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, 12 13
99, Apple Daily, Hong Kong http://www.perc.org/articles/article175.php)

Perhaps more relevant to Hong Kong's future is a recent finding that government efforts to regulate
environmental quality, a cornerstone of many "sustainable development" proposals, can have a substantial
negative impact on economic growth. Another team of economists found that American air and water regulations
had a total cost of about $320 billion and decreased American gross domestic product (GDP) by 5.8%. Even well
intentioned regulations can have a negative impact on economic growth and thus unintentionally on desired
improvements in environmental quality.

A policy of sustainable development can also be harmful in its prescription to forgo economic growth in the name
of preserving resources for the future. Forcing the current generation to conserve resources for the future is like
taxing the poor to give money to the rich. Imagine how different Hong Kong would look today if fifty years ago its
imperial rulers had decreed that Hong Kong must not use natural resources so that they would be available for
future generations. In that case Hong Kong, then with per capita incomes lower than many Third World countries
today, would never have been able to achieve the remarkable economic growth that has made it one of the richest
places on Earth, with individual incomes as high as those in the United States and higher than in most parts of
Europe.


Hong Kong is a good example of how economic growth will lead to a higher quality of the environment.

(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana, 12 13
99, Apple Daily, Hong Kong http://www.perc.org/articles/article175.php)

In addition to asking Hong Kong to give up growth for the sake of future generations, a policy of "sustainable
development" involves reducing the environmental burden Hong Kong's economy places on its neighbors. Here
Hong Kong's great success is truly in evidence. Hong Kong is much wealthier than mainland China and indeed most
of the rest of Asia. As such it is in a position to worry more about the impact its neighbors have on Hong Kong's
environment than vice versa. By continuing the liberal trade and economic policies that have made Hong Kong the
envy and model for much of Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, it will help promote economic growth in the
region and thus improved environmental quality for its neighbors and itself.

As Hong Kong moves into the new millennium it has many advantages over most of its neighbors. Its economic
freedom and consequent wealth will not only allow it to enjoy increased prosperity in the future but also
increasing environmental quality. Avoiding the temptation to impose new layers of government regulation on a
system that has worked so well will be the main challenge standing in its way.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
83 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

83

Econ growth good- Poverty
Countries with higher economic growth rates will face poverty alleviation.

(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the institute of economic growth,
university enclave, Delhi, 08, Economic growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Agrawal.pdf)

Countries with higher growth rates are likely to experience more rapid reduction in poverty. Using province-level
panel data, this was demonstrated to hold for Kazakhstan. Growth is considered pro-poor if the income share of the
poor rises with growth or at least their incomes grow in absolute terms. Inequality has declined slightly over the
recent high-growth period (19982003), accompanied by reduction in poverty gap and severity. This evidence
supports the view that the 19982003 high-growth period in Kazakhstan has been pro-poor.

Growth reduced poverty by leading to increased employment and higher real wages. Both government revenue
and expenditure increased with growth and increased oil and gas exports, both in real terms and as percent of
GDP. Government revenue, which sharply increased in 2003, was used partly to reform and expand the pension
system. This provided assistance to many unemployed workers who could not adjust to the major and rapid
changes from the Soviet era industrial structure. However, it did not translate into a corresponding improvement in
expenditure on the education and health as a share of government revenue or GDP. Nevertheless, because of the
high growth of government revenue and GDP, real expenditure per person on social sectors still rose slightly in
some periods over 19982003. The paper shows that provinces (regions) of Kazakhstan that received higher
expenditure on social sectors experienced a larger decline in poverty. This underlines the need for sustained,
increasing expenditure for the social sectors in Kazakhstan, more so in the poorer provinces, possibly through
additional support from the national government.

Economic growth and poverty alleviation are directly connected; economic growth helps reduce poverty.

(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the institute of economic growth,
university enclave, Delhi, 08, Economic growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Agrawal.pdf)

This paper empirically examines the relation between economic growth and poverty
alleviation in the case of Kazakhstan using province-level data. It shows that provinces with higher
growth rates achieved faster decline in poverty. This happened largely through growth, which
led to increased employment and higher real wages and contributed significantly to poverty
reduction. Rapidly increasing oil revenues since 1998 have helped significantly raise both gross
domestic product growth and government revenue in Kazakhstan. Part of the oil fund was used
to fund a pension and social protection program that has helped reduce poverty. However,
expenditure on other social sectors like education and health has not increased much and needs more support. It is
also shown empirically that increased government expenditure on social sectors did contribute significantly to
poverty alleviation. This suggests that both rapid economic growth and enhanced government
support for the social sectors are helpful in reducing poverty.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
84 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

84

Econ growth good- poverty/environment
Economic growth is key to reducing poverty and helping the environment.

(World Resources institute, 97, Economic growth and human development,
http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8372)

Economic growth is an important factor in reducing poverty and generating the resources
necessary for human development and environmental protection. There is a strong correlation
between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and indicators of development such as life
expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy, political and civil rights, and some indicators of
environmental quality. However, economic growth alone does not guarantee human development. Well-
functioning civil institutions, secure individual and property rights, and broad-based health and educational services
are also vital to raising overall living standards. Despite its shortcomings, though, GDP remains a useful proxy
measure of human well-being.
The world economy has grown approximately fivefold since 1950, an unprecedented rate of
increase. The industrialized economies still dominate economic activity, accounting for
US$22.5 trillion of the US$27.7 trillion global GDP in 1993 [1]. Yet a remarkable trend over the
past 25 years has been the burgeoning role played by developing countries, in particular the
populous economies of east and south Asia.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
85 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

85

Econ growth good- social services
Economic growth helps increase government revenue, which in turn decreases poverty through social
programs.

(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the institute of economic growth,
university enclave, Delhi, 08, Economic growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2-Agrawal.pdf

The growing literature on policies for poverty reduction has emphasized the importance of
economic growth, as well as targeted provision of government aid in poverty alleviation and
development. Since government aid to the poor is dependent on government revenue, which
in turn grows with economic growth, the key role of economic growth has been emphasized in
the literature. This paper examined these issues empirically for Kazakhstan and showed that
the rapid increase in oil and gas extraction and related activities very significantly contributed
to economic growth as well as to increased government revenue. A portion of these funds was
used to improve the social security/pension system, and maintain government demand for
goods that helped industrial recovery. This played a key role in poverty reduction in Kazakhstan.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
86 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

86

Econ growth good- poverty
Economic growth is key to reduce poverty.
(Ebba Dohlman and Mikael Soderback, OECD development Cooperation, 03 07, "Economic growth versus
poverty reduction: A "hollow debate"?,"
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/2173/Economic_growth_versus_poverty_
reduction:_A__93hollow_debate_94_.html)

A close look at what can be patchy data suggests that growth, poverty and inequality are linked. One study shows
that a 1% increase in per capita incomes may reduce income poverty by as much as 4% or by less than 1%,
depending on the initial conditions in the country, such as the distribution of assets, ownership, and so on.
Overall, most of the evidence confirms that poverty reduction depends on the pace and pattern of economic
growth. But how to achieve the optimal pattern?
The answer is a hybrid: pro-poor and pro-growth approaches are mutually reinforcing and should go hand in hand.
What this means for policy is spelt out in a new book by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD,
whose member countries handle some 90% of world bilateral ODA (see references). Its forum, the Network on
Poverty Reduction (POVNET), has helped to steer previously divided opinion into a new consensus that rapid and
sustained poverty reduction requires pro-poor growth. This means a pace and pattern of growth that enhances
the ability of poor women and men to participate in, contribute to and benefit from growth.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
87 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

87

AT: Dedev-No mindshift
People will always want an increase in economic growth, because it prevents everyone from becoming poor.

(Richland college, 08, Economic Growth,
http://www.google.com/search?q=people+will+always+want+economic+growth&hl=en&start=10&sa=N)

We now know what Economic Growth is. It is the level of Real GDP increasing over time. The trick about Economic
Growth is that we always want it increasing, but not too fast or too slow. Without increased Economic Growth we
would never improve our standard of living. We would never have innovation. Ex: Would you rather live during the
time of the Biltmore Mansion, or today at minimum wage?

We are much better off today than we were 120 years ago (roughly the time when the Biltmore Estate was built).
Even people making near the Minimum Wage have access to products and information that wasnt yet invented
or available to that time period. That explains why we want a continuous increase in GDP, but why do we want to
control its speed; why is too fast or too slow equally as bad as no growth? Think about everyone running out and
borrowing money to start businesses or invent new products. What would happen to GDP? It would increase
drastically for a short period of time, but that cant last. Everyone is in debt through borrowing; there would be no
consumers to buy all of these new products. Everyone would become poor, and that would lead to a recession which
we know ends in job losses.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
88 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

88

Econ growth good-violence
Economic growth leads to less violence and disorder, and helps establish stability and the quality of health.

(The Futurist. 04 30 06, "The Psychology of Economic Progress,"
http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/04/the_psychology_.html)

In centuries past, killing another person in order to take his belongings was common. Today, the downside risk to
one's career of even petty theft or minor fraud is enough that most people in the US today don't consider it. As
the world economy accelerated from centuries of slow growth to a period of rapid growth starting from the
middle of the 20th century, we have seen a general decline in violence and disorder in developed societies, and
also a decline in large-scale warfare in general. Simply put, when more people have a stake in the stability and
health of the system, they are more interested in maintaining and strengthening it, rather than disrupting it or
trying to bypass it.











Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
89 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

89

Econ growth good- social services

Economic growth helps increase social services, leading to a decrease in poverty.
(JBIC, Japanese bank of international cooperation, 11 06, "Infrastructure development to alleviate poverty,"
http://www.jbic.go.jp/en/report/jbic-today/2006/11/index_02.html)

It is estimated that 1.1 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day. About three-quarters of these
1.1 billion live in rural areas in developing countries, and there is a growing awareness throughout the
international community that agricultural development is extremely important in reducing poverty, and must be
accelerated to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

For rural areas where many of the poor live, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) has provided Official
Development Assistance (ODA) loans to support the development of infrastructure that will serve as a foundation
for growth in the agricultural sector. JBIC offers a range of support tools, including the combination of various
frameworks for the effective use of agricultural infrastructure and ensuring sustainable results from it.
As the development experience in Asia has shown, economic growth boosts incomes and creates employment
opportunities, leading to higher standards of living. Reducing poverty in developing countries requires sustainable
economic growth and the development of infrastructure to support that growth.


Economic growth helps increase social welfare, which is the objective of governments.

(Mathew Clarke, 09 03, "Chairman of MIND (Munasinge Institute for
development),"
http://books.google.com/books?id=TK1YDJKJoC8C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=economic+growth+leads+welfare&source=bl
&ots=Z88sFL27JS&sig=saQ7KNsHERU_k4x98hR3XxAKre4&hl=en&ei=J-
pYSpG1NaCytwftgfHdCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3)

An explanation of the relationships between economic growth and social welfare is an enduring question in
contemporary development studies. Economic growth is desirable if it improves social welfare. Within the
literature and public policy, the orthodox view is that achieving economic growth is the appropriate means to
increase social welfare and enhancing social welfare is a rational objective of society and governments. Economic
growth leads to higher incomes and improved access to basic needs. However, the costs of achieving economic
growth are often not fully considered, as welfare analysis of economic growth is limited within the literature. Whist
some work has been undertaken for transitional economies, welfare analysis has been generally limited to the
suggestion of general frameworks.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
90 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

90

AT: Trainer
Ted Trainers ideas are flawed overconsumption is unavoidable and necessary

(Margo Condoleon, Document of the DSP, national executive, 09,
"Environment, Capitalism and Socialism,"
http://books.google.com/books?id=kP4xrhGDoywC&pg=PA97&dq=ted+trainer&lr=&ei=L-BYSsujHpbyzQTLzJw1)

Ted Trainer's main ideas have been expressed in two books Abandon Affluence and Developed to Death. They
contain very detailed presentation of trends in resource depletion and energy supply, population growth, the
wastefulness of consumer societies, and the exploitation of the Third World by wealthier nations. Trainer argues
strongly against those who believe that these problems can be addressed adequately through existing political and
social institutions.

However, as the title indicates, Abandon Affluence argues that all have to accept a lower level of consumption --
the root cause of the ecological crisis is "overconsumption" by individual consumers in the industrially developed
countries. This argument undervalues the great disparities in income that exist within the developed countries. It
also fails to grasp that wasteful consumption is overwhelmingly created by the needs of capital for ever expanding
markets: if profits need to be maintained planned obsolescence, the permanent stimulation of new "needs"
through advertising, multiple versions of the same product and unnecessary packaging are all unavoidable. Thus
Trainer's tendency to blame individual consumption levels for the ecological crisis stems from his equating affluence
(a plentiful supply of products meeting rational needs) with consumerism and wasteful consumption created by
capitalism

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
91 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

91

Econ defense
Economic problems dont increase the likelihood of war
Bennet and Nordstrom, 2k (D. Scott and Timothy Nordstrom, dept of political science @ the University of Penn,
2000,Foreign Policy)

Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries, Journal of Conflict resolution, vol.44 no.1 p.
33-61, jstor
Conflict settlement is also a distinct route to dealing with internal problems that leaders in rivalries may pursue when
faced with internal problems. Military competition between states requires large amounts of resources, and rivals
require even more attention. Leaders may choose to negotiate a settlement that ends a rivalry to free up important
resources that may be reallocated to the domestic economy. In a "guns versus butter" world of economic trade-offs,
when a state can no longer afford to pay the expenses associated with competition in a rivalry, it is quite rational for
leaders to reduce costs by ending a rivalry. This gain (a peace dividend) could be achieved at any time by ending a
rivalry. However, such a gain is likely to bemost important and attractive to leaders when internal conditions are bad
and the leader is seeking ways to alleviate active problems. Support for policy change away from continued rivalry is
more likely to develop when the economic situation sours and elites and masses are looking for ways to improve a
worsening situation. It is at these times that the pressure to cut military investment will be greatest and that state
leaders will be forced to recognize the difficulty of continuing to pay for a rivalry. Among other things, this argument
also encompasses the view that the cold war ended because the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics could no longer
compete economically with the United States. Hypothesis 2: Poor economic conditions increase the probability of
rivalry termination. Hypotheses 1 and 2 posit opposite behaviors in response to a single cause (internal economic
problems). As such, they demand are search design that can account for substitutability between them.

Us not key to world economy- emerging economies are more independent from the US
The Economist, 5-21 (Decoupling 2.0 May 21, 2009, http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm
?story_id=13697292)
REMEMBER the debate about decoupling? A year ago, many commentatorsincluding this newspaperargued that
emerging economies had become more resilient to an American recession, thanks to their strong domestic markets
and prudent macroeconomic policies. Naysayers claimed Americas weakness would fell the emerging world. Over
the past six months the global slump seemed to prove the sceptics right. Emerging economies reeled and decoupling
was ridiculed.
Yet perhaps the idea was dismissed too soon. Even if Americas output remains weak, there are signs that some of
the larger emerging economies could see a decent rebound. China is exhibit A of this new decoupling: its economy
began to accelerate again in the first four months of this year. Fixed investment is growing at its fastest pace since
2006 and consumption is holding up well. Despite debate over the accuracy of Chinas GDP figures (see article), most
economists agree that output will grow faster than seemed plausible only a few months ago. Growth this year could
be close to 8%. Such optimism has fuelled commodity prices which have, in turn, brightened the outlook for Brazil
and other commodity exporters.
That said, even the best performing countries will grow more slowly than they did between 2004 and 2007. Nor will
the resilience be universal: eastern Europes indebted economies will suffer as global banks cut back, and emerging
economies intertwined with America, such as Mexico, will continue to be hit hard. So will smaller, more trade-
dependent countries. Decoupling 2.0 is a narrower phenomenon, confined to a few of the biggest, and least
indebted, emerging economies.
It is based on two under-appreciated facts: the biggest emerging economies are less dependent on American
spending than commonly believed; and they have proven more able and willing to respond to economic weakness
than many feared. Economies such as China or Brazil were walloped late last year not only, or even mainly, because
American demand plunged. (Over half of Chinas exports go to other emerging economies, and China recently
overtook the United States as Brazils biggest export market.) They were hit hard by the near-collapse of global
credit markets and the dramatic destocking by shell-shocked firms. In addition, many emerging countries had been
aggressively tightening monetary policy to fight inflation just before these shocks hit. The result was that domestic
demand slumped even as exports fell.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
92 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

92

Econ Defense
The economy is resilient
Sehgal, 4-17 (Rohit- chief investment strategist for Dynamic Funds, The Globe and Mail, Optimism reigns, even
after the humble pie Lexis-Nexis Academic, April 17, 2009,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do)
We follow two economies very closely, China and the U.S. In China, the numbers look very encouraging. They also
have a fairly aggressive stimulus plan that seems to be sticking. Car sales in China, for instance, in March were more
than 12 million [at an annual pace] so they are already exceeding U.S. car sales.
In the U.S., we are still in a crisis mode. You have to look very closely at housing because that's where the whole
trouble started. If you're looking at affordability, it's improving pretty dramatically. You're seeing mortgage
applications, the numbers are beginning to improve. The retail data in the U.S. are not as bad, durables numbers are
not as bad. Not as bad to me is a good sign.
And if you look at inventories, they're scraping the bottom right now so you could have a pretty fast recovery there,
because industrial production came to a screeching halt. When you look at all this anecdotal evidence, you can make
a case that maybe things are improving a bit.
The bears say that things may get better, but not for long and then they will get worse. What do you say to that?
But maybe it will not get worse again. Look at the amount of stimulus, and look at the valuations in equity markets.
They're at historically low levels. If you look at the last 10 years, equity returns are zero. That's a very rare
occurrence. It doesn't mean we won't have setbacks. I think we will have setbacks. I don't believe we are in a great
depression. I think we have a problem that started in the housing sector with subprime, and it's going to take a long
time to clean it up.
The U.S. economy is very resilient. This is one area where the bears don't want to give too much credit. Unlike Japan
and Europe, it's adaptive. They go and blow their brains out once every five or six years because of excesses, but
they learn their lessons and they do adapt very well and it's still a very productive economy. It will take time,
certainly.

Multiple competitive advantages ensure the US economy will remain strong
Francis, 8 (Dianne, Fingold = portfolio manager of Dynamic Funds, The Huffington Post, U.S. Economy Huge
Winner in Future May 30, 2008, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/us-economy-huge-winner-
in_b_104205.html)

The current slowdown is temporary because the U.S. has competitive advantages compared to virtually all other
countries. Said Fingold:
"The United States still has huge competitive advantages to the rest of the world. It has tax advantages, good laws,
its government goes to bat for its corporations around the world, its government protects intellectual property."
Fingold's global funds are under-weighted in Europe because the Euro has risen by 40% and has decimated
corporate profits and exporters. He's also cautious about Asia. "Asian currencies will be the next to rise against the
U.S. dollar which is why we are reluctant to invest in Asian exporters and multinationals," he said.
The U.S. has huge underlying strength:
"America is one of the only free markets in the world, where intellectual property and people can be developed.
Its industrial and technology companies are the hot houses of the world for producing innovation. The low dollar
means that there is a huge wind at the back for companies who can serve the world with exports, services and
goods that help build their economies and enable infrastructure development."

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
93 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

93

Environmental Destruction/opop turns disease
Worldwatch Institute, 96 (Infectious Diseases Surge: Environmental Destruction, Poverty To Blame
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1593)

Rates of infectious disease have risen rapidly in many countries during the past decade, according to a new study
released by the Worldwatch Institute. Illness and death from tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and AIDS are up
sharply; infectious diseases killed 16.5 million people in 1993, one-third of all deaths worldwide, and slightly more
than cancer and heart disease combined.
The resurgence of diseases once thought to have been conquered stems from a deadly mix of exploding populations,
rampant poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and severe environmental degradation, says the
new report, Infecting Ourselves: How Environmental and Social Disruptions Trigger Disease. Infectious diseases take
their greatest toll in developing countries, where cases of malaria and tuberculosis are soaring, but even in the
United States, infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992.
Research Associate Anne Platt, author of the report, says, "Infectious diseases are a basic barometer of the
environmental sustainability of human activity. Recent outbreaks result from a sharp imbalance between a human
population growing by 88 million each year and a natural resource base that is under increasing stress."
"Water pollution, shrinking forests, and rising temperatures are driving the upward surge in infections in many
countries," the report says. "Only by adopting a more sustainable path to economic development can we control
them."
"Beyond the number of people who die, the social and economic cost of infectious diseases is hard to overestimate,"
Platt says. "It can be a crushing burden for families, communities, and governments. Some 400 million people suffer
from debilitating malaria, about 200 million have schistosomiasis, and nine million have tuberculosis."
By the year 2000, AIDS will cost Asian countries over $50 billion a year just in lost productivity. "Such suffering and
economic loss is doubly tragic," says Platt, "because the cost of these diseases is astronomical, yet preventing them
is not only simple, but inexpensive."
The author notes, "The dramatic resurgence of infectious diseases is telling us that we are approaching disease and
medicine, as well as economic development, in the wrong way. Governments focus narrowly on individual cures and
not on mass prevention; and we fail to understand that lifestyle can promote infectious disease just as it can
contribute to heart disease. It is imperative that we bring health considerations into the equation when we plan for
international development, global trade, and population increases, to prevent disease from spreading and further
undermining economic development."
The report notes that this global resurgence of infectious disease involves old, familiar diseases like tuberculosis and
the plague as well as new ones like Ebola and Lyme disease. Yet all show the often tragic consequences of human
actions:
Population increases, leading to human crowding, poverty, and the growth of mega-cities, are prompting dramatic
increases in dengue fever, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.
Lack of clean water is spreading diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty percent of all disease in
developing countries is related to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation.
Poorly planned development disrupts ecosystems and provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes, rodents, and
snails that spread debilitating diseases.
Inadequate vaccinations have led to resurgences in measles and diphtheria.
Misuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant strains of pneumonia and malaria.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
94 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

94

Environment Impact/ turns disease
Environmental collapse threatens health and civilization collapse
WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)

In a fundamental sense, ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems - for the human species and all other forms
of life (see Figure 1.1). The needs of the human organism for food, water, clean air, shelter and relative climatic
constancy are basic and unalterable. That is, ecosystems are essential to human well-being and especially to human
health defined by the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Those who live in materially comfortable, urban environments commonly take for granted ecosystem services to
health. They assume that good health derives from prudent consumer choices and behaviours, with access to good
health care services. But this ignores the role of the natural environment: of the array of ecosystems that allow
people to enjoy good health, social organization, economic activity, a built environment and life itself. Historically,
overexploitation of ecosystem services has led to the collapse of some societies (SG3). There is an observable
tendency for powerful and wealthy societies eventually to overexploit, damage and even destroy their natural
environmental support base. The agricultural-based civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mayans, and
(on a micro-scale) Easter Island all provide well documented examples. Industrial societies, although in many cases
more distant from the source of the ecosystem services on which they depend, may reach similar limits. Resource
consumption in one location can lead to degradation of ecosystem services and associated health effects in other
parts of the world (SG3). At its most fundamental level of analysis, the pressure on ecosystems can be
conceptualized as a function of population, technology and lifestyle. In turn, these factors depend on many social
and cultural elements. For example, fertilizer use in agricultural production increasingly is dependent on resources
extracted from other regions and has led to eutrophication of rivers, lakes and coastal ecosystems. Notwithstanding
ecosystems' fundamental role as determinants of human health, sociocultural factors play a similarly important role.
These include infrastructural assets; income and wealth distribution; technologies used; and level of knowledge. In
many industrialized countries, changes in these social factors over the last few centuries have both enhanced some
ecosystem services (through more productive agriculture, for instance) and improved health services and education,
contributing to increases in life expectancy. The complex multifactorial causation of states of health and disease
complicates the attribution of human health impacts to ecosystem changes. A precautionary approach to ecosystem
management is appropriate.

Environmental destruction causes new diseases
WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)

Disturbance or degradation of ecosystems can have biological effects that are highly relevant to infectious disease
transmission (C14). The reasons for the emergence or re-emergence of some diseases are unknown, but the
following mechanisms have been proposed: altered habitat leading to changes in the number of vector breeding
sites or reservoir host distribution; niche invasions or transfer of interspecies hosts; biodiversity change
(including loss of predator species and changes in host population density); human-induced genetic changes in
disease vectors or pathogens (such as mosquito resistance to pesticides or the emergence of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria); and environmental contamination by infectious disease agents (such as faecal contamination of source
waters).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
95 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

95

Environment turns war/economy
Environmental degradation increases war, instability, and hurts the economy
UN, 4 (United Nations News Center, Environmental destruction during war exacerbates instability November
5, 2004, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=12460&Cr=conflict&Cr1=environment,

"These scars, threatening water supplies, the fertility of the land and the cleanliness of the air are recipes for
instability between communities and neighbouring countries," he added. Citing a new UNEP report produced in
collaboration with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation
in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Toepfer stressed that environmental degradation could undermine local and international
security by "reinforcing and increasing grievances within and between societies." The study finds that a decrepit
and declining environment can depress economic activity and diminish the authority of the state in the eyes of
its citizens. It also points out that the addressing environmental problems can foster trust among communities
and neighbouring countries. "Joint projects to clean up sites, agreements and treaties to better share resources
such as rivers and forests, and strengthening cooperation between the different countries' ministries and
institutions may hold the key to building trust, understanding and more stable relations," said the UNEP chief.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
96 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

96

Environmental destruction turns agriculture
Environmental degradation destroys cropland
Homer-Dixon, 91 (Thomas- Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the
University of Toronto, International Security On The Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute
Conflict 199, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh/thresh2.htm)
Decreased agricultural production is often mentioned as potentially the most worrisome consequence of
environmental change,
47
and Figure 2 presents some of the causal scenarios frequently proposed by researchers.
This illustration is not intended to be exhaustive: the systemic interaction of environmental and agricultural variables
is far more complex than the figure suggests.
48
Moreover, no one region or country will exhibit all the indicated
processes: while some are already clearly evident in certain areas, others are not yet visible anywhere.
The Philippines provides a good illustration of deforestation's impact, which can be traced out in the figure. Since
the Second World War, logging and the encroachment of farms have reduced the virgin and second-growth forest
from about sixteen million hectares to 6.8-7.6 million hectares.
49
Across the archipelago, logging and land-clearing
have accelerated erosion, changed regional hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns, and decreased the land's
ability to retain water during rainy periods. The resulting flash floods have damaged irrigation works while plugging
reservoirs and irrigation channels with silt. These factors may seriously affect crop production. For example, when
the government of the Philippines and the European Economic Community commissioned an Integrated
Environmental Plan for the still relatively unspoiled island of Palawan, the authors of the study found that only about
half of the 36,000 hectares of irrigated farmland projected within the Plan for 2007 will actually be irrigable because
of the hydrological effects of decreases in forest cover.
50

Figure 2 also highlights the importance of the degradation and decreasing availability of good agricultural land,
problems that deserve much closer attention than they usually receive. Currently, total global cropland amounts to
about 1.5 billion hectares. Optimistic estimates of total arable land on the planet, which includes both current and
potential cropland, range from 3.2 to 3.4 billion hectares, but nearly all the best land has already been exploited.
What is left is either less fertile, not sufficiently rainfed or easily irrigable, infested with pests, or harder to clear and
work.
51

For developing countries during the 1980s, cropland grew at just 0.26 percent a year, less than half the rate of
the 1970s. More importantly, in these countries arable land per capita dropped by 1.9 percent a year.
52
In the
absence of a major increase in arable land in developing countries, experts expect that the world average of 0.28
hectares of cropland per capita will decline to 0.17 hectares by the year 2025, given the current rate of world
population growth.
53
Large tracts are being lost each year to urban encroachment, erosion, nutrient depletion,
salinization, waterlogging, acidification, and compacting. The geographer Vaclav Smil, who is generally very
conservative in his assessments of environmental damage, estimates that two to three million hectares of
cropland are lost annually to erosion; perhaps twice as much land goes to urbanization, and at least one million
hectares are abandoned because of excessive salinity. In addition, about one-fifth of the world's cropland is
suffering from some degree of desertification.
54
Taken together, he concludes, the planet will lose about 100
million hectares of arable land between 1985 and 2000.
55



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
97 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

97

Freedom

Violation of freedom negates the value of human existence and represents the greatest threat to
human survival
Rand 89
(Ayn Rand, Philosopher, July 1989, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, p. 145)
A society that robs and individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind,
or compels him to act against his own rational judgment, a society that sets up a conflict between its ethics and the
requirements of mans nature is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule.
Such a society destroys all values of human coexistence, has no possible justification, and represents, not
a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat to mans survival. Life on desert island is safer than and
incomparably preferable than existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
98 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

98

Genocide

Genocide threatens extinction
Diamond 92
(Diamond, THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE, 1992, p. 277)
While our first association to the world genocide is likely to be the killings in Nazi concentration camps, those were not
even the largest-scale genocide of this century. The Tasmanians and hundreds of other peoples were modern targets of
successful smaller extermination campaigns. Numerous peoples scattered throughout the world are potential
targets in the near future. Yet genocide is such a painful subject that either wed rather not think about
it at all, or else wed like to believe that nice people dont commit genocide only Nazis do. But our refusal to think
about it has consequences weve done little to halt the numerous episodes of genocide since World War
II, and were not alert to where it may happen next. Together with our destruction of our own
environmental resources, our genocidal tendencies coupled to nuclear weapons now constitute the two
most likely means by which the human species may reverse all its progress virtually overnight.


Genocide should always be weighed before other impacts
Rice 05
(Susan Rice, Brookings Institute, WHY DARFUR CANT BE LEFT TO AFRICA, August 7, 2005,
http://www.brookings.org/views/articles/rice/20050807.htm)

Never is the international responsibility to protect more compelling than in cases of genocide. Genocide
is not a regional issue. A government that commits or condones it is not on a par with one that, say, jails dissidents,
squanders economic resources or suppresses free speech, as dreadful as such policies may be. Genocide makes a claim
on the entire world and it should be a call to action whatever diplomatic feathers it ruffles.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
99 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

99

Heg
Heg prevents global nuclear wars
Khalilzad 95
(Zalmay Khalilzad, Rand Corporation, The Washington Quarterly 1995)

What might happen to the world if the United States turned inward? Without the United States and the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than cooperating with each other, the West European nations might compete with each other for domination of East-
Central Europe and the Middle East. In Western and Central Europe, Germany -- especially since unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either
in cooperation or competition with Russia, Germany might seek influence over the territories located between them. German efforts are likely
to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival powers. Britain and France fear such a development. Given
the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with absorbing the former East Germany, European concerns about Germany appear
exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to assume that U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the renationalization of Germany's
security policy. The same is also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan would have to look after its own security
and build up its military capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S.
protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability dramatically -- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant
Russian forces. This could result in arms races, including the possible acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons. Given Japanese technological
prowess, to say nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously become a nuclear
weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also build long-range missiles and carrier task forces. With the shifting balance
of power among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new regional powers such as India, Indonesia, and a united Korea could come
significant risks of preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance could lead to major
wars in Europe or East Asia. If the United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe or East Asia could
become dominated by a hostile power. Such a development would threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such
dominance would seek to exclude the United States from the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides,
with the domination of Europe or East Asia, such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States
would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more catastrophic than the last.
In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional domination. Iran and Iraq have, in the past, both
sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak oil-rich states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be unlikely to retain their
independence. To preclude this development, the Saudis might seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear weapons. If either Iraq or Iran
controlled the region that dominates the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any country that
gained hegemony would have vast economic resources at its disposal that could be used to build military capability as well as gain leverage over the United
States and other oil-importing nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran or Iraq would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East
under its influence and domination because of the shift in the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and the peace
process would be fundamentally undermined, increasing the risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis.
<continued> The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would harm the economy of the
United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard
of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and
jeopardizing U.S. investments in these regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of
necessary adjustments might be high. The higher level of turmoil in the world would also increase the likelihood of
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and means for their delivery. Already several rogue states such as
North Korea and Iran are seeking nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. That danger would only increase if the United
States withdrew from the world. The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many
states possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase accordingly. If this
happened, the security of every nation in the world, including the United States, would be harmed.<continued> Under the third option,
the United States would seek to retain global leadership and to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the
indefinite future. On balance, this is the best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but
because a world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global environment would
be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the rule of law. Second, such a world would have a
better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by
renegade states, and low-level conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile
global rival, enabling the United States and the world to avoid another global cold or hot war and all the attendant dangers,
including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a
multipolar balance of power system.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
100 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

100

Homophobia War
Heterosexual dominance justifies genocide homophobia isolates homosexuals as citizens undeserving of
equal protection of law
Cohen, 2K [More censorship or less discrimination? Sexual orientation hate propaganda in multiple perspectives,
McGill law review]

The above phenomena--closetry, deviance, sexism, and supremacy--form the context of homophobia against which hate
propaganda works its harms. These harms are not just those of individual libel writ large; they are, seen contextually, the
implements of heterosexual domination. (24) First among them is a range of physiological and psychological traumas
experienced by members of the targeted group, all of which exacerbate existing feelings of vulnerability and
isolation. (25) Second, these effects extend beyond the targeted group, causing particular detriment to freedom
of expression, freedom of association, and democracy. (26) Third, sexual orientation hate propaganda reinforces
(and is reinforced by) the other tools of homophobia, which include harassment, gay bashing, overt and covert
discrimination, extortion, stigmatization, murder, and genocide. (27) Finally, the absence of protection from hate
propaganda--particularly in jurisdictions such as Canada, where other target groups receive protection--signals to members
of sexual minorities that they are second class citizens not entitled to equal protection of the law. (28) It is
the individual and combined effect of these interconnected tools of homophobia, and not the mere pluralization of individual
defamation or libel, that ultimately justifies state sanction of anti-gay hate propaganda.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
101 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

101

Human Rights: Credibility

Human Right Credibility solves extinction
Copelan 99
(Rhonda Copelan, law professor, NYU, NEW YORK CITY LAW REVIEW, 1999, p. 71-2)
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the international arena.
The framework is there to shatter the myth of the superiority. Indeed, in the face of systemic inequality and crushing
poverty, violence by official and private actors, globalization of the market economy, and military and
environmental depredation, the human rights framework is gaining new force and new dimensions. It is
being broadened today by the movements of people in different parts of the world, particularly in the
Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection of human rights as a matter of
individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also emerging is a notion of third-generation rights,
encompassing collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state basis and that call for new mechanisms of
accountability, particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights include human-centered sustainable
development, environmental protection, peace, and security. Given the poverty and inequality in the United
States as well as our role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human rights framework to bear
on both domestic and foreign policy.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
102 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

102

Human Rights Promo Good- Terrorism
Human Rights credibility gives us the influence to start modern movements and ensure necessary
cooperation to stop terrorist attacks
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, 7-7, 2004, Promoting Human Rights and Democracy, Human
Rights Watch, p. http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/07/usint9009_txt.htm


Having an effective and principled American strategy to promote democratic freedoms around the world has never
been more important to Americas national security. Indeed, I strongly believe that promoting human rights is
central to Americas central national security imperative of defeating terror, for three reasons. First, the aims of Al
Qaeda and its allies are advanced by the actions of repressive regimes in the Muslim world, which stretches from
Africa to the Middle East to Central, South and Southeast Asia. The terrorists primary aim, we should remember, is
to turn the hearts and minds of the people of this region against their governments and against the West, and to
seize upon that anger to transform the region politically. When governments in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi
Arabia and Uzbekistan shut down political dissent, lock up non-violent dissidents, torture opponents, abuse the rule
of law, and deny their people fair justice, they are contributing to the radicalization of their people, thus playing
right into the hands of terrorist movements. And when ordinary people in the region associate the United States
with their repressive governments, Al Qaedas aim of painting the United States as the enemy is also
advanced. Second, in the long run, the only viable alternative to the rise of violent, extremist movements in this
region is the development of moderate, non-violent political movements that represent their peoples aspirations,
speaking out for economic progress and better schools and against corruption and arbitrary rule. But such
movements can only exist under democratic conditions, when people are free to think, speak, write and worship
without fear, when they can form political organizations, and when their rights are protected by independent
courts. Without a doubt, more radical organizations can also exploit democratic freedoms to express their views,
and they will be part of the political landscape as societies in the Middle East become more open. But as for
terrorists, they do not need human rights to do what they do. They have thrived in the most repressive societies in
the world. It is the people who dont use violence who need democratic freedoms to survive. Third, promoting
human rights and democracy is important because Americas moral authority partly depends on it. American
power in the world is more likely to be respected when it is harnessed to goals that are universally shared. People
around the world are more likely to aid the United States in the fight against terrorism and other important goals
if they believe the United States is also interested in defending their rights and aspirations. When America is seen
to be compromising the values it has long preached, its credibility and influence are diminished.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
103 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

103

Human Rights Promo Good- Iran Prolif
Human rights promotion is critical to stem Iran prolif
William W. Burke-White, Senior Special Assistant to the Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, Spring, 2004, 17 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 249, Lexis
The human rights-aggression link suggests alterations in U.S. policy toward Iran. Current policy emphasizes
preventing Iran from acquiring WMD,[133] which is admittedly important. The danger of WMD in Iranian hands,
however, stems in part from the aggressive tendencies associated with Irans human rights abuses. A dramatic
improvement in Irans human rights record would thus decrease the danger of the states potential WMD
acquisition. Part and parcel of U.S. non-proliferation goals, then, should be active advocacy of human rights
improvement in Iran. Such a policy would differentiate reformist groups in government and civil society from
conservative religious leaders. It would single out repressive elements within Iranthose particular clerics who seek
to push Iran back toward totalitarian theocracy. Likewise, it would support elements within Iran that seek
liberalization, democracy, and human freedom. That might involve beginning a conversation with President
Mohammed Khatami and members of parliament through our European partners. It might involve changing rhetoric
and granting minor concessions that strengthen Khatamis hand vis--vis the clerical leadership. Such a policy would
encourage non-governmental efforts to engage with and assist Irans NGO and academic communities. Finally, such
a policy would require Irans full participation in the war on terror and an end to its support for the Hezbollah.

Iran proliferation causes arms race, terrorism, and nuclear war
Kurtz, 6 (Stanley, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Our Fallout-Shelter Future, National Review Online, 8/28,
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWU4MDMwNmU5MTI5NGYzN2FmODg5NmYyMWQ4YjM3OTU=)
Proliferation optimists, on the other hand, see reasons for hope in the record of nuclear peace during the Cold
War. While granting the risks, proliferation optimists point out that the very horror of the nuclear option tends,
in practice, to keep the peace. Without choosing between hawkish proliferation pessimists and dovish
proliferation optimists, Rosen simply asks how we ought to act in a post-proliferation world. Rosen assumes
(rightly I believe) that proliferation is unlikely to stop with Iran. Once Iran gets the bomb, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia are likely to develop their own nuclear weapons, for self-protection, and so as not to allow Iran to take de
facto cultural-political control of the Muslim world. (I think youve got to at least add Egypt to this list.) With
three, four, or more nuclear states in the Muslim Middle East, what becomes of deterrence? A key to deterrence
during the Cold War was our ability to know who had hit whom. With a small number of geographically
separated nuclear states, and with the big opponents training satellites and specialized advance-guard radar
emplacements on each other, it was relatively easy to know where a missile had come from. But what if a
nuclear missile is launched at the United States from somewhere in a fully nuclearized Middle East, in the middle
of a war in which, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran are already lobbing conventional missiles at one another? Would
we know who had attacked us? Could we actually drop a retaliatory nuclear bomb on someone without being
absolutely certain? And as Rosen asks, What if the nuclear blow was delivered against us by an airplane or a
cruise missile? It might be almost impossible to trace the attack back to its source with certainty, especially in
the midst of an ongoing conventional conflict. More Terror Were familiar with the horror scenario of a Muslim
state passing a nuclear bomb to terrorists for use against an American city. But imagine the same scenario in a
multi-polar Muslim nuclear world. With several Muslim countries in possession of the bomb, it would be
extremely difficult to trace the state source of a nuclear terror strike. In fact, this very difficulty would encourage
states (or ill-controlled elements within nuclear states like Pakistans intelligence services or Irans
Revolutionary Guards) to pass nukes to terrorists. The tougher it is to trace the source of a weapon, the easier it is to give the weapon
away. In short, nuclear proliferation to multiple Muslim states greatly increases the chances of a nuclear terror strike. Right now, the Indians and Pakistanis
enjoy an apparently stable nuclear stand-off. Both countries have established basic deterrence, channels of communication, and have also eschewed a
potentially destabilizing nuclear arms race. Attacks by Kashmiri militants in 2001 may have pushed India and Pakistan close to the nuclear brink. Yet since
then, precisely because of the danger, the two countries seem to have established a clear, deterrence-based understanding. The 2001 crisis gives fuel to
proliferation pessimists, while the current stability encourages proliferation optimists. Rosen points out, however, that a multi-polar nuclear Middle East is
unlikely to follow the South Asian model. Deep mutual suspicion between an expansionist, apocalyptic, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, and the Sunni Saudis
and Egyptians (not to mention Israel) is likely to fuel a dangerous multi-pronged nuclear arms race. Larger arsenals mean more chance of a
weapon being slipped to terrorists. The collapse of the worlds non-proliferation regime also raises the chances

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
104 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

104

that nuclearization will spread to Asian powers like Taiwan and Japan. And of course, possession of nuclear
weapons is likely to embolden Iran, especially in the transitional period before the Saudis develop weapons of
their own. Like Saddam, Iran may be tempted to take control of Kuwaits oil wealth, on the assumption that the
United States will not dare risk a nuclear confrontation by escalating the conflict. If the proliferation optimists
are right, then once the Saudis get nukes, Iran would be far less likely to make a move on nearby Kuwait. On the
other hand, to the extent that we do see conventional war in a nuclearized Middle East, the losers will be sorely
tempted to cancel out their defeat with a nuclear strike. There may have been nuclear peace during the Cold
War, but there were also many hot proxy wars. If conventional wars break out in a nuclearized Middle East, it
may be very difficult to stop them from escalating into nuclear confrontations.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
105 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

105

Human Rights Promo Good- Democracy
A. Human rights promotion is critical to democracy
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, 3-10, 2004, Federal Document Clearing House Congressional
Testimony, Lexis

Whether we agree with the President's policies or not, Mr. Chairman, we have to take that warning seriously when it
is coming from those on the front lines of the struggle for human rights and democracy in the Middle East. As we
make decisions on these complex matters, we have to take into account the impact those decisions will have on
America's ability to champion democratic values around the world.
The fundamental point is that we need the moral clarity that is provided by these State Department human rights
reports and by the efforts of the President and the State Department to condemn human rights abuses throughout
the year. But the United States needs to project more than moral clarityit must maintain moral authority to
promote a more humane and democratic world. That requires consistent leadership abroad and a sterling example
at home.


B. Extinction

Diamond 95. (Larry, Snr. research fellow @ Hoover Institute, Promoting Democracy in the 1990's, p 6-7)

This hardly exhausts the list 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.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
106 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

106

Human Rights Promo Good- Central Asia
Human rights cred is critical to prevent war in Central Asia
Fiona Hill, fellow Brookings Institution, 2001, The Caucus and Central Asia: How the United States and Its Allies
Can Stave Off a Crisis, Policy Brief #80, p. online

In the next two years, the Caucasus and Central Asian states could become zones of interstate competition similar to
the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Economic and political crises, or the intensification of war in Chechnya or
Afghanistan, might lead to the "Balkanization" of the regions. This, in turn, could result in military intervention by
any of the major powers. Given the fact that both Turkey and Iran threatened intervention in the Caucasus at the peak of the Nagorno-
Karabakh war in 1992-1993, this risk should be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the Caucasus and Central Asian states lack the capacity to tackle crises without outside help. Economic collapse has produced
social dislocation and extreme poverty. Widespread corruption and the entrenchment of aging leaders and their families have eroded support for
central governments and constrained the development of a new generation of leaders. The internal weakness of the Caucasus and Central Asian
states, combined with brutal regional wars, makes them extremely vulnerable to outside pressureespecially from Russia. Although Russia itself
is weak, it is far stronger than all the states combined, and while its direct influence over their affairs has declined since the collapse of the Soviet
Union, it remains the dominant economic, political, and military force.
The West will have to assist the states in bolstering their institutional capacity and in promoting cooperation among them. American engagement
remains crucial given its weight on the international stage, the potential threats to its own security, and the fact that it has leverage in the
regions. In spite of a few glitches, the Caucasus and Central Asian states have been receptive to the United States and are
among its few potential allies in a zone where other states are not so amenable to U.S. activity. Regional countries
need American moral and material support to maintain independence in the face of increasing pressures, and its
guidance in dealing with presidential transition crises and addressing human rights abuses. Even with limited
political and financial resources, U.S. leadership can do a great deal to defuse regional tensions and mitigate
problems. However, this will only be possible if a policy is defined early and communicated clearly, if there is a
particular focus on partnership with European allies in addressing regional challenges, and if Russia is encouraged to
become a force for stability rather than a factor for instability in the regions.
The Caucasus and Central Asia at a Crossroads
This is a critical time for the Caucasus and Central Asian states because a number of negative trends could converge
to bring about a crisis. Responding to that crisis requires the United States to build a long-term strategy based on a
frank assessment of regional needs and of U.S. capabilities and resources. The Clinton administration's approach to the regions was ad hoc. It tackled a
laundry list of initiatives in response to crises and shifting policy priorities. Issues such as oil and gas pipelines, conflict resolution, and human rights were
targeted at different junctures, but an overall strategywhich was essential given limited government resources for the regionswas never fully
articulated. As a result, American priorities were not communicated clearly to local leaders, resulting in frequent misinterpretations of intentions. Domestic
constituencies in the United States undermined leverage in regional conflicts. Incompatible government structures and conflicting legislation fostered
competition among agencies and encouraged a proliferation of parallel initiatives, while congressional mandates limited areas in which scarce funds could
be applied and thus reduced flexibility. The new administration must get ahead of this negative trend in setting policy and priorities, while tackling U.S.
government deficiencies directly. In crafting policy, several developments need to be considered: The civil war in Afghanistan will likely regain
momentum this summer. Already, the incursion of refugees and fighters from Afghanistan into Central Asia and the activities of Central Asian militant
groups have strained fragile political situations in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Governments in Central Asia are violating human rights as they
clamp down on Islamic groups in response to acts of terrorism and militant activities. In Uzbekistan, the closing of mosques, a ban on political opposition
movements, and arrests of practicing Muslims have forced groups underground and increased support for insurgencies and extremists. In Chechnya, the
war shows little sign of resolution through political negotiation. Refugees and fighters have been pushed across borders into the South Caucasus by Russian
troops, as well as into neighboring Russian regions. As in Afghanistan, an intensification of the war in Chechnya is likely this summer. Other Caucasus civil
wars are in a state of "no peace, no war." Recent international efforts to resolve the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, led by the United States, France, and
Russia, have raised expectations for a peace settlement. But, in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, opposition figures openly discuss the resumption of war if
leaders are perceived to have sold out. Georgia is teetering on the verge of collapse, overwhelmed by internal difficulties and burdened by the inability to
combat corruption and tackle economic reform. The dual secessions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have split the country and spillover from Chechnya has
soured relations with Russia. In winter 2000, Russia imposed new, stringent visa requirements on Georgia and temporarily suspended energy supplies over
payments and a contract dispute, increasing pressure on the beleaguered country. In both Georgia and Azerbaijan, political succession has become a
critical issue. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan will soon face the same crisis. No provisions have been made for a presidential transition, and
emerging leaders have often been suppressed or forced into exile. All of these issues are exacerbated by the continued downturn of regional economies.
The Asian and Russian financial crises of 1998 were a major setback, leading to the devaluation of currencies, untenable debt burdens, and the withdrawal
of foreign investment. Deep-rooted corruption feeds into the economic crisis and hinders the emergence of small and medium-sized businesses that could
spur market development and economic growth. For both regions, Russia is the only source of reliable employment, a significant market for local products,
and, in the short-term, the principal energy supplier. In Georgia alone, approximately 10 percent of the population currently works in Russia and sends
home an amount equivalent to nearly a quarter of Georgia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This influx of economic migrants has exacerbated ethnic
tensions within Russia. Because regional governments cannot pay their energy bills, clashes over energy with Russia will continue, increasing tensions and
instability. In Central Asia, high unemployment fosters the smuggling of raw materials and consumer goods, and trafficking in arms and drugs. Eighty
percent of heroin sold in Europe originates in Afghanistan and Pakistan and about half of this production flows through Central Asia. The heroin trade in
Central Asia has created a burgeoning intravenous drug problem and an HIV/AIDS outbreak that mimics the early epidemic in Africa. Health workers fear an
escalation in a matter of months that will overwhelm local medical systems and the region's miniscule international programs. A major HIV/AIDS crisis
would be the final straw for states like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. U.S.-Russian Tensions in the Caspian Basin Converging with this regional crisis is a sharp

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
107 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

107

difference of opinion between the United States and Russia over U.S. involvement in Caspian energy development and engagement in the Caucasus and
Central Asia. In Moscow, the United States is portrayed as purposefully weakening Russia's strategic position and bent on establishing Central Asia and the
Caucasus as U.S. outposts. Where American policymakers speak of intervention in a positive sense to promote regional cooperation and stability, Russian
political commentators speak of American "vmeshatel'stvo"literally, negative interventionto constrain Russia. The United States and Russia are at odds
politically and semantically in the Caspian. Because approximately 50 percent of Russia's foreign currency revenues are generated by oil and gas sales, the
Putin administration has made increasing Russian energy exports to Europe a priority. Caspian energy resources play a major role in Russian calculations.
Gas from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan flows into the Russian pipeline system, where it supplies the Russian domestic market and supplements Russia's
European exports. Russia is the largest supplier of gas to Turkey, and has begun constructing a new Black Sea pipeline ("Blue Stream") to increase supplies.
But gas flowing to Turkey from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijanand bypassing Russiacould pose direct competition. Over the last five years,
U.S. policy in the Caspian Basin has promoted multiple gas and oil pipelines to world markets to increase export options for regional states, persuading
Moscow that the United States seeks to squeeze Russia out of regional energy development. Beyond energy issues, Russia sees itself caught between NATO
to the west and chaos to the south. In the Caucasus, Russia has lost its strategic defensive structures against NATO's southern flank in Turkey. Moscow
perceives this loss as significant, given NATO expansion east and the alliance's willingness to use force in the extended European arena. Explicit statements
of intent to join NATO by Georgia and Azerbaijan have angered Russian policymakers, along with the active involvement of regional states in NATO's
Partnership for Peace Program, and the formation of a regional alliance among states that have opted out of the Russian-led Commonwealth of
Independent States security structures (the so-called GUUAM group of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Moldova). Although Central Asia is
less a zone of competition because of shared concern about Afghanistan, which resulted in unprecedented U.S.-Russian collaboration on UN sanctions
against the Taliban in December 2000, U.S. bilateral military relations with regional states still alarm Moscow. The fact that an energetic Pentagon moved
faster than the State Department to engage Central Asian counterparts has led Moscow to view U.S. actions in both regions with deepening suspicion.
Crafting U.S. Policy. To address these issues, the Bush administration will first have to recognize that the Caucasus and Central Asia are a major factor in
U.S.-Russian bilateral relations. Russia does not only view its dealings with the U.S. through the prism of NATO, missile defense, and non-proliferation
issues, although these are currently the United States' top security priorities in the relationship. Russia's southern tier is now its most sensitive frontier and
the Caucasus and Central Asia are its number one security priority. Having recognized this fact, the Bush administration must present a unified front when
dealing with Moscow and the region, and prevent the various agencies from acting in conflict with each other. The administration needs to articulate a
message that is positive and inclusive for Russia as well as regional states and stick to it. It should emphasize regional stability, cooperative relations,
political solutions to conflicts, border security, human rights, institutional development, orderly successions of political power, anti-corruption efforts, and
opportunities for citizen participation in political and economic decisionmaking. Although this framework would not be considerably different from the
general themes of the Clinton administration, the notion of explicitly recognizing the importance of the Caucasus and Central Asian regions in the bilateral
U.S.-Russian relationshipand staying focusedwould be a departure. The primary goal should be to encourage Russia to adopt a positive approach to
relations with its neighbors that eschews commercial and political bullying. To this end, the administration will have to maintain a direct dialogue with its
Russian counterparts in working out a practical approach for the Caucasus and Central Asia. With its message clear, the administration needs to bring its
bureaucratic mechanisms in line to focus on key issues and countries. Even if responsibility for the Caucasus and Central Asian states is divided within
government departments, effective structures will have to be created to preserve links between the regions, and conflicting legislation will have to be
streamlined to resolve interagency conflicts over responsibilities. This will require the executive branch to work closely with Congress to reconcile
appropriations with a comprehensive program for the regions and to articulate U.S. interests through public hearings and testimony. If the administration
has appropriate mechanisms in place, some policy innovations should be considered to address regional problems:
Rethink the U.S. Approach to Central Asia
The Central Asian states require the most serious reassessment in U.S. policy. Central Asia is rapidly becoming a base
for extremism and terrorism, and the U.S. needs to look ahead to avert its "Afghanicization." The pivotal states for
regional security are Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which both border Afghanistan. The United States has bilateral
military relations with Uzbekistan, but is barely present in Tajikistan, where permanent U.S. representation has been
withdrawn because of fears for the safety of Embassy personnel. The Bush administration must change the
American approach to both countries by emphasizing human rights and cooperative regional relations in Uzbekistan
(rather than simply security), and by increasing its focus on Tajikistan.
Productive relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbors are key to regional stability. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan
have significant Uzbek diasporas and are dependent on Uzbekistan for cross-border communications and energy
supplies. Uzbekistan has frequently used this leverage to negative effect with these vulnerable neighbors. The
United States should encourage high-level discussions between Uzbekistan and its neighbors that would address
border access and gas deliveries as well as militant incursions across the Tajik and Kyrgyz borders into Uzbekistan.
Of all the regional states, Tajikistan is the most receptive to outside assistance, serving as a potential model for
dealing with Islamic and political opposition. The Tajik government engaged its opposition in a dialogue that resulted
in power-sharing arrangements and an end to a five-year civil war. Given the precipitous decline of the Tajik
economy, even the reestablishment of a permanent U.S. embassywith appropriate security precautionsand a
modest increase in aid programs related to job creation and health would be a major boost.
Link Human Rights and Security
As a general rule, the administration should engage Central Asia without reinforcing authoritarian regimes. In Uzbekistan,
while militant groups are real threats to the state, human rights abuses are an equal threat and increase sympathy for the
militants. The United States has considerable leverage with Uzbekistan through its military engagement activities. In 2000,
Uzbekistan came close to losing congressional certification for these programs, and the Pentagon placed greater emphasis on
human rights in its special forces training curriculum. Taking this as a cue, the Bush administration should emphasize
mutually-reinforcing security and human rights objectives throughout Central Asia and should encourage cooperation among
the Pentagon, State Department, and international human rights groups on security-human rights linkages. The administration

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
108 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

108

should also emphasize U.S. support for regional non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that seek to increase both citizen
participation in government and access to objective sources of information.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
109 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

109

Oceans

Oceans key to survival
Craig '03
(Robin Kundis Craig -- Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law McGeorge Law Rev Winter elipses
in original)

The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable.
"Occupy[ing] more than [seventy percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," 17 oceans
provide food; marketable goods such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes,
including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic
and economic, for millions of people worldwide. 18 Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the
ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of
existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles
that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." 19 Ocean and coastal ecosystem services have been
calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. 20 In addition, many people assign heritage and
existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact
to future generations.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
110 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

110

Ozone
Ozone depletion causes extinction
Greenpeace, 1995
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer,
http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html.)

When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone layer
depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible
scientists have since confirmed this hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful
ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist. Exposure to
increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin cancer, and immune system suppression
in humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and Molina's theory
was taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.

Ozone destruction causes mass extinction
Palenotological Research Insitute, No Date
(Paleontological Research Institute, PERMIAN EXTINCTION, no date,
http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTHOLrp/82rp.htm)

Lastly, a new theory has been proposed- the Supernova explosion. A supernova occurring 30 light years away
from earth would release enough gamma radiation to destroy the ozone layer for several years. Subsequent
exposure to direct ultra-violet radiation would weaken or kill nearly all existing species. Only those
living deep in the ocean will be secured. Sediments contain records or short-term ozone destruction- large
amounts of NOx gasses and C14 plus global and atmospheric cooling. With sufficient destruction of the
ozone layer, these problems could cause widespread destruction of life.This was the biggest extinction
event in the last 500 million years, and researchers want a theory that is scientifically rigorous. Therefore, all
these theories are possible but also have many faults and create much controversy in determining if it is the
one exact theory which will explain this historic mass extinction.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
111 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

111

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is the root cause of wars
Reardon 93
(Betty A. Reardon, Director of the Peace Education Program at Teachers College Columbia University, 1993, Women and
Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security, p. 30-2 (PDNSS6401))
In an article entitled Naming the Cultural Forces That Push Us toward War (1983), Charlene Spretnak focused on some of
the fundamental cultural factors that deeply influence ways of thinking about security. She argues that patriarchy
encourages militarist tendencies. Since a major war now could easily bring on massive annihilation of almost
unthinkable proportions, why are discussions in our national forums addressing the madness of the nuclear arms race limited
to matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is badly needed . . . A clearly visible element in
the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the macho posturing and the patriarchal ideal of
dominance, not parity, which motivates defense ministers and government leaders to strut their stuff
as we watch with increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are still acting out old patterns that are
radically inappropriate for the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to distance ones character from
that of women, to survive the toughest violent initiation, to shed the sacred blood of the hero, to collaborate with
death in order to hold it at bayall of these patriarchal pressures on men have traditionally reached resolution
in ritual fashion on the battlefield. But there is no longer any battlefield. Does anyone seriously believe that if a
nuclear power were losing a crucial, large-scale conventional war it would refrain from using its multiple-warhead nuclear
missiles because of some diplomatic agreement? The military theater of a nuclear exchange today would extend,
instantly or eventually, to all living things, all the air, all the soil, all the water. If we believe that war is a
necessary evil, that patriarchal assumptions are simply human nature, then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The
ultimate result of unchecked terminal patriarchy will be nuclear holocaust. The causes of recurrent warfare are not biological.
Neither are they solely economic. They are also a result of patriarchal ways of thinking, which historically
have generated considerable pressure for standing armies to be used. (Spretnak 1983)

Patriarchy is the root of all violence and war
Hooks 04
(hooks, professor of English at City College, 2004 (bell, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love. P 26-27))
Citizens in this nation fear challenging patriarchy even as they lack overt awareness that they are fearful,
so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious are the rules of patriarchy. I often tell audiences that if we
were to go door-todoor asking if we should end male violence against women, most people would give their unequivocal
support. Then if you told them we can only stop male violence against women by ending male domination, by eradicating
patriarchy, they would begin to hesitate, to change their position. Despite the many gains of contemporary feminist
movement-greater equality for women in the workforce, more tolerance for the relinquishing of rigid
gender roles- patriarchy as a system remains intact, and many people continue to believe that it is needed
if humans are to survive as a species. This belief seems ironic, given that patriarchal methods of organizing
nations, especially the insistence on violence as a means of social control, has actually led to the slaughter of
millions of people on the planet.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
112 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

112

Patriarchy War

Patriarchy is the root cause of war The unequal value of women and threat of violence mirror the coercive
order of the war system
Runyan 92 (Anne, Department of PoliSci at Potsdam College of State U of NY, Criticizing the Gender of
International Relations, International Relations: Critical concepts in Political Science, pg. 1693-1724)

Betty Reardon takes this thesis even further by equating war with patriarchy, military with sexism, and peace and
world order with feminism. According to Reardon, the war system is a pervasive, competitive social order, which
is based in authoritarian principles, assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held
in place by coercion. In addition, it is controlled by a few elites in industrialized countries, implemented by
subelites throughout the world, and directed against nonelites to ensure their submission. Similarly, patriarchy is a
set of beliefs and values supported by institutions and backed up by the threat of violence. It lays down the
supposedly proper relations between men and women, between women and women and between men
and men. Thus, patriarchal relations constitute the paradigm on which the war system is
based, and the war system, in turn, consolidates patriarchal relations.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
113 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

113

Patriarchy War
Manifestation of Evil - Discourse of male dominance for survival affirms the same type of coercion and
violence it defends against
Johnson 97 The Gender Knot

To support male aggression and therefore male dominance as society's only defense against evil, we have to
believe that evil forces exist out there, in villains, governments, and armies. In this, we have to assume that the
bad guys actually see themselves as evil and not as heroes defending loved ones and principles against bad guys like
us. The alternative to this kind of thinking is to realize that the same patriarchal ethos that creates our masculine
heroes also creates the violent villains they battle and prove themselves against, and that both sides often see
themselves as heroic and self-sacrificing for a worthy cause. For all the wartime propaganda, good and bad guys
play similar games and salute a core of common values, not to mention one another on occasion. At a deep level,
war and many other forms of male aggression are manifestations of the same evil they supposedly defend
against. The evil is the patriarchal religion of control and domination that encourages men to use coercion
and violence to settle disputes, manage human relations, and affirm masculine identity.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
114 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

114

Patriarchy War
Patriarchy is the root cause of war The unequal value of women and threat of violence mirror the coercive
order of the war system
Runyan 92 (Anne, Department of PoliSci at Potsdam College of State U of NY, Criticizing the Gender of
International Relations, International Relations: Critical concepts in Political Science, pg. 1693-1724)

Betty Reardon takes this thesis even further by equating war with patriarchy, military with sexism, and peace and
world order with feminism. According to Reardon, the war system is a pervasive, competitive social order, which
is based in authoritarian principles, assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held
in place by coercion. In addition, it is controlled by a few elites in industrialized countries, implemented by
subelites throughout the world, and directed against nonelites to ensure their submission. Similarly, patriarchy is a
set of beliefs and values supported by institutions and backed up by the threat of violence. It lays down the
supposedly proper relations between men and women, between women and women and between men
and men. Thus, patriarchal relations constitute the paradigm on which the war system is
based, and the war system, in turn, consolidates patriarchal relations.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
115 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

115

Patriarchy War
Manifestation of Evil - Discourse of male dominance for survival affirms the same type of coercion and
violence it defends against
Johnson 97 The Gender Knot

To support male aggression and therefore male dominance as society's only defense against evil, we have to believe that
evil forces exist out there, in villains, governments, and armies. In this, we have to assume that the bad guys actually see
themselves as evil and not as heroes defending loved ones and principles against bad guys like us. The alternative to this
kind of thinking is to realize that the same patriarchal ethos that creates our masculine heroes also creates the violent
villains they battle and prove themselves against, and that both sides often see themselves as heroic and self-sacrificing
for a worthy cause. For all the wartime propaganda, good and bad guys play similar games and salute a core of common
values, not to mention one another on occasion. At a deep level, war and many other forms of male aggression are
manifestations of the same evil they supposedly defend against. The evil is the patriarchal religion of control
and domination that encourages men to use coercion and violence to settle disputes, manage human
relations, and affirm masculine identity.









Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
116 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

116

Poverty

Ongoing global poverty outweighs nuclear war- only our ev is comparative
Spina 2k
(Stephanie Urso, Ph.D. candidate in social/personality psychology at the Graduate School of the City University
of New York, Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context of Violence in Schools and Society, p. 201)
This sad fact is not limited to the United States. Globally, 18 million deaths a year are caused by structural
violence, compared to 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict. That is, approximately every five years, as
many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million
deaths, and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as
were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an
ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war or genocide, perpetuated on the weak and the
poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.

Poverty poses the greatest threat to the worldwe have a moral obligation to eradicate it
Vear 04
(Jesse Leah, Co-coordinates POWER--Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights, "Abolishing Poverty: A
Declaration of Economic Human Rights," http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0407/040704.htm)
Locked in the cross-hairs of domestic and foreign policies which intentionally put our bodies in harm's
way, our terror is the terror of poverty - a terror boldly and callously proliferated by our own government. Surely one
doesn't need the surveillance powers of high-definition weapons-grade satellites to see the faces of the some 80 million poor
people struggling just to survive in America; to see the worried faces of homeless mothers waiting to be added to the waiting
list for non-existent public housing; to find the unemployment lines filled with parents who aren't eligible to see a doctor and
who can't afford to get sick; to see the children stricken with preventable diseases in the midst of the world's best-equipped
hospitals; to hear the rumble in the bellies of millions of hungry Americans whose only security is a bread line once a week;
or to detect the crumbling of our nation's under-funded, under-staffed schools. Meanwhile, billions are spent waging wars and
occupying countries that our school children can't even find on a map. Surely it doesn't take a rocket scientist to
detect the moral bankruptcy of a nation - by far the world's richest and most powerful - which disregards
the basic human needs of its own despairing people in favor of misguided military adventures that
protect no one, whether in nations half-way across the globe, or in the outer reaches of our atmosphere. To see these things
one needs neither a high-powered satellite nor a specialized degree. One needs only to open one's eyes and dare to see the
reality before them. Yet even as you look you still might not see the millions of poor people in America. My
face is only one of 80 million Americans who never get asked for in-depth television interviews or for our expert
commentary regarding the state of the economy or the impact of our nation's policies. In addition to all the indignities
suffered by poor people in America, we must suffer the further indignation of being disappeared - kept discretely hidden
away from the eyes, ears, and conscience of the rest of society and the world. The existence of poverty in the richest country
on earth cannot remain a secret for long. Americans, like the majority of the world's peoples, are compassionate, fair-minded
people. When exposed, the moral hypocrisy of poverty in America cannot withstand the light of day any
more than the moral hypocrisy of slavery or race or sex discrimination could. That's where the Poor People's
Economic Human Rights Campaign comes in. With this campaign, we are reaching out to the international community as
well as the rest of US society to help us secure what are our most basic human rights, as outlined in International Law.
According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an International Treaty signed in 1948 by all UN member nations,
including the United States, all nations have a moral and legal obligation to ensure the basic needs and well-
being of all their citizens. Among the rights outlined in the Declaration are the rights to food, housing, health care, jobs
at living wages, and education. Over half a century after signing this document, despite huge economic gains and a vast
productive capacity, the United States has sorely neglected its promise. In a land whose founding documents
proclaim life, liberty, and justice for all, we must hold this nation to its promises.

Racism

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
117 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

117


Racism is the root cause of violence
Foucault '76
[Michel, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976, p. 254-257 Trans. David Macey]
What in fact is racism? It is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of life that is under
power's control: the break between what must live and what must die. The appearance within the biological continuum of
the human race of races, the distinction among races, the hierarchy of races, the fact that certain races are described as good and that others, in contrast, are
described as inferior: all this is a way of fragmenting the field of the biological that power controls. It is a way of separating out the groups that exist within a
population. It is, in short, a way of establishing a biological type caesura within a population that appears to be a biological domain. This will allow power to
treat that population as a mixture of races, or to be more accurate, to treat the species, to subdivide the species it controls, into the subspecies known,
precisely, as races. That is the first function of racism: to fragment, to create caesuras within the biological continuum addressed by biopower. Racism also
has a second function. Its role is, if you like, to allow the establishment of a positive relation of this type: "The more you kill, the more deaths you will
cause" or "The very fact that you let more die will allow you to live more." I would say that this relation ("If you want to live, you must take lives, you must
be able to kill") was not invented by either racism or the modern State. It is the relationship of war: "In order to live, you must destroy your enemies." But
racism does make the relationship of war-"If you want to live, the other must die" - function in a way that is completely new and that is quite compatible
with the exercise of biopower. On the one hand, racism makes it possible to establish a relationship between my life and
the death of the other that is not a military or warlike relationship of confrontation, but a biological-type
relationship: "The more inferior species die out, the more abnormal individuals are eliminated, the fewer
degenerates there will be in the species as a whole, and the more Ias species rather than individual-can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I will
be. I will be able to proliferate." The fact that the other dies does not mean simply that I live in the sense that his death guarantees my safety; the death of the
other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the abnormal) is something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and
purer. This is not, then, a military, warlike, or political relationship, but a biological relationship. And the reason this mechanism can come into play is that
the enemies who have to be done away with are not adversaries in the political sense of the term; they are threats, either external or internal, to the
population and for the population. In the biopower system, in other words, killing or the imperative to kill is acceptable only if it results not in a victory over
political adversaries, but in the elimination of the biological threat to and the improvement of the species or race. There is a direct connection between the
two. In a normalizing society, race or racism is the precondition that makes killing acceptable. When you have a
normalizing society, you have a power which is, at least superficially, in the first instance, or in the first line a biopower, and racism is the indispensable
precondition that allows someone to be killed, that allows others to be killed. Once the State functions in the biopower mode, racism alone can justify the
murderous function of the State. So you can understand the importance-I almost said the vital importance-of racism to the exercise of such a power: it is the
precondition for exercising the right to kill. If the power of normalization wished to exercise the old sovereign right to ki ll, it must become racist. And if,
conversely, a power of sovereignty, or in other words, a power that has the right of life and death, wishes to work with the instruments, mechanisms, and
technology of normalization, it too must become racist. When I say "killing," I obviously do not mean simply murder as such, but also every form of indirect
murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on.
I think that we are now in a position to understand a number of things. We can understand, first of all, the link that was quickly-I almost said immediately-
established between nineteenth-century biological theory and the discourse of power. Basically, evolutionism, understood in the broad sense-or in other
words, not so much Darwin's theory itself as a set, a bundle, of notions (such as: the hierarchy of species that grow from a common evolutionary tree, the
struggle for existence among species, the selection that eliminates the less fit) naturally became within a few years during the nineteenth century not simply a
way of transcribing a political discourse into biological terms, and not simply a way of dressing up a political discourse in scientific clothing, but a real way
of thinking about the relations between colonization, the necessity for wars, criminality, the phenomena of madness and mental illness, the history of
societies with their different classes, and so on. Whenever, in other words, there was a confrontation, a killing or the risk of death, the nineteenth century was
quite literally obliged to think about them in the form of evolutionism. And we can also understand why racism should have developed in modern societies
that function in the biopower mode; we can understand why racism broke out at a number of .privileged moments, and why they were precisely the moments
when the right to take life was imperative. Racism first develops with colonization, or in other words, with colonizing
genocide. If you are functioning in the biopower mode, how can you justify the need to kill people, to
kill populations, and to kill civilizations? By using the themes of evolutionism, by appealing to a racism.
War. How can one not only wage war on one's adversaries but also expose one's own citizens to war,
and let them be killed by the million (and this is precisely what has been going on since the nineteenth
century, or since the second half of the nineteenth century), except by activating the theme of racism


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
118 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

118

SARS

A SARS bioweapon would kill at least 50 million people
Conant, 06
Paul, House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack,July 2006
http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html

Concerned about this point, subcommittee Chairman John Linder, R-Ga., asked whether someone with a "modicum of talent
in this business" might genetically alter the SARS virus and "make it more virulent, spread faster and make it more difficult
to treat? The "short answer is yes," replied Brent, though the recombinant virus might actually be weaker than the original
Still, resynthesized SARS spread by suicidal coughers is a real concern, said Brent.Anthrax, though not contagious in
humans, is the more serious threat, said witnesses, Callahan noting that "you don't have to store it, it lives forever, and you
don't have to feed it." The pathogen is also easy to obtain because the disease afflicts animals in many places, he
said.However, Callahan put avian influenza -- bird flu -- as a top concern because of its extreme mortality in humans. If a
mutated bird flu pathogen becomes contagious among humans and remains extremely deadly, it could kill some 50
million people worldwide, experts have said. http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
119 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

119

Space Exploration bad
1. Space exploration will cause environmental exploitation, nuclear annihilation, arms races, and epidemics
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, 1999 (Bruce
K., Space Exploration and Exploitation, http://www.space4peace.org/articles/scandm.htm)
We are now poised to take the bad seed of greed, environmental exploitation and war into space. Having
shown such enormous disregard for our own planet Earth, the so-called "visionaries" and "explorers" are now
ready to rape and pillage the heavens. Countless launches of nuclear materials, using rockets that regularly
blow up on the launch pad, will seriously jeopardize life on Earth. Returning potentially bacteria-laden space
materials back to Earth, without any real plans for containment and monitoring, could create new epidemics
for us. The possibility of an expanding nuclear-powered arms race in space will certainly have serious
ecological and political ramifications as well. The effort to deny years of consensus around international space
law will create new global conflicts and confrontations

A. Space exploration will lead to the spread of pathogenic viruses through biohazardous land samples
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, 1999 (Bruce K.,
Space Exploration and Exploitation, http://www.space4peace.org/articles/scandm.htm)
Potential dangers do exist though. Barry DiGregorio, author and founder of the International Committee
Against Mars Sample Return, has written that "any Martian samples returned to Earth must be treated as
biohazardous material until proven otherwise." At the present time NASA has taken no action to create a
special facility to handle space sample returns. On March 6, 1997 a report issued by the Space Studies Board
of the National Research Council recommended that such a facility should be operational at least two years
prior to launch of a Mars Sample Return mission. Reminding us of the Spanish exploration of the Americas,
and the smallpox virus they carried that killed thousands of indigenous people, DiGregorio warns that the
Mars samples could "contain pathogenic viruses or bacteria." There are vast deposits of mineral resources like
magnesium and cobalt believed to be on Mars. In June of 1997, NASA announced plans for manned mining
colonies on Mars, expected around 2007-2009. The mining colonies, NASA says, would be powered by nuclear
reactors launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
B. Extinction
Daswani, 96 (Kavita, South China Morning Post, 1/4, lexis)
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about. There is a much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be
alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV. If this makes Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak which killed
more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study
and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An
airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain
reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could
have predicted the impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it
was killed before it had a chance to spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years - theoretically, it could
happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of
the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of
the human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for viruses to learn
how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new
"mega-cities" are being developed in the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into areas of human
habitation. "This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and
imperil the survival of the human race," he said.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
120 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

120

Space Weaponization: NASA Key

NASA KEY TO SPACE WEAPONIZATION
[Bruce K. Gagnon (Coordinator of the Global Network Against Nuclear Power and Weapons in Space)] Arms Race in Space
Foreign Policy in Focus: International Relations Think Tank. March 19, 2009 http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5971 6/27/09 RFF
NASA was created as a civilian agency with a mission to do peaceful space exploration. But the growing influence of the
military industrial complex has rubbed out the line between civilian and military programs. When George W. Bush appointed
former Secretary of the Navy Sean O'Keefe to head NASA in late 2001, the new space agency director announced that all NASA missions
in the future would be "dual use." This meant that every NASA space launch would be both military and civilian at the
same time. The military would ride the NASA Trojan horse and accelerate space weapons development without the public's
knowledge. NASA would expand space nuclear power systems to help create new designs for weapons propulsion.
Permanent, nuclear-powered bases on the moon and Mars would give the United States a leg up in the race for control
of those planetary bodies. The international competition for resource extraction in space (helium-3 on the moon) is now full on. NASA's job is to do
the research and development, and then be ready to turn everything over to private corporate interests once the technology has been sorted out. The
taxpayers will fund the technology investment program. The military will create the space weapons systems to ensure free corporate access to the space
highways of the future. The aerospace industry is already making record profits from the ever-escalating cost of space technology systems. Virtually every
system now under development is well over budget. Just one illustration is NASA's International Space Station. Originally slated to cost the taxpayers $10
billion, the project has now grown to $100 billion and is not yet finished.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
121 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

121

Space Weaponization Bad: Nuclear Annhilation

SPACE WEAPONIZATION LEADS TO NUCLEAR ANNIHLATION
[Lt Col Bruce M. DeBlois (PhD, Oxford University, Division Chief of Strategic Studies and Assessments at the National
Reconnaissance Office) 1998+ Space Sanctuary: A Viable National Strategy
Demonstrations of atomic weapons at the close of World War II and the prospect of nuclear weapons married to emerging ballistic
missile technology ushered in a new era of international relations. Threatening to use military force had always been an instrument of
diplomacy, but the potential for instantaneous, indefensible, and complete annihilation posed a new rubric in the games nations play. Thus, nuclear
deterrence was born. Initial thoughts that such a threat relegated warfare to the shelves of history due to the prospects of massive nuclear retaliation
proved navesubsequent lower-order conflict did not force nuclear escalation. Symmetric nuclear capabilities among the principal powers weakened the
credibility of their use, while asymmetric responses (guerrilla and terrorist tactics, aligning with nuclear-capable parties, conflict protraction, etc.) still
allowed lesser powers to test the resolve of the principalsparticularly over issues of peripheral interest to those nuclear powers. Examples include
Vietnam and Afghanistan. Visions of massive space superiority and the touted huge, coercive power advantage they provide
will likely prove as bankrupt a notion as that of massive nuclear retaliation. In their logical evolution, both give way to strategies that
recognize an international context of reactive nations. Principal powers will simply not allow a space hegemon to emerge, and lesser
powers may concede hegemony but will continue to seek asymmetric counters.4 The result will be a space strategy that
better aligns with what evolved out of the nuclear dilemma: mutual assured destruction (MAD). As a common MAD logic
developed across the globe (but primarily between the two players in the gamethe United States and Soviet Union), nontraditional foreign-policy traits
became apparent. Any move toward developing weapons or practices that increased the viability of the idea that one could win a nuclear exchange was
perceived as destabilizing. Deterrence in the form of MAD had to overcome the notion of winningone that could come in several forms: 1. A nation
could survive nuclear attacks and prevail. Conceding offensive dominance was critical if MAD were to deter nuclear holocaust. One had to avoid an odd
array of destabilizing practices and systems, including missile-defense systems and civil-defense programs. 2. A nation could use nuclear weapons on a
small scale and prevail in a predominantly conventional conflict. The term theater nuclear weapons was an oxymoronevery nuclear weapon was
strategic because it posed the threat of escalation. Limited use of nuclear weapons was destabilizing; hence, one had to avoid any such strategy.
Prohibiting the development of the neutron bomb, in spite of the immediate tactical benefits it offered to outnumbered NATO forces in Europe, was a
direct result of this logic. 3. A nation could launch a successful first strike. Stabilizing approaches that reduced the viability of surprise via first strike were
pursued. More than its name implies, if MAD were to prohibit a nuclear exchange, it had to be paired either with a reliable early warning capability
allowing a reactive nuclear response or with a survivable second-strike capability. The United States pursued both: the former via space- and land-based
early warning networks and the latter via submarine-launched ballistic missiles. From this experience, one can draw and apply lessons as
the possibility of space weapons emerges. Clearly, these weapons offer the potential for instantaneous and indefensible
attack. Although the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 (outlawing weapons of mass destruction [WMD] in space) prohibits complete annihilation, the threat
of annihilation would still existit is difficult to distinguish space-based WMD from space-based non-WMD. In simple terms, space
weaponization could bring a new round of MAD. Although MAD successfully deterred a nuclear exchange over the past 40 years, it was a
very costly means of overcoming the lack of trust between superpowers. The dissolution of that distrust and the corresponding reduction of nuclear arms
lie at the very heart of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START). Comparing the emergence of nuclear-tipped ICBMs with the accession of space
weapons does yield some stark differences, however. There is no single threat to focus diplomatic efforts aimed at building trust, and there does seem to
be some international support for the idea of coalescing a strategy supporting space sanctuary and deterring third world space upstarts. Aside from these
differences, though, one could assume the existence of proliferated space weapons and proceed with the thought experiment that a space-
MAD strategy would emerge among the principal powers. Again, one would have to eliminate the notion of winning a space-weapons
exchange, and on at least the first two counts, one could do so: 1. It is logical to concede the offensive dominance of space-based weapons in low-earth
orbit (LEO). Any point on earth could have a weapon pointed at it with clear line of sight; the potential of directed-energy weapons
takes the notion of instantaneous to the extreme; and defense of every national asset from such an attack would prove next to
impossible. 2. The same argument against the logic of tactical nuclear weapons would also apply to the tactical use of space-based weapons.
Once they were used, any conflict could automatically escalate to a higher level. 3. The failing of a space-MAD strategy comes on
the third count: early warning or survivable second-strike capability. Should space be weaponized and two space-capable foes emerge,
there will be no 30-minute early warning window from which one actor could launch a counterattack prior to the impact
of the preemptive first strike. Furthermore, space basing is equivalent to exposureno strike capability can be reliably
hidden or protected in space in order to allow a surviving, credible second strike. Space-MAD weapons without early
warning or reliable survivability logically instigate a first strike. This creates an incredibly unstable situation in which the
viability of winning a space war exists and is predicated upon striking first (with plausible deniability exacerbating the problem),
eliminating the mutual from MAD and only assuring the destruction of the less aggressive state. Obviously, this is not a
good situation. Putting weapons in space could well be a self-fulfilling prophecy: we put them there because we
anticipate well need them, and because theyre there, well be compelled to use them; hence, we needed them. The
conclusion, then, of a nuclear weaponsspace weapons analogy can only be that while the threats from each type of weapon are similar, the most
successful strategy (MAD) for dealing with the former cannot work for the latter. Unlike the strategy for nuclear weapons, there exists no
obvious strategy for employing space weapons that will enhance global stability. If the precedent of evading destabilizing situations

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
122 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

122

is to continueand that is compatible with a long history of US foreign policyone ought to avoid space-based weapons. Further, even if one could
construct a workable space-MAD strategy, the nuclear-MAD approach teaches that this is an intensely expensive means of dealing with mutual distrust
between nations.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
123 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

123


SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA

SPACE WEAPONIZATION WILL CAUSE A WAR WITH CHINA
William C. Martel and Toshi Yoshihara. 2003. Averting a Sino-U.S. Arms Race The Washington Quarterly
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/washington_quarterly/v026/26.4martel.html 7/7/09 RFF

[End Page 20] Government agencies often pay private firms to collect and process vital satellite imagery. For the first five
months of the Afghan campaign, the Department of Defense paid the Space Imaging Corporation $1.9 million per month for
images of Afghanistan collected by its Ikonos imaging satellite. This new commercial satellite market also creates
vulnerabilities because of the ability of hostile governments or terrorist organizations to gain access to readily available
satellite imagery. Such information could be used to harm U.S. interests in various ways, including attacking military bases
and disrupting military operations. In sum, because U.S. military effectiveness and commercial competitiveness depend so
overwhelmingly on space, the country is increasingly vulnerable to an adversary's malicious use of space or attacks against
space systems. As the Rumsfeld Commission report warned ominously, "If the [United States] is to avoid a 'space Pearl
Harbor,' it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on U.S. space systems. The nation's leaders must assure that the
vulnerability of the United States is reduced and that the consequences of a surprise attack on U.S. space assets are limited in
their effects." 7 At present, most nations cannot challenge the United States directly, but there are fears that
states might someday attack U.S. satellites to cripple its military capabilities. Policymakers in the United
States are increasingly concerned that this is precisely China's strategy. Chinese Interests in Space As with the
United States, China's objectives in space reflect broad commercial and military interests. From an
economic perspective, the PRC views the exploitation of space as an integral part of its modernization
drive, a top priority on Beijing's national agenda. 8 The rapid growth of China's economy in the past two decades
has fueled investments in civilian space capabilities for several reasons. First, the explosive growth of the Chinese
telecommunications market has spurred China to put both indigenous and foreign-made networks of communications
satellites into orbit to keep pace with demand. Second, China's relatively inexpensive and increasingly reliable launchers have
enabled Beijing to provide satellite-launching services to major international customers. Third, China recognizes that
space research at the frontier of scientific knowledge promises innovative breakthroughs that are likely
to strengthen its economic power and technological capabilities in the long term. [End Page 21] As a result
of these economic imperatives, the Chinese government has invested substantial resources in a robust
space program. The PRC has developed a comprehensive scientific and industrial base capable of producing commercial
space launchers and satellites. Chinese launch vehicles, which have become increasingly reliable and competitive in the
international market, can place a variety of satellitesincluding those used for communications, remote sensing, photo
reconnaissance, meteorology, and scientific researchinto earth orbit. Furthermore, since 1999, China's involvement in
preparations for manned space flight has attracted substantial international attention. In the case of national security, China's
space program is shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively shielding Chinese intentions and capabilities from outside
observers. The PRC's official policy is to support the exploitation of space for economic, scientific, and
cultural benefits while firmly opposing any militarization of space. 9 China has consistently warned that
any testing, deployment, and use of space-based weapons will undermine global security and lead to a
destabilizing arms race in space. 10 These public pronouncements have been primarily directed at the
United States, especially after President George W. Bush declared in December 2001 that the United States was officially
withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treatyand accelerating U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system. Some
Chinese observers point to U.S. efforts to militarize space as evidence of the U.S. ambition to establish
unilateral hegemony. For example, in 2001, Ye Zhenzhen, a correspondent for a major daily newspaper of the Chinese
Communist Party, stated that, "[a]fter the Cold War, even though the United States already possessed the sole
strategic advantage over the entire planet, and held most advanced space technology and the most satellites, they still want

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
124 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

124

to bring outer space totally under their own armed control to facilitate their smooth ascension as the
world hegemon of the 21st century." 11 Diplomatically, China has urged the use of multilateral and bilateral legal
instruments to regulate space activities, and Beijing and Moscow jointly oppose the development of space weapons or the
militarization of space. 12 The Chinese leadership's opposition to weaponizing space provides evidence of
China's growing concern that the United States will dominate space. The United States' avowed intention to
ensure unrivaled superiority in space, as exemplified by the Rumsfeld Commission report, increasingly defines China's
interests in space. Chinese anxieties about U.S. space power began with the 1991 Gulf War, when the PRC leadership
watched with awe [End Page 22] and dismay as the United States defeated Iraq with astonishing speed. Beijing recognized
that the lopsided U.S. victory was based on superior command and control, intelligence, and communications systems, which
relied heavily on satellite networks. Demonstrations of the United States' undisputed conventional military power in Bosnia;
Kosovo; Afghanistan; and, most recently, Iraq further highlighted for Chinese officials the value of information superiority
and space dominance in modern warfare.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
125 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

125

SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA

WAR IN ASIA LEADS TO NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION AND EXTINCTION

CIRINICONE 00[ Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
2000 <Joseph, Foreign Policy, The Asian Nuclear Reaction Chain, Lexis] The blocks would fall quickest and
hardest in Asia, where proliferation pressures are already building more quickly than anywhere else in
the world. If a nuclear breakout takes place in Asia, then the international arms control agreements that
have been painstakingly negotiated over the past 40 years will crumble. Moreover, the United States could
find itself embroiled in its fourth war on the Asian continent in six decades--a costly rebuke to those who seek the safety of
Fortress America by hiding behind national missile defenses. Consider what is already happening: North Korea continues to
play guessing games with its nuclear and missile programs; South Korea wants its own missiles to match Pyongyang's; India
and Pakistan shoot across borders while running a slow-motion nuclear arms race; China modernizes its nuclear
arsenal amid tensions with Taiwan and the United States; Japan's vice defense minister is forced to resign after
extolling the benefits of nuclear weapons; and Russia--whose Far East nuclear deployments alone make it the largest Asian
nuclear power--struggles to maintain territorial coherence. Five of these states have nuclear weapons; the others
are capable of constructing them. Like neutrons firing from a split atom, one nation's actions can trigger reactions
throughout the region, which in turn, stimulate additional actions. These nations form an interlocking Asian
nuclear reaction chain that vibrates dangerously with each new development. If the frequency and
intensity of this reaction cycle increase, critical decisions taken by any one of these governments could
cascade into the second great wave of nuclear-weapon proliferation, bringing regional and global
economic and political instability and, perhaps, the first combat use of a nuclear weapon since 1945.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
126 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

126



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
127 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

127

US-CHINA CONFLICT IS A ZERO-SUM COMPETITION
William C. Martel and Toshi Yoshihara. 2003. Averting a Sino-U.S. Arms Race The Washington Quarterly
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/washington_quarterly/v026/26.4martel.html 7/7/09 RFF

Sources of Competition At the same time that the United States views space dominance as a fundamental tenet of its national
security, China evidently views U.S. space dominance as a major threat to its geostrategic interests. These views inevitably
breed a zero-sum competition, in which one side perceives any loss as a gain for the other, and could ultimately prove
destabilizing for Sino-U.S. relations. First, Beijing perceives the proposed U.S. missile defense system, which will be
supported by an array of space systems and sensors, as a strategic menace to China and to international security. 15 Many
China watchers contend that this perception stems from anxietiesthat any conceivable system of missile defenses being
developed by the Bush administration will undermine China's small nuclear deterrent. 16 Beijing remains wary of the joint
research program on missile defense by the U.S.-Japanese alliance, which the PRC sees as a potential partnership for
blocking Chinese regional aspirations or, in broader terms, for containing China. Of particular concern for Beijing is the
possibility that Tokyo's decision formally to join U.S. plans for deploying missile defense in Northeast Asia will significantly
increase Japan's military capabilities by providing an opportunity for Japanese forces to enjoy unprecedented military
integration with U.S. forces in the areas of space-based intelligence and communications.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
128 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

128


WEAPONIZTION BAD: A2: PEACEFUL NUKES

WEAPONIZATION BAD EVEN IF WEAPONS ARE CREATED AS A DETERRANCE, THIS ACTION CONDEMNS US
TO GLOBAL WAREFARE

[Lt Col Bruce M. DeBlois (PhD, Oxford University, Division Chief of Strategic Studies and Assessments at the National
Reconnaissance Office) 1998+ Space Sanctuary: A Viable National Strategy
In total, the issues raised here indicate that long-term military costs and the broader social, political, and economic costs
associated with the United States leading the world in the weaponization of space outweigh the prospect of a short-term
military advantage. Furthermore, pursuing a national space strategy on the assumption made at the outsetthat space will be
weaponized; we only need to decide if the US will take the leadcan be challenged on a more fundamental level. This
assumption is ultimately founded on a belief that the nature of peopletheir historical tendency to wage warcannot
change. Contrarily, the social nature of people can change. One has only to compare todays global attitudes toward slavery with those of
150 years ago. If we continue to assume that major global warfare between nations is inevitable and prepare for it
accordingly, we condemn ourselves to that future. Doing so assumes determinismthat the future will happen and that we have to
optimize our position in it. That assumption is not necessarily true and runs counter to the American spirit. The future is what we make it.
Perhaps we need to spend a little less time creating weapons to protect ourselves in a future that we are destined to
stumble into and a little more time building the future we would want to live in. More than challenging a flawed assumption, this
article suggests a replacementan assumption that is both more optimistic about the nature of people and one that resonates with the American spirit:
The United States will lead the world into space; we only need to decide where and how to go.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
129 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

129

SPACE WEAPONIZATION IMPOSSIBLE: NASA

NASA DOESNT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO WEAPONIZE SPACE
David W. McFaddin, April 1998 (Lt Col, USAF) Can the U.S. Air Force Weaponize Space?
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/awc/98-173.pdf 7/7/09 RFF
Just as the Air Force finds itself in a dilemma when it comes to achieving the goals set out in National Space Policy, without
the authority to programmatically accomplish the task, or in other words left holding the bag by current space policy, NASA finds itself in a similar
position. Before the current Space Policy was issued, NASA felt it was being encouraged, or at a minimum allowed, to pursue
manned flight to Mars. Just prior to the current Space Policy release, Space News reported that Spurred by public
excitement about possible life on Mars, a group of NASA officials is devising scenarios for human missions to the red
planet as early as 2011.8 President Clinton even made the press announcement on 7 Aug 96 about the findings of the NASA-Stanford University
team there may be past or present life on Mars!9 NASA officials were very vocal about the need for the U.S. to pursue manned
mission to Mars. As stated in Space News, Wesley Huntress, NASA associate administrator for space science, said that robots can do a reasonable
job at selecting samples on Mars surface for return. He also acknowledged there will likely be a long-term need to send astronauts to Mars to conduct
site research. Huntress also said, The human can do a lot of intelligent integrating of the areaa synthesis job that we still dont yet know how to do in
a robotic brain.10 However, after the Space Policy was released with no mention of manned missions to Mars, NASA
ceased official discussion of a manned mission and was rumored to feel betrayed by the administration. The bottom line from this discussion is the
realization that official policy, including Space Policy, must on the one hand be generic enough to sound acceptable to everyone inside the Beltway while
on the other hand, providing some hope for those wanting specifics enough to actually proceed down a particular path. However, as seen in the NASA and
space control issues above, if the policy is so generic as to not have the teeth required to proceed down a controversial path, it does little good for those
charged with mission accomplishment.

NASA ACTIVITIES IN SPACE ARE NOT FOR WEAPONIZATION THEY ARE KEY TO EXPLORATION
National Space Society, 2005. Nuclear Power: Now More Than Ever, Or Never?
http://www.nss.org/adastra/volume17/david.html 7/7/09 RFF
Having a far different outlook is Bruce Behrhorst, president of Nuclear Space Technology Institute, Inc. He runs the NuclearSpace.com website. Its short
and sweet mission: "To promote the use of nuclear power in space to further enhance the manned exploration of our Solar
System." "There is no other technology in the near term that can be manipulated to service human beings in outer space
other than nuclear energy, if at least to insure the survival of our species in the heavens," Behrhorst believes. "Our
technological prowess and space exploration requires the use of dynamic, high density energy systems to realistically
transport humans and robotica in a safe and efficient mode." Behrhost sees space nuclear power as opening the window to other realistic
methods to affect the space and time frame metric, thus "providing insight into the micro universe for the practicality of bridging much of the ultimate
macro universe." Similar in view is James Dewar, a former nuclear affairs expert in the Department of Energy. In his book, To the End of the Solar System:
The Story of the Nuclear Rocket [University Press of Kentucky, 2003], he stresses that chemically propelled rockets can lift less than five
percent of their takeoff weight into orbit. That fact is a prescription for a stay-at-home, highly limited space program.
Dewar sees nuclear-powered rockets, however, as offering far superior thrusting power and speed. To date, the nuclear rocket story has been scarred by
political battles over the space program's future, involving U.S. presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. He
maintains that only by reestablishing a nuclear rocket project can the nation have a space program worthy of the 21st century, one that makes reality of
the hopes and dreams of science fiction. Just like those projects of the past, NASA's newest nuclear initiative offers the promise of
an untethered exploration of the Solar System. Risk management, as well as public and political support tied to the building of safe, reliable
and affordable nuclear power space systems are essential if humanity is to break the stranglehold of Earth's gravity and travel deep into the Solar System
and well beyond into the surrounding cosmos. If past is prologue, NASA's latest nuclear power play will be as challenging as the technology it hopes to
harness.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
130 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

130

SPACE WEAPONIZATION ALREADY HAPPENED

SPACE WEAPONS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DEPLOYEDALL OF THEIR ARMS RACE ARGUMENTS ARE FALSE
USA TODAY 6-13-05
We've seen it before, nations reacting not to threats but to illusory phantoms, or to badly reasoned deductions. Russia is
particularly vulnerable to such manipulation, from the major defensive weapons systems it fielded to counter U.S. armaments that appeared only on the
pages of Aviation Week, to scary space hardware it actually built to combat what it saw as "soldier-astronauts" aboard militarized Gemini, Apollo and
space shuttle vehicles. In recent years, historians have revealed that Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev bankrupted his country's space program by
demanding that his engineers build a copy of NASA's space shuttle because his advisers persuaded him that the United States wanted to use it for
bombing Moscow. Aside from the waste, building such hardware created new hazards to everyone involved. Now come the newest stories
that echo down the interconnected corridors of the American mainstream media, about "killer satellites" and "death
stars" and "Rods from God" bombardment systems as if the Hollywoodized terminology wasn't a clue that most of the subject matter
was equally imaginary. Take the opening paragraph of a recent Christian Science Monitor editorial that denounced what it portrayed as "the possible
first-ever overt deployment of weapons where heretofore only satellites and astronauts have gone." But history reveals an entirely different reality.
Weapons have occasionally been deployed in space for decades, without sparking mass arms races or hair- trigger
tensions. These are not just systems that send warheads through space, such as intercontinental missiles or the proposed global
bomber. These are systems that put the weapons into stable orbits, circling Earth, based in space. And these systems were all
Russian ones, by the way, most of them predating President Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative" to develop an anti-missile system.

SPACE HAS ALREADY BEEN MILITARIZED
John A. Tirpak, Senior Editor, March 01. Air Force Magazine Online. http://www.afa.org/magazine/march2001/0301space.asp The Space Commission
Reports.
The argument about the militarization of space is "moot," he said, "because space has been militarized. The issue is, whether
you weaponize space." He noted that there is a ban on nuclear weapons tests in space, but otherwise, there is "no prohibition against weapons
in space today" under any existing treaty. Moreover, he noted that a handful of nations already have the "crude" means to do great damage
to a satellite constellation. Fact of Life "Militarization of space is a fact of life," Fogleman asserted. He added that weapons applicable to
space are further along than most suspect and predicted that directed energy weapons will be a "centerpiece" of the US military's arsenal
within 20 years. In later discussion with reporters, he said the commission didn't intend to "challenge the aerospace integration [concept]. ... I don't think
aerospace integration and a restructured space segment of the US Air Force are mutually exclusive." The point of aerospace integration is to merge space
capabilities into all facets of warfare and bring down barriers between space power and field commanders who need it, but Fogleman said that many of
those barriers already "have been knocked down" and had to do with security classification and "nothing to do with organizational structure." While the
Air Force has not suffered much until now by putting nonspace experts in command of space organizations, this needs to change, Fogleman said.

U.S. CAN WEAPONIZE OTHER STATES WONT CHALLENGE U.S. DOMINANCE
Leonard David, 2005. Weapons in Space: The Dawn of a New Era Space.com.
http://www.space.com/news/050617_space_warfare.html 7/7/09 RFF
For those that think space weaponization is impossible, Dolman said such belief falls into the same camp that "man will never fly". The fact that space
weaponization is technically feasible is indisputable, he said, and nowhere challenged by a credible authority. "Space
weaponization can work," Dolman said. "It will be very expensive. But the rewards for the state that weaponizes first--and establishes itself at the top of
the Earth's gravity well, garnering all the many advantages that the high ground has always provided in war--will find the benefits worth the costs." What
if America weaponizes space? One would think such an action would kick-start a procession of other nations to follow
suit. Dolman said he takes issues with that notion. "This argument comes from the mirror-image analogy that if another state were
to weaponize space, well then, the U.S. would have to react. Of course it would! But this is an entirely different
situation," Dolman responded. "The U.S. is the world's most powerful state. The international system looks to it for order. If
the U.S. were to weaponize space, it would be perceived as an attempt to maintain or extend its position, in effect, the
status quo," Dolman suggested. It is likely that most states--recognizing the vast expense and effort needed to hone their space
skills to where America is today--would opt not to bother competing, he said.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
131 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

131

TB (1/4)

TB collapses the economy
Fonkwo, International Consultant on Public Health, 2008 (Peter Ndeboc, International Consultant on Public
Health, EMBO reports 9, S1, S13S17 (2008),
http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v9/n1s/full/embor2008110.html)
During the past couple of decades, however, microbes have shown a tenacious ability to adapt, re-adapt, survive and
challenge human ingenuity (Table 1). The impact of these diseases is immense and is felt across the world. In addition to
affecting the health of individuals directly, infectious diseases are also having an impact on whole societies, economies and
political systems. In the developing world in particular, crucial sectors for sustained development such as health and
education, have seen a marked loss of qualified personnel, most notably to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired
immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), tuberculosis (TB) and malaria. These and other infectious agents not only take
an enormous physical toll on humanity, but also cause significant economic losses both directly in the
developing world and less directly in the developed world. It is therefore a matter not only of public health, but
also of economic interest, to invest in and organize an internationally coordinated strategy to fight the
major infectious diseases, or at least to bring them under control. Of course, one could simply think the solution
would be to try to eliminate the pathogens and/or their vectors from their natural reservoirs or hosts. After all, this was
successfully done with smallpox, for example. Cholera and malaria were similarly brought under control in the USA and
southern Europe. Unfortunately, it is not easy to predict where and when most infectious agents will strike or which new
diseases will emerge. The reasons for their persistence are manifold and include biological, social and political causes.
Pathogens constantly change their genetic make-up, which challenges the development of vaccines against infectious
diseases. This genetic flexibility allows many infectious agents to mutate or evolve into more deadly strains against which
humans have little or no resistance: the HIV and influenza viruses, for example, constantly mutate and recombine to find
their way through the host defence mechanisms. "From the evolutionary perspective, they [viruses and bacteria] are 'the
fittest' and the chances are slim that human ingenuity will ever get the better of them" (Stefansson, 2003). Mass migrations,
trade and travel are notoriously effective at spreading infectious diseases to even the most remote parts of the globe (Table 2).
Mass migrations are often the result of emergency situations such as floods, wars, famines or earthquakes, and can create
precarious conditionssuch as poor hygiene and nutrition or risky sexual behaviourswhich hasten the spread of infectious
diseases. Global trade and travel introduce new pathogens into previously virgin regions, where the diseases find a
more vulnerable population and can develop into epidemics; this was the case, for example, in the late 1990s, when West
Nile virus arrived in New York City, from where it quickly spread throughout North America. In the
present-day global village, the next rabies or Ebola epidemic could occur anywhere in the world. Increasing urbanization and
the growth of urban slums that lack sanitation and clean water, provide fertile ground for infections. Many cities and
townships in the developing world expands at the expense of pristine land, thereby disturbing natural habitats and bringing
humans into more intimate contact with unknown and possibly dangerous microorganisms. Human forays into virgin areas of
the African equatorial forests have brought us into contact with the Ebola virus, although its real origin has not yet been
identified. When humans live in close contact with animals, pathogens are sometimes able to change hosts and infect humans
(Parish et al, 2005). The new hostin this case, a humanis often not as adapted to these zoonotic diseases as the original
host. The past outbreaks of avian influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), hantavirus, Nipah virus and the HIV
epidemic were all due to pathogens that were normally found in animals, but which subsequently found a new, susceptible
host in humans. Moreover, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics is eroding our ability to control even common infections.
Many bacteria have become resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics or combinations of antibiotics; similarly, the once
first-line drugs against malaria are now almost useless. Promiscuous sexual behaviour and substance abuse remain the main
means of transmission of blood-borne infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. In areas of extreme poverty, given the
increased resort to the sex trade for survival, sexual transmission of these diseases is accelerated. In many developing
countries, commercial sex workers and long-distance truck drivers have contributed greatly to the spread of such infectious
diseases from one community to another. In addition, institutional settingssuch as child-care centres, hospitals and homes
for the elderlyprovide an ideal environment for the transmission of infectious diseases because they bring susceptible
individuals into close contact with one another. Wars, natural disasters, economic collapse and other catastrophes, either
individually or in combination, often cause a breakdown in healthcare systems, which contributes further to the emergence,
re-emergence and persistence of otherwise easily controllable diseases. Yet these diseases do not necessarily require an
emergency situation to be able to thrive.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
132 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

132

TB (2/4)

Complacency within the population or health-service providers could be equally dangerous under
otherwise normal conditions. Cutbacks in prevention programmes, a lack of trained staff and a lack of early-detection
systems allow infectious diseases to gain a foothold in otherwise healthy populations. It is often not the
lack of tools, but the lack of an appropriate healthcare infrastructure and personnel that handicaps the
response to infectious diseases. More generally, there is not yet enough commitment to control infectious diseases at
the political level. The absence of a direct and obvious link between disease control and the benefits for public health makes
it difficult to sustain public-health policies. Programmes to prevent and treat infectious diseases in developing countries
depend largely on indigenous health workers, most of whom are unfortunately not motivated enough to deliver the goods.
Given the multiplicity and complexity of the reasons behind this general demotivation, only a strong political will can
improve the situation. Finally, public-health experts also worry that global climate change could contribute further to the
spread of both pathogens and their vectors such as mosquitoes or birds, as their migratory patterns and normal habitats are
likely to change. The burden of infectious disease is therefore likely to aggravate, and in some cases even
provoke, further economic decay, social fragmentation and political destabilization, especially in the developing world and
former communist countries. As of the year 2001, one billion people lived on less than US$1 per day. Countries with a per
capita income of less than US$500 per year spend, on average, US$12 per person per year on health. According to the World
Health Organization (WHO), infectious diseases caused 32% of deaths worldwide, 68% of deaths in Africa and 37% of
deaths in Southeast Asia (WHO, 1999). These diseases account for 90% of the health problems worldwide and kill about 14
million people annually, 90% of whom are from the developing world. They have killed more people than famine, war,
accidents and crimes together. AIDS, TB and malaria are increasingly being acknowledged as important factors in the
political and economic destabilization of the developing world. However, the developed world is not spared either. As of the
year 2000, the number of annual deaths owing to infectious diseases was estimated at roughly 170,000 in the USA (Gordon,
2000). HIV and pneumonia/influenza are among the 10 leading causes of death in the USA. At present, approximately one
million Americans are infected with HIV. The WHO estimates that 33.4 million people have contracted HIV worldwide since
the beginning of the epidemic in 1983 and about 2.3 million of these died in the year 1998 alone. In the USA and many other
countries, AIDS is now the leading cause of death among young adults (Fauci et al, 1996). The United Nations Joint
Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS; Geneva, Switzerland) estimates that another 115 million people will die by 2015 in the
60 countries most affected by AIDS (UNAIDS, 2006). The economic costs of infectious diseasesespecially
HIV/AIDS and malariaare significant. Their increasing toll on productivity owing to deaths and chronic
debilitating illnesses, reduced profitability and decreased foreign investment, has had a serious effect on the
economic growth of some poor countries. According to the WHO, the economic value of the loss-of-life owing to HIV/AIDS
in 1999 was estimated at about 12% of the gross national product (GNP) in sub-Saharan African countries, and the virus
could reduce the gross domestic product of some by 20% or more by 2010. Some of the hardest hit countries in sub-Saharan
Africaand possibly in South and Southeast Asiawill face severe demographic changes as HIV/AIDS and associated
diseases reduce human life-expectancy by as much as 30 years and kill as many as 23% of their populations, thereby creating
a huge orphan cohort. Nearly 42 million children in 27 countries will lose one or both parents to AIDS by 2010, and 19 of the
hardest-hit countries will be in sub-Saharan Africa (WHO, 2003). These demographic changes also affect economic growth,
as endemic diseases deplete a country of its work force. A 10% increase in life expectancy at birth (LEB) is associated with a
rise in economic growth of 0.30.4% per year. The difference in annual growth owing to LEB between a typical high-income
country with a LEB of 77 years and a typical less-developed country with a LEB of 49 years is roughly 1.6% per year, and is
cumulative over time. The relationship between disease and political instability is indirect but real. A wide-
ranging study on the causes of instability indicates that TB prevalencea good indicator of overall quality of
lifecorrelates strongly with political instability, even in countries that have already achieved a measure of
democracy (Van Helden, 2003). The severe social and economic impact of infectious diseases is likely to
intensify the struggle for the political power to control scarce resources. Health must therefore be regarded as a
major economic factor and investments in health as a profitable business. According to the WHO, TB affects working
hours in formal and informal economies, as well as within households (WHO, 2008). Country studies document that each
TB patient loses, on average, 34 months of work time annually due to the disease, and lost earnings amount to 2030% of
household income. Families of people who die from the disease lose approximately 15 years of income.
The global burden

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
133 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

133

TB (3/4)

of TB in economic terms can therefore be easily calculated: given 8.4 million patients yearly according to the most
recent WHO estimates (Kim et al, 2008), the majority of whom are potential wage-earners, and assuming a 30% decline in
average productivity, the toll amounts to approximately US$1 billion each year. Annual deaths are estimated at two million
and, with an average loss of 15 years of income per death, there is an additional deficit of US$11 billion. Every 12 months,
TB therefore causes roughly US$12 billion to disappear from the global economy. The social cost of the lost
productivity further increases the burden on society. By contrast, a 50% reduction in TB-related deaths would cost US$900
million per year, but the return on investment by 2010 would be 22 million people cured, 16 million deaths averted and US$6
billion saved. Each year there are between 400 and 900 million febrile infections owing to malaria (0.72.7 million deaths),
more than 75% of which are among African children, and less than 20% of these malaria cases ever see a doctor for
treatment. Pregnant women have a higher risk of dying from the infection or of having children with low birth weight.
Children suffer cognitive damage and anaemia, and families spend up to 25% of their income on treatment. A study by
Gallup & Sachs (2000) showed that countries with endemic malaria had income levels in 1995 that were only 33% of those
in countries that do not suffer from malaria. Countries with a severe malaria burden grew 1.3% less per year, compared with
those without. Gallup & Sachs estimated the aggregate loss owing to the disease in some 25 countries at approximately
US$73 billion in 1987, which represented more than 15% of the GDP. AIDS/HIV also creates an enormous burden for the
global economy. In the year 2000, 36.1 million people were living with AIDS (25 million of whom were in sub-Saharan
Africa), 5.3 million people were infected (3.8 million in sub-Saharan Africa) and three million people died (2.4 million in
sub-Saharan Africa), and AIDS has caused 21.8 million deaths to date. This has a heavy economic impact on society.
According to the WHO Macroeconomics Report, the economic burden of AIDS on sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 72
million disability-adjusted life years (DALY), and each AIDS death is estimated to have resulted in 34.6 DALYs lost, on
average, in 1999 (WHO, 2003). Assuming that each DALY is valued at the per capita income, the economic value of lost life
years in 1999 caused by AIDS represents 11.7% of the GNP. If each DALY is valued at three times the per capita income,
the losses represent 35.1% of the GNP. In addition, infectious diseases in general, especially those that can cause an
epidemic, continue to make costly disruptions to trade and commerce in every region of the world (Table 3).
Emerging and re-emerging diseases, many of which are likely to appear in poorer countries first, can easily spread to richer
parts of the world. The burden of infectious disease already weakens the military capabilities of various countries and
international peace-keeping efforts. This will contribute further to political destabilization in the hardest-hit parts of the
world. In slowing down social and economic development, diseases challenge democratic developments and transitions, and
contribute to civil conflicts. Finally, trade embargoes or restrictions on travel and immigration owing to
outbreaks of infectious disease will cause more friction between developing and developed countries,
and hinder global commerce to the greater detriment of poor countries. The effects of infectious diseases over the next
decades depend on three variables: the relationship between increasing microbial resistance and scientific efforts to develop
new antibiotics and vaccines; the future of developing and transitional economies, especially with regard to improving the
basic quality of life for the poorest people; and the success of global and national efforts to create effective systems of
surveillance and response. Depending on these variables, the relationship between humans and infectious diseases, and their
impact on the human race, could take one of the following pathways. The optimistic scenario foresees steady improvement
whereby ageing populations and declining fertility, socioeconomic advances, and improvements in health care and medical
research will lead to a 'health transition' in which infectious diseases will be replaced by non-infectious diseases such as
diabetes, heart disease and cancer, as major health challenges. By contrast, the pessimist scenario of steady deterioration
foresees little or no progress in countering infectious diseases in the future. According to this scenario, a vicious spiral
will develop between infectious diseases and poverty. Major diseasessuch as HIV/AIDSwill reach
catastrophic proportions as the viruses spread throughout populations as a result of increased resistance
to multi-drug treatments and the unavailability of expensive treatments in developing countries, which face the majority
of the problem. The third and most likely scenario foresees an initial deterioration followed by limited improvement.
Persistent poverty in the least-developed countries will create conditions that sustain reservoirs of infectious diseases.
Microbial resistance will continue to increase faster than the pace of drug and vaccine development. The threat, in
particular from HIV/AIDS, TB or malaria, will cause such massive socio-economic and cultural upheaval that
it will eventually affect a critical mass of humanity. This will create the necessary pressure for a movement towards
better prevention and control efforts, with new and effective drugs and vaccines made affordable. This will only later result in
demographic changes such as reduced fertility and ageing populations, and a gradual socioeconomic improvement in most
countries. The good news is that infectious

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
134 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

134


TB (4/4)


diseases can be easily prevented through simple and inexpensive methods (Sidebar A). This requires correct education and
the spread of knowledge; however, even these simple measures will not be enough to bring infectious diseases under control
if there is no political and international commitment. Governments must be made to understand the stakes
involved in fighting infectious diseasesthis is the only way to guarantee that the necessary resources
will be allocated in sufficient quantities and on time. We need a global commitment to address the most prominent
infectious diseases and to complement local initiatives with special attention to the least-developed countries (Alilio, 2001;
Stop TB Partnership, 2006). This will require analytical and advisory services in order to help countries generate and act on
information about the status and dynamics of most infectious diseases, and to estimate their social and economic impact.
Such information is essential for advocacy, and for making appropriate and timely decisions. In the face of limited resources,
joint efforts will have to focus on the main killer diseasesincluding HIV/AIDS, TB and malariain order to have the
greatest impact. Medical treatment, psychosocial supportincluding palliative care for debilitating diseasesand highly
active anti-microbial therapy will be essential. In addition, the prevailing problem of the physical and financial inaccessibility
of most of these drugs will have to be addressed. Last, best practices will have to be identified and scaled up. This will
require special efforts to identify and overcome legal barriers, and to analyse, country-by-country, financial and non-financial
resources with a view to mobilizing support internationally. In conclusion, infectious diseases constitute a major problem for
the world, but even more so for the developing world. No country can afford to remain aloof in the battle against these
diseases, especially given the potentially far-reaching and devastating effects that they could have on the human race at large.
Increasing globalization means that the big questions in relation to epidemics will be those of where and whenand not
whetherthe next epidemic emerges, as historical examples have shown. Therefore, all stakeholdersresearchers,
politicians, health professionals, the financial sector and the community at largemust take the necessary bold steps forward.
Even from the purely economic point of view, the investment in the fight against infectious diseases is
evidently good business: the world economyand, subsequently, individual family economiesstands to
benefit from such investments. We already know a lot of what we must do; we just need to do it. The future of the
human race depends on our actions today.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
135 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

135

TB

TB collapses the economy
Thomas, Writer for the WHO, 4/8/05 (Chris, Writer for the World Health Organization (WHO), 4/8/05
http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_apr05/pillars.htm )
TB tends to threaten the poorest and most marginalized groups of people. It disrupts the social fabric of
society and slows or undermines gains in economic development. An overwhelming 98 percent of the 2
million annual TB deathsand some 95 percent of all new casesoccur in developing countries. On
average, TB causes three to four months of lost work time and lost earnings for a household. USAID has
been a key player in the Stop TB Partnership, an effort of more than 350 partner governments and organizations. Aside from
funding, the Agency invests in the Stop TB Partnership and GDF by providing technical support. This helps poor countries
improve their drug management systems, trains local TB experts, and helps health ministries draw up comprehensive TB
strategies. USAID has been particularly involved in administering DOTS, a system of observing people while they take the
full course of medicine to prevent drug-resistant strains from developing.


The timeframe for TB is immediate
Lite, 4/1/09 (Jordan Lite, 4/1/09, Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-
science/post.cfm?id=drug-resistant-tuberculosis-a-time-2009-04-01 )
The growing prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a "potentially explosive situation," the World
Health Organization's director general, Margaret Chan, said today at the opening of a three-day meeting on the
problem.Representatives from 27 countries affected by multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and
extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) are gathering in Beijing to discuss how to address the trend.
MDR-TB is resistant to first-line drugs; XDR-TB doesnt respond to those meds or second-line therapies.
More than 500,000 MDR-TB cases occur annuallyonly 3 percent of them treated according to WHO standardsand XDR-
TB exists in more than 50 countries, the agency says. People with HIV, whose immune systems are already weakened by the
AIDS-causing virus, are at increased risk of TB. "Call it what you maya time bomb or a powder keg," Chan
said today, according to the Associated Press. "Any way you look at it, this is a potentially explosive
situation."


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
136 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

136

Terror

A terrorist attack escalates to a global nuclear exchange
Speice 06
)Speice 06 06 JD Candidate @ College of William and Mary *Patrick F. Speice, Jr., NEGLIGENCE AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION:
ELIMINATING THE CURRENT LIABILITY BARRIER TO BILATERAL U.S.-RUSSIAN NONPROLIFERATION ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, William & Mary Law Review, February 2006, 47 Wm
and Mary L. Rev. 1427])

Accordingly, there is a significant and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a nuclear device or fissile
material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic decline and the end of stringent Soviet-era nuclear
security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could acquire a nuclear weapon by a number of methods, including
"steal[ing] one intact from the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one by [*1438]
such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in one of these ways." 40
Equally threatening, however, is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase fissile material and construct a nuclear device on
their own. Very little material is necessary to construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon. 41 Although nuclear
devices are extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon are not
significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be used to deliver a nuclear device into the United States
makes it incredibly likely that terrorists could successfully employ a nuclear weapon once it was built. 43 Accordingly,
supply-side controls that are aimed at preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most
effective means of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the rationale for
maintaining a large military-industrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were closed. 45 This resulted in at least
35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy has stabilized
somewhat, there [*1439] are still at least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young
to retire, 47 raising the chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge, or steal nuclear
material to sell, to states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48 The potential consequences of the unchecked
spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly
horrifying. A terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human
and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United States to discover the
perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the number of casualties and potentially triggering a
full-scale nuclear conflict. 50 In addition to the threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from
Russia will reduce the barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear
weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the United States [*1440] or
its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as increase the likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the
United States and escalate to the use of nuclear weapons. 53

A nuclear terrorist attack will trigger every single impact scenario
Zedillo 06
(Ernesto Zedillo, Former President of Mexico Director, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, FORBES,
January 9, 2006, p. 25)
Even if you agree with what's being done in the war on terror, you still could be upset about what's not happening: doing the
utmost to prevent a terrorist nuclear attack. We all should have a pretty clear idea of what would follow a
nuclear weapon's detonation in any of the world's major cities. Depending on the potency of the device the loss
of life could be in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), the destruction of property in the trillions
of dollars, the escalation in conflicts and violence uncontrollable, the erosion of authority and
government unstoppable and the disruption of global trade and finance unprecedented. In short, we
could practically count on the beginning of another dark age.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
137 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

137

Terrorism turns Econ
Academic studies prove terrorism hurts the economy
Abadie and Gardeazabal, 7 (Alberto Abadie- professor of public policy @ Harvard, and Javier Gareazabal- professor of
economics @ the University of Baque Country, Terrorism and the World Economy, August 2007,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/twe.pdf)
It has been argued that terrorism should not have a large effect on economic activity, because terrorist attacks
destroy only a small fraction of the stock of capital of a country (see, e.g., Becker and Murphy, 2001). In contrast,
empirical estimates of the consequences of terrorism typically suggest large effects on economic outcomes (see,
e.g., Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003). The main theme of this article is that mobility of productive capital in an open
economy may account for much of the difference between the direct and the equilibrium impact of terrorism. We
use a simple economic model to show that terrorism may have a large impact on the allocation of productive capital
across countries, even if it represents a small fraction of the overall economic risk. The model emphasizes that, in
addition to increasing uncertainty, terrorism reduces the expected return to investment. As a result, changes in the
intensity of terrorism may cause large movements of capital across countries if the world economy is sufficiently
open, so international investors are able to diversify other types of country risks. Using a unique dataset on
terrorism and other country risks, we find that, in accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of
terrorist risks are associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions, even after controlling for
other types of country risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk is associated with a fall in
the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of GDP. The magnitude of the estimated effect is large,
which suggests that the open-economy channel" impact of terrorism may be substantial.
This paper analyzes the effects of terrorism in an integrated world economy. From an economic standpoint,
terrorism has been described to have four main effects (see, e.g., US Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 2002).
First, the capital stock (human and physical) of a country is reduced as a result of terrorist attacks. Second, the
terrorist threat induces higher levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in counter-terrorism
expenditures, drawing resources from productive sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to affect
negatively specific industries such as tourism.1 However, this classification does not include the potential effects of
increased terrorist threats in an open economy. In this article, we use a stylized macroeconomic model of the world
economy and inter- national data on terrorism and the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) assets and liabilities
to study the economic effects of terrorism in an integrated world economy


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
138 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

138

Terrorism Defense
Nuclear weapons are too expensive
RAND, 5 (RAND research brief, Combating Nuclear Terrorism http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/
RB165/index1.html)
Nuclear Acquisition Remains Relatively Difficult for Terrorist Groups
Acquiring a nuclear weapon requires access to specialized material and a high level of technical expertise that has
historically been beyond the reach of terrorist groups. Throughout the 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo tried without success to
hire Russian nuclear experts, to purchase Russian nuclear technology and data, to mine uranium, and to steal
sensitive nuclear power plant information. These efforts were thwarted by Russian officials refusal to cooperate and
by the lack of technical expertise within the group. Similarly, al Qaeda has been exposed to numerous scams
involving the sale of radiological waste and other non-weapons-grade material. These difficulties may lead terrorists
to conclude that nuclear acquisition is too difficult and too expensive to pursue.

The threat of terrorism has been greatly exaggerated empirically proven
Mueller, 05 (John, Professor of Political Science at OhioState. May 2005. International Studies Perspectives,
Volume 6 Issue 2 Page 208-234, Simplicity and Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration)
The capacity for small bands of terrorists to do harm is far less than was the case for the great countries
behind international Communism who possessed a very impressive military (and nuclear) capacity and had,
in addition, shown great skill at political subversion. By contrast, for all the attention it evokes, terrorism, in
reasonable context, actually causes rather little damage and the likelihood that any individual will become a
victim in most places is microscopic. Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in "the age of
terror" (Hoagland, 2004). However, the number of people worldwide who die as a result of international
terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny compared with the numbers who die in most civil wars
or from automobile accidents. In fact, until 2001 far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by
all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning. And except for 2001, virtually none of these
terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Indeed, outside of 2001, fewer people have died in
America from international terrorism than have drowned in toilets.

Even with the September 11 attacks
included in the count, however, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late
1960s (which is when the State Department began its accounting) is about the same as the number killed
over the same period by lightningor by accident-causing deer or by severe allergic reaction to peanuts. In
almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists is not
much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States. Some of this is definitional. When terrorism becomes really
extensive, we generally no longer call it terrorism, but war. But people are mainly concerned about random terror, not sustained warfare. Moreover, even using an expansive definition of terrorism
and including domestic terrorism in the mix, it is likely that far fewer people were killed by terrorists in the entire world over the last hundred years than died in any number of unnoticed civil wars
during that century. Obviously, this could change if international terrorists are able to assemble sufficient weaponry or devise new tactics to kill masses of people and if they come to do so routinely
and this, of course, is the central fear. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that 9/11 was an extreme event: until then, no more than 329 had ever been killed in a single terrorist attack (in a 1985 Air
India explosion), and during the entire twentieth century fewer than 20 terrorist attacks resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people. The economic destruction on September 11 was also
unprecedented, of course. However, extreme events often remain exactly thataberrations, rather than harbingers. A bomb planted in a piece of checked
luggage was responsible for the explosion that caused a PanAm jet to crash into Lockerbie Scotland in 1988.
Since that time, hundreds of billions of pieces of luggage have been transported on American carriers and
none has exploded to down an aircraft. This does not mean that one should cease worrying about luggage on
airlines, but it does suggest that extreme events do not necessarily assure repetitionany more than
Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 has.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
139 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

139

Terrorism Defense
The costs of fighting terrorism outweigh the small risk of another attack
Fidas, 7 (George- Professor of Practice of International Affair @ Elliot school of international affairs, "Terrorism:
Existensial Threat or Exaggerated Threat: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm" Feb 28, 2007
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p181269_index.html)

But terrorism is not likely to pose the kind of sustained existential threat that strong states, especially nuclear-armed
ones, posed against other strong states in the 20th century. Treating terrorism as such in an endless war is likely to
lead to endless fear and the slighting of other, perhaps more salient new and existing security threats, ever larger
budget expenditures that weaken our overall economy, and growing restrictions on civil liberties and freedom of
movement at home and loss of soft power abroad. It will also produce a self-fulfilling sense of fear and terror that
will accomplish the goals of our terrorist adversaries at little risk to themselves.

Terrorist threats are exaggerated
Brookings Institue, 8 (The Brookings Institution, Have We Exaggerated the Threat of Terrorism?
http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/0221_terrorism.aspx?p=1, November 2008)
The Crisis in the Middle East Task Force addressed the topic of Have We Exaggerated the Threat of Terrorism? in
its sixth session on February 21, 2008. This session, hosted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, assessed the
risks of and appropriate responses to terrorism. One participant argued that terrorism presents minimal cause for
concern. Discounting war zones, studies show that there have been very few people killed by Muslim extremists
each yearin fact, more people drown in bathtubs each year in the United States. The FBI reported in 2005 that it
had not found an al-Qaeda presence in the United States. Additionally, terrorism, by its very nature, can be self-
defeating: many attacks by al-Qaeda have caused the group to lose popularity.
This participant questioned both the intentions and capability of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden has threatened many
attacks that he has not been able to execute. In specific, this participant thought it unlikely that that al-Qaeda would
obtain nuclear weapons, despite fears to the contrary. Another participant agreed that the fears about terrorism are
exaggerated and differentiated between the actual campaign against al-Qaeda and its supporters and the idea of a
general war on terrorism.

No Impact to terrorism
Fidas, 7 (George- Professor of Practice of International Affair @ Elliot school of international affairs, "Terrorism:
Existensial Threat or Exaggerated Threat: Challenging the Dominant Paradigm" Feb 28, 2007
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p181269_index.html)
The overwhelmingly dominant-indeed only-paradigm concerning terrorism is that it is pervasive, highly lethal, and
poses a clear and present danger to the United States, in particular, and tothe world in general. Yet, group think is
rarely correct and this is evident from the facts. There has been no terrorist act in the United States since 9/11 and
less than 10 major terrorist attacks around the world resulting in fewer than 1000 casualties. The riposte is that this
is due to strong countermeasures, especially in the U.S., but this is belied by the fact that borders remain porous and
thousands of people cross them illegally on a daily basis, many counterterrorism measures have failed official and
unofficial tests, and key facilities remain unprotected. Meanwhile, huge funds are being allocated to conduct the so-
called war on terror, the balance between liberty and security is tilting toward security, and both law enforcement
officials and publics are "terrorized" by a pervasive uneasiness about impending terrrorist attacks. There is no doubt
that the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they have become an anchoring event in a psychological sense through
which all subsequent events and perceptions are being filtered, and thereby may be skewing our perceptions about
the continued seriousness of the terrorist threat. It is time to at least question the dominant paradigm and that is
the topic of this paper.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
140 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

140

Terrorism doesnt hurt the economy
Terrorism has no economic impact- empirically proven
Shapiro, 3 (Robert, Slate.com, Former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce Al-Qaida and the GDP, 2/28/03,
http://www.slate.com/id/2079298/)
While everyone else is buying duct tape and making evacuation plans, we cold-blooded economists ask, what could
terrorism do to an economy like ours?
There is an economics of everything else, so why not an economics of terrorism? Terrorists have inflicted enough
damage in enough places during the past 30 years for economists to credibly evaluate how terrorism affects
economic activity. The lesson for the United States: The economic cost of terrorism here is likely to be less than
you'd expect.
In the few places where terrorist activity has been pervasive and protractedColombia, Northern Ireland, the
Basque region of Spain, and Israelit depresses growth and sometimes stunts development. Where terrorism has
been more occasional and local, the economic impact is modest, resembling ordinary crime. So long as al-Qaida or
its counterparts are unable (or unwilling) to use weapons much more powerful than airliners, especially nuclear
weapons, any ambition to derail a large, advanced economy like ours will fail.
The immediate costs of terrorism are rarely very high for an economy. For small operationsa political murder or
bombing that kills a few people (think Colombian narco-terrorists, IRA operatives, or Palestinian suicide bombers)the
direct economic impact is negligible. Even a huge terror strike is a blip in a vast economy like the United States'. The
World Trade Center attack did not move the U.S. economy, as consumer spending and GDP accelerated strongly in the
quarter immediately following the attack. Modern economies regularly absorb greater losses from bad weather and
natural disastersfor example, the 1988 heat wave that took the lives of more than 5,000 Americans or the 1999
earthquake in Izmit, Turkey, that killed 17,000without derailing.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
141 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

141

Terrorism deters foreign investment
Abadie and Gardeazabal, 7 (Alberto Abadie- professor of public policy @ Harvard, and Javier Gareazabal- professor of
economics @ the University of Baque Country, Terrorism and the World Economy, August 2007,
http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/twe.pdf)

The amounts of foreign direct investment in the U.S. before and after the September 11th attacks provide some
suggestive evidence of the open-economy channel of terrorism. In the year 2000, the year before the terrorist
attacks, foreign direct investment inflows represented about 15.8 percent of the Gross Fixed Capital Formation in
the U.S. This figure decreased to only 1.5 percent in 2003, two years after the attacks. Conversely, foreign direct
investment outflows from the U.S. increased from about 7.2 percent of the Gross Fixed Capital Formation for the
U.S. in 2000 to 7.5 percent in 2003 (see UNCTAD, 2004). Of course, not all this variation in FDI can be attributed to
the effect of the September 11th attacks. As of September 2001 foreign direct investment inflows had fallen from its
2000 peak not only in the U.S. but also in other developed economies (see UNCTAD, 3In related research, Frey,
Luechinger, and Stutzer (2004) study the effect of terrorism on life satisfaction. Frey, Luechinger, and Stutzer (2007)
surveys the existing research on the economic impact of terrorism. 2 2002). These figures, however, motivate the
question of to which extent an increase in the perceived level of terrorism was responsible for the drop in FDI in the
U.S. that followed the events of September 11th. Surveys of international corporate investors provide direct
evidence of the importance of terrorism on foreign investment. Corporate investors rate terrorism as one of the
most important factors influencing their foreign direct investment decisions (see Global Business Policy Council,
2004).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
142 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

142

Warming

Warming leads to nuclear war and famine that kills hundreds of millions of people
Pfeiffer 2004
[Dale Allen, Geologist, Global Climate Change & Peak Oil, The Wilderness Publications, Online]

But the real importance of the report lies in the statement of probability and in the authors' recommendations to the President
and the National Security Council. While no statistical analysis of probability is given in the report as it has been released
(any such statistical analysis would most likely be classified), the authors state that the plausibility of severe and
rapid climate change is higher than most of the scientific community and perhaps all of the political
community is prepared for.6 They say that instead of asking whether this could happen, we should be
asking when this will happen. They conclude: It is quite plausible that within a decade the evidence of an imminent
abrupt climate shift may become clear and reliable.7 From such a shift, the report claims, utterly appalling
ecological consequences would follow. Europe and Eastern North America would plunge into a mini-ice
age, with weather patterns resembling present day Siberia. Violent storms could wreak havoc around the
globe. Coastal areas such as The Netherlands, New York, and the West coast of North America could become
uninhabitable, while most island nations could be completely submerged. Lowlands like Bangladesh could
be permanently swamped. While flooding would become the rule along coastlines, mega-droughts could destroy the world's
breadbaskets. The dust bowl could return to America's Midwest. Famine and drought would result in a major drop
in the planet's ability to sustain the present human population. Access to water could become a major
battleground hundreds of millions could die as a result of famine and resource wars. More than 400
million people in subtropical regions will be put at grave risk. There would be mass migrations of climate refugees,
particularly to southern Europe and North America. Nuclear arms proliferation in conjunction with resource
wars could very well lead to nuclear wars.8 And none of this takes into account the effects of global peak oil and the
North American natural gas cliff. Not pretty.

Runaway warming leads to extinction
Pfeiffer 2004
[Dale Allen, Geologist, Global Climate Change & Peak Oil, The Wilderness Publications, Online]
The possibility of runaway global warming is not as distant a threat as we may wish. It is a threat which
worries some of the greatest minds living among us today. Stephen Hawking, physicist, best selling author of A Brief
History of Time, and claimant of the Cambridge University post once occupied by Sir Isaac Newton (the Lucasian Chair of
Mathematics), has been quoted as saying, "I am afraid the atmosphere might get hotter and hotter until it
will be like Venus with boiling sulfuric acid."1 The renowned physicist was joined by other notables such as former
President Jimmy Carter, former news anchor Walter Cronkite, and former astronaut and Senator John Glenn in drafting a
letter to urge President Bush to develop a plan to reduce US emissions of greenhouse gases.2 Former British
Environmental Minister Michael Meacher is also worried about the survival of the human race due to
global warming.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
143 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

143


**HEG**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
144 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

144

Heg Declining and Unsustainable

Hegemony is declining- counterbalancing and overstretch, hard power and economic recovery wont solve
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, Empire Falls
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)

The balance of world power circa 2008 and 2013 shows a disturbing trend. True, the United States remains stronger
than any other state individually, but its power to stand up to the collective opposition of other major
powers is falling precipitously. Though these worlds depict potential power, not active counterbalancing coalitions, and
this type of alliance may never form, nonetheless, American relative power is declining to the point where even
subsets of major powers acting in concert could produce sufficient military power to stand a reasonable
chance of successfully opposing American military policies. Indeed, if present trends continue to 2013
and beyond, China and Russia, along with any one of the other major powers, would have sufficient
economic capacity to mount military opposition at least as serious as did the Soviet Union during the
cold war. And it is worth remembering that the Soviet Union never had more than about half the world product of the
United States, which China alone is likely to reach in the coming decade. The faults in the arguments of the
unipolar-dominance school are being brought into sharp relief. The world is slowly coming into balance.
Whether or not this will be another period of great-power transition coupled with an increasing risk of
war will largely depend on how America can navigate its decline. Policy makers must act responsibly in this
new era or risk international opposition that poses far greater costs and far greater dangers. A COHERENT grand strategy
seeks to balance a states economic resources and its foreign-policy commitments and to sustain that balance over time. For
America, a coherent grand strategy also calls for rectifying the current imbalance between our means and our ends, adopting
policies that enhance the former and modify the latter. Clearly, the United States is not the first great power to
suffer long-term declinewe should learn from history. Great powers in decline seem to almost
instinctively spend more on military forces in order to shore up their disintegrating strategic positions,
and some like Germany go even further, shoring up their security by adopting preventive military
strategies, beyond defensive alliances, to actively stop a rising competitor from becoming dominant. For
declining great powers, the allure of preventive waror lesser measures to merely firmly contain a
rising powerhas a more compelling logic than many might assume. Since Thucydides, scholars of
international politics have famously argued that a declining hegemon and rising challenger must necessarily face such intense
security competition that hegemonic war to retain dominance over the international system is almost a foregone conclusion.
Robert Gilpin, one of the deans of realism who taught for decades at Princeton, believed that the first and most attractive
response to a societys decline is to eliminate the source of the problem . . . [by] what we shall call a hegemonic war. Yet,
waging war just to keep another state down has turned out to be one of the great losing strategies in
history. The Napoleonic Wars, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, German aggression
in World War I, and German and Japanese aggression in World War II were all driven by declining
powers seeking to use war to improve their future security. All lost control of events they thought they could
control. All suffered ugly defeats. All were worse-off than had they not attacked. As China rises, America must
avoid this great-power trap. It would be easy to think that greater American military efforts could offset the
consequences of Chinas increasing power and possibly even lead to the formation of a multilateral strategy to contain China
in the future. Indeed, when Chinas economic star began to rise in the 1990s, numerous voices called for precisely this, noting
that on current trajectories China would overtake the United States as the worlds leading economic power by 2050.
8
Now, as
that date draws nearerindeed, current-dollar calculations put the crossover point closer to 2040and with Beijing
evermore dependent on imported oil for continued economic growth, one might think the case for actively containing China
is all the stronger. Absent provocative military adventures by Beijing, however, U.S. military efforts to contain the
rising power are most likely doomed to failure. Chinas growth turns mainly on domestic issuessuch
as shifting the workforce from rural to urban areasthat are beyond the ability of outside powers to
significantly influence. Although Chinas growth also depends on external sources of oil, there is no way to exploit this

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
145 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

145

vulnerability short of obviously hostile alliances (with India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan) and clearly aggressive military
measures (controlling the sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf to Asia) that together could deny oil to China. Any efforts
along these lines would likely backfireand only exacerbate Americas problems, increasing the risk of
counterbalancing. Even more insidious is the risk of overstretch. This self-reinforcing spiral escalates
current spending to maintain increasingly costly military commitments, crowding out productive
investment for future growth. Today, the cold-war framework of significant troop deployments to Europe, Asia and the
Persian Gulf is coming unglued. We cannot afford to keep our previous promises. With American forces bogged
down in Iraq and Afghanistan and mounting troubles in Iran and Pakistan, the United States has all but
gutted its military commitments to Europe, reducing our troop levels far below the one hundred thousand of the
1990s. Nearly half have been shifted to Iraq and elsewhere. Little wonder that Russia found an opportunity to
demonstrate the hollowness of the Bush administrations plan for expanding NATO to Russias borders by scoring a quick
and decisive military victory over Georgia that America was helpless to prevent. If a large-scale conventional
war between China and Taiwan broke out in the near future, one must wonder whether America would significantly shift air
and naval power away from its ongoing wars in the Middle East in order to live up to its global commitments. If the United
States could not readily manage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time, could it really wage a
protracted struggle in Asia as well? And as the gap between Americas productive resources and global
commitments grows, why will others pass up opportunities to take advantage of Americas overstretched
grand strategy? Since the end of the cold war, American leaders have consistently claimed the ability to maintain a
significant forward-leaning military presence in the three major regions of the globe and, if necessary, to wage two major
regional wars at the same time. The harsh reality is that the United States no longer has the economic capacity for such an
ambitious grand strategy. With 30 percent of the worlds product, the United States could imagine maintaining this hope.
Nearing 20 percent, it cannot. Yet, just withdrawing American troops from Iraq is not enough to put Americas grand strategy
into balance. Even assuming a fairly quick and problem-free drawdown, the risks of instability in Iraq, Afghanistan and
elsewhere in the region are likely to remain for many years to come. Further, even under the most optimistic
scenarios, America is likely to remain dependent on imported oil for decades. Together, these factors point
toward the Persian Gulf remaining the most important region in American grand strategy. So, as Europe and Asia continue to
be low-order priorities, Washington must think creatively and look for opportunities to make strategic trades. America
needs to share the burden of regional security with its allies and continue to draw down our troop levels
in Europe and Asia, even considering the attendant risks. The days when the United States could
effectively solve the security problems of its allies in these regions almost on its own are coming to an
end. True, spreading defense burdens more equally will not be easy and will be fraught with its own costs and risks.
However, this is simply part of the price of Americas declining relative power. The key principle is for America to
gain international support among regional powers like Russia and China for its vital national-security
objectives by adjusting less important U.S. policies. For instance, Russia may well do more to discourage Irans
nuclear program in return for less U.S. pressure to expand NATO to its borders. And of course America needs to develop a
plan to reinvigorate the competitiveness of its economy. Recently, Harvards Michael Porter issued an economic blueprint to
renew Americas environment for innovation. The heart of his plan is to remove the obstacles to increasing investment in
science and technology. A combination of targeted tax, fiscal and education policies to stimulate more productive investment
over the long haul is a sensible domestic component to Americas new grand strategy. But it would be misguided to
assume that the United States could easily regain its previously dominant economic position, since the
world will likely remain globally competitive. To justify postponing this restructuring of its grand
strategy, America would need a firm expectation of high rates of economic growth over the next several
years. There is no sign of such a burst on the horizon. Misguided efforts to extract more security from a
declining economic base only divert potential resources from investment in the economy, trapping the
state in an ever-worsening strategic dilemma. This approach has done little for great powers in the past,
and America will likely be no exception when it comes to the inevitable costs of desperate policy
making.The United States is not just declining. Unipolarity is becoming obsolete, other states are rising to
counter American power and the United States is losing much of its strategic freedom. Washington must
adopt more realistic foreign commitments.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
146 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

146

Hard Power doesnt solve Heg
Hard power doesnt maintain heg and ultimately causes counterbalancing
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The National Interest, Empire Falls
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)

As China rises, America must avoid this great-power trap. It would be easy to think that greater American military
efforts could offset the consequences of Chinas increasing power and possibly even lead to the
formation of a multilateral strategy to contain China in the future. Indeed, when Chinas economic star began to
rise in the 1990s, numerous voices called for precisely this, noting that on current trajectories China would overtake
the United States as the worlds leading economic power by 2050.8 Now, as that date draws nearer
indeed, current-dollar calculations put the crossover point closer to 2040and with Beijing evermore
dependent on imported oil for continued economic growth, one might think the case for actively containing China is all the
stronger. Absent provocative military adventures by Beijing, however, U.S. military efforts to contain the
rising power are most likely doomed to failure. Chinas growth turns mainly on domestic issuessuch
as shifting the workforce from rural to urban areasthat are beyond the ability of outside powers to
significantly influence. Although Chinas growth also depends on external sources of oil, there is no way to exploit
this vulnerability short of obviously hostile alliances (with India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan) and
clearly aggressive military measures (controlling the sea-lanes from the Persian Gulf to Asia) that
together could deny oil to China. Any efforts along these lines would likely backfireand only
exacerbate Americas problems, increasing the risk of counterbalancing.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
147 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

147

Heg collapse turns economy

US withdrawal would result in a new dark age and collapse the global economy
Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, A World without Power July/August 4.
http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)

So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are
the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of
course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For
the world is much more populousroughly 20 times moremeaning that friction between the worlds disparate
tribes is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not
merely on fresh water and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has
upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital
has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process
through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalizationwhich a new Dark Age would producewould certainly
lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second
September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable
for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europes Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist
extremists infiltration of the E.U. would become irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East
to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing
the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude
that lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the
global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With
ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western
nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous
regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin
America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa,
the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply
suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there?

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
148 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

148

Kagan

US hegemony key to check multiple scenarios for nuclear war.

Kagan 7 Senior Associate @ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(End of Dreams, Return of History, Policy Review, Hoover Institution,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html)

Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across numerous administrations,
Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have insisted on preserving regional predominance in East
Asia; the Middle East; the Western Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its
goal after the Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration and
continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its influence eastward across Europe and
into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as it maintains its position as the predominant global
power, it is also engaged in hegemonic competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the
Middle East and Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States, too, is
more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to acknowledge it, they generally prefer their
global place as No. 1 and are equally loath to relinquish it. Once having entered a region, whether for practical or
idealistic reasons, they are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed it
in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left alone even as they seek daily to
shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The jostling for status and influence among these ambitious
nations and would-be nations is a second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system.
Nationalism in all its forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for
power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these rivalries from intensifying
its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United States to diminish its influence in the regions
where it is currently the strongest power, the other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have
done in the past: sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and wars of
varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar world is that most of these
powers would possess nuclear weapons. That could make wars between them less likely, or it could simply make
them more catastrophic. It is easy but also dangerous to underestimate the role the United States plays in
providing a measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the United States
is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete with it even in their home waters. They
either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to be the guarantor of international waterways and trade
routes, of international access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the United States
engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more genuinely multipolar
world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval dominance at least in their own regions and
possibly beyond. Conflict between nations would involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed
embargos, of the kind used in World War i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now
impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but on a foundation provided
by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical miracle, owes its founding to American power, for
without it the European nations after World War ii would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most
Europeans recoil at the thought, but even today Europes stability depends on the guarantee, however distant
and one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any dangerous development on the
continent. In a genuinely multipolar world, that would not be possible without renewing the danger of world
war. People who believe greater equality among nations would be preferable to the present American
predominance often succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
149 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

149

independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American power was diminished, the
aspects of international order that they like would remain in place. But
thats not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions. It is shaped by
configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects the distribution of power in the
world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar
world in which the poles were Russia, China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of
order, with different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in shaping it.
Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it would. But it is doubtful that it would
suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from
perfect but also offers no guarantee against major conflict among the worlds great powers. Even under the umbrella of
unipolarity, regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan and draw in
both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing the United States and its European
allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan
remains possible, as does conflict between Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other
great powers, including the United States. Such conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what policies the United
States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States weakens or withdraws from its
positions of regional dominance. This is especially true in East Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable
American power has a stabilizing and pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of
Chinas neighbors. But even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the
region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious, independent, nationalist
Japan. In Europe, too, the departure of the United States from the scene even if it remained the worlds most
powerful nation could be destabilizing. It could tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially
forceful approach to unruly nations on its periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the
disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and the West, and therefore
to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history suggests that conflicts in Europe involving Russia
are possible even without Soviet communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe if it adopted what
some call a strategy of offshore balancing this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict involving
Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw the United States back in under
unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine that a retrenchment of the American
position in the Middle East and the assumption of a more passive, offshore role would lead to greater stability
there. The vital interest the United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to
other nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would stand back and
hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor would a more even-handed policy
toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the
need to come to Israels aid if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the American
commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world, practically ensures a heavy American
military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the ground. The subtraction of American power from
any region would not end conflict but would simply change the equation. In the Middle East,
competition for influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two centuries.
The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesnt change this. It only adds a new and more threatening dimension to the
competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate American
withdrawal from Iraq would change. The alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and
peace. It is further competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A diminution
of American influence would not be followed by a diminution of other external influences. One could
expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if only to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the
more powerful states of the region, particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American
administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
150 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

150

Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasnt changed that much. An American withdrawal from
Iraq will not return things to normal or to a new kind of stability in the region. It will produce a new
instability, one likely to draw the United States back in again. The alternative to American regional
predominance in the Middle East and elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning
nationalism, the future is likely to be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist
movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no one should imagine that a
reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global involvement will provide an easier path.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
151 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

151

Decline Inev

Rising asymmetric balancing, diplomatic countermovements, and overstretch coupled with massive
expenditure has rendered the decline of hegemony imminent

Khanna 08 (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)

It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but has about 20,000 troops in the
independent state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has
absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The
European Union has expanded to well over 30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as
substantial nuclear energy. Americas standing in the world remains in steady decline. Why? Werent we
supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should, lead it to collective
security and prosperity? Indeed, improvements to Americas image may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. Condoleezza
Rice has said America has no permanent enemies, but it has no permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq as the symbols of a global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has
weakened Americas armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened resistance in the form of terrorist
networks, insurgent groups and asymmetric weapons like suicide bombers. Americas unipolar moment has inspired
diplomatic and financial countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world
order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or Obama could do to resist
its growth.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
152 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

152

Econ T/

US withdrawal would result in a new dark age and collapse the global economy
Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, A World without Power July/August 4.
http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)

So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are
the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of
course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For
the world is much more populousroughly 20 times moremeaning that friction between the worlds disparate
tribes is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not
merely on fresh water and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has
upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital
has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process
through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalizationwhich a new Dark Age would producewould certainly
lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second
September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable
for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europes Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist
extremists infiltration of the E.U. would become irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East
to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing
the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude
that lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports
of the global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould become the targets of plunderers and
pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise
liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear
wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending
catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in evangelical
Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their
deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents;
who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there?

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
153 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

153

**WAR IMPACTS**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
154 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

154

War causes dehumanization
Dehumanization is used as propaganda during wars
Vinulan-Arellano 03. [Katharine, March 22 yonip.com Stop Dehumanization of People to Stop Wars
http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/nomorewars.html]

In war time, dehumanization is a key element in propaganda and brainwashing. By portraying the enemy as less
than human, it is much easier to motivate your troops to rape, torture or kill. Ethnic cleansing or genocide would
always be perceived as a crime against humanity if human beings belonging to another race or religion are not
dehumanized.
Throughout history, groups or races of human beings have been dehumanized. Slaves, Negroes, Jews, and now,
Muslims. Up to now, women are dehumanized in many societies -- they are made sexual objects, treated as second-
class human beings. The proliferation of the sex trade are indications of the prevailing, successful dehumanization
of women, worldwide. During wars, mass rape of women is common.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
155 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

155

War Turns Disease
War increases the spread of fatal disease.
Boston Globe 07. [05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to_us_combat_deploymen
ts/]

A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected an estimated 2,500
US troops in the last four years because of massive deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and
Afghanistan, military officials said. Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly,
usually shows up in the form of reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or legs. But a more virulent form of
the disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if left untreated. In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has
become so commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil." But in the United States, the appearance of it
among civilian contractors who went to Iraq or among tourists who were infected in other parts of the world has
caused great fear because family doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of leishmaniasis
(pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious diseases in the United States in
recent years as a result of military deployments, as well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business
opportunities in the developing world, health officials say. Among those diseases appearing more frequently in
the United States are three transmitted by mosquitoes: malaria, which was contracted by 122 troops last year in
Afghanistan; dengue fever; and chikungunya fever.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
156 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

156

War turns Gender violence
War causes sexual violence and reifies the subjugation of women.
Eaton 04. [Shana JD Georgetown University Law Center 35 Geo. J. Int'l L. 873 Summer lexis]

While sexual violence against women has always been considered a negative side effect of war, it is only in
recent years that it has been taken seriously as a violation of humanitarian law. In the "evolution" of war,
women themselves have become a battlefield on which conflicts are fought. Realizing that rape is often more
effective at achieving their aims than plain killing, aggressors have used shocking sexual violence against women
as a tool of conflict, allowing battling forces to flaunt their power, dominance, and masculinity over the other
side. The stigma of rape is used to effectuate genocide, destroy communities, and demoralize opponents-
decimating a woman's will to survive is often only a secondary side effect.
Sexual violence against women during wartime had to reach horrifying levels before the international
community was shocked enough to finally take these atrocities seriously. It took the extremely brutal
victimization of vast numbers of women, played out against a backdrop of genocide, to prove that rape is not
simply a natural side effect of war to be lightly brushed aside.
The conflicts in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia put women's rights directly in the spotlight, and the
international community could no longer avoid the glare. In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ethnic cleansing was
central to the conflict. Raping women helped to achieve this aim in a number of ways, from forced
impregnation, where offspring would have different ethnicities than their mothers, to the use of sexual violence
to prevent women from wanting to have sex again (thus limiting their likelihood of bearing children in the
future). Additionally, rape was used as a means of destroying families and communities. Raping a woman
stigmatized her, making it unlikely that she would ever want to return home, and in many cases, ensuring that if
she did return home that she would be rejected. Civilians, particularly women, came to be used as tools to
achieve military ends, putting the human rights of these women at the heart of the conflict.

War conditions cause sexual violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Women are especially vulnerable during war (see Chapter 12). Rape has been used as a weapon in many wars-
in Korea, Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, the former Yugslavia, and elsewhere.
As acts of humiliation and revenge, soldiers have raped the female family members of their enemies. For
example, at least 10,000 women were raped by military personnel during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The social chaos brought about by war also creates situations and conditions conductive to sexual violence.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
157 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

157

War turns Human Right Violations
Wars undermine human rights
Ganesan and Vines 04. [Arvind, Business and Human Rights Program Director @ HRW Alex, Senior Researcher @
HRW, Head of Africa Programme Chatham House, Royal Institue of Intl Affairs, Engine of War: Resources,
Greed, and the Predatory State, Human Rights Watch World Report 2004
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/download/14.pdf]

Internal armed conflict in resource-rich countries is a major cause of human rights violations around the world.
An influential World Bank thesis states that the availability of portable, high-value resources is an important
reason that rebel groups form and civil wars break out, and that to end the abuses one needs to target rebel
group financing. The focus is on rebel groups, and the thesis is that greed, rather than grievance alone, impels
peoples toward internal armed conflict.
Although examination of the nexus between resources, revenues, and civil war is critically important, the picture
as presented in the just-described greed vs. grievance theory is distorted by an overemphasis on the impact of
resources on rebel group behavior and insufficient attention to how government mismanagement of resources
and revenues fuels conflict and human rights abuses. As argued here, if the international community is serious
about curbing conflict and related rights abuses in resource-rich countries, it should insist on greater
transparency in government revenues and expenditures and more rigorous enforcement of punitive measures
against governments that seek to profit from conflict.
Civil wars and conflict have taken a horrific toll on civilians throughout the world. Killings, maiming, forced
conscription, the use of child soldiers, sexual abuse, and other atrocities characterize numerous past and
ongoing conflicts. The level of violence has prompted increased scrutiny of the causes of such wars. In this
context, the financing of conflict through natural resource exploitation has received increased scrutiny over the
last few years.
When unaccountable, resource-rich governments go to war with rebels who often seek control over the same
resources, pervasive rights abuse is all but inevitable. Such abuse, in turn, can further destabilize conditions,
fueling continued conflict. Factoring the greed of governments and systemic rights abuse into the greed vs.
grievance equation does not minimize the need to hold rebel groups accountable, but it does highlight the
need to ensure that governments too are transparent and accountable. Fundamentally, proper management of
revenues is an economic problem, and that is why the role of IFIs is so important. But it is an economic problem
that also has political dimensions and requires political solutions. Political will and pressure, including targeted
U.N. sanctions where appropriate, can motivate opaque, corrupt governments to be more open and
transparent. Where such pressure is lacking, as in Liberia prior to enforcement of sanctions, continued conflict,
rights abuse, and extreme deprivation of civilians all too commonly are the result.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
158 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

158

War turns human rights/ disease
Modern warfare involves crippling civilian infrastructure and violating human rights
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Modern military technology, especially the use of high-precision bombs, rockets, and missile warheads, has now
made it possible to attack civilian populations in industrialized societies indirectlybut with devastating resultsby
targeting the facilities on which life depends, while avoiding the stigma of direct attack on the bodies and habitats of
noncombatants. The technique has been termed "bomb now, die later."
U.S. military action against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the Iraq War has included the specific and
selective destruction of key aspects of the infrastructure necessary to maintain ci vi l i an life and health (see Chapter
15). During the bombing phase of the Persian Gulf War this deliberate effort almost totally destroyed Iraq's
electrical-power generation and transmission capacity and its civilian communications networks. In combination
with the prolonged application of economic sanctions and the disruption of highways, bridges, and facilities for
refining and distributing fuel by conventional bombing, these actions had severely damaging effects on the health
and survival of the civilian population, especially infants and children. Without electrical power, water purification
and pumping ceased immediately in all major urban areas, as did sewage pumping and treatment. The appearance
and epidemic spread of infectious diarrheal disease in infants and of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid fever and
cholera, were rapid. At the same lime, medical care and public health measures were totally disrupted. Modern
multistory hospitals were left without clean water, sewage disposal, or any electricity beyond what could he
supplied by emergency generators designed to operate only a few hours per day. Operating rooms, x-ray equipment,
and other vital facilities were crippled. Supplies of anesthetics, antibiotics, and other essential medications were
rapidly depleted. Vaccines and medications requiring refrigeration were destroyed, and all immunization programs
increased. Because almost no civilian telephones, computers, or transmission lines were operable, the Ministry of
Health was effectively immobilized. Fuel shortages and the disruption of transportation limited civilian access to
medical care.
Many reports provide clear and quantitative evidence of violations of the requirements of immunity for civilian
populations, proportionality, and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. They mock the concept of life integrity
rights. In contrast to the chaos and social disruption that routinely accompany armed conflicts, these deaths have
been the consequence of and explicit military policy, with clearly foreseeable consequences to human rights of
civilians. The U.S. military has never conceded that its policies violated human rights under the Geneva Conventions
or the guidelines under which U.S. military personnel operate. Yet the ongoing development of military technology
suggests thatabsent the use of weapons of mass destructionviolations of civilians human rights will be the
preferred method of warfare in the future.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
159 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

159

War Turns Racism

War props up systems of racism and domination.
Martin 90. [Brian, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Wollongong, ,
Uprooting War, Freedom Press, [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/index.html]

Antagonism between ethnic groups can be used and reinforced by the state to sustain its own power. When one
ethnic group controls all the key positions in the state, this is readily used to keep other groups in subordinate
positions, and as a basis for economic exploitation. This was clearly a key process in apartheid in South Africa,
but is also at work in many other countries in which minority groups are oppressed. From this perspective, the
dominant ethnic group uses state power to maintain its ascendancy. But at the same time, the use of political
and economic power for racial oppression helps to sustain and legitimate state power itself. This is because the
maintenance of racial domination and exploitation comes to depend partly on the use of state power, which is
therefore supported and expanded by the dominant group. From this perspective it can be said that the state
mobilises racism to help maintain itself.
There are several other avenues used by the state to mobilise support. Several of these will be treated in the
following chapters, including bureaucracy and patriarchy. In each case, structured patterns of dominance and
submission are mobilised to support the state, and state in turn helps to sustain the social structure in question,
such as bureaucracy or patriarchy. To counter the state, it is necessary both to promote grassroots mobilisation
and to undermine the key structures from which the state draws its power and from which it mobilises support.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
160 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

160

War Turns Everything
War causes destroys health, human rights, the environment, and causes domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys families, communities,
and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection and promotion of health, medical
care, and other human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and
contributes to social injustice. It leads many people to think that violence is the only way to resolve conflictsa
mindset that contributes to domestic violence, street crime, and other kinds of violence. And it contributes to the
destruction of the environment and overuse of nonrenewable resources. In sum. war threatens much of the fabric of
our civilization.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
161 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

161

War Turns Mental Health
War creates many mental health issues
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Given the brutality of war. many people survive wars only to be physically or mentally scarred for life (see Box 1-1). Millions
of survivors are chronically disabled from injuries sustained during war or the immediate aftermath of war.
Approximately one-third of Ihe soldiers who survived ihe civil war in Ethiopia, for example, were injured or disabled, and at
least 40,000 individuals lost one or more limbs during the war.' Antipersonnel landmines represent a serious threat
to many people'' (see Chapter 7). For example, in Cambodia, I in 236 people is an amputee as a result of a landmine
explosion.'
0

Millions more people are psychologically impaired from wars, during which they have been physically or sexually assaulted or have
physically or sexually assaulted others; have been tortured or have participated in the torture of others; have been forced to
serve as soldiers against their will; have witnessed the death of family members; or have experienced the destruction of their
communities or entire nations (sec Chapter4). Psychological trauma may be demonstrated in disturbed and antisocial
behaviors, such as aggression toward family members and others. Many soldiers, on returning from military action, suffer
from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). which also affects many civilian survivors of war.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
162 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

162

War turns Health
Funds are prioritized for war over health services
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Many countries spend large amounts of money per capita for military purposes. The countries with the highest
military expenditures are shown in Table I -1. War and the preparation for war divert huge amounts of resources
from health and human services and other productive societal endeavors. This diversion of resources occurs in
many countries. In some less developed countries, national governments spend S10 to $20 per capita on military
expenditures but only SI per capita on al l health-related expenditures. The same type of distorted priorities also
exist in more developed countries. For example, the United States ranks first among nations in military expenditures
and arms exports, but 38th among nations in infant mortality rate and 45th in life expectancy at birth. Since 2003.
during a period when federal, state, and local governments in the United States have been experiencing budgetary
shortfalls and finding it difficult to maintain adequate health and human services, the U.S. government has spent
almost $500 bi l l i on for the Iraq War, and is spending (in 2007) more than $2 billion a week on the war.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
163 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

163

War turns domestic violence
War creates a cycle of violence that spills over to domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

War often creates a cycle of violence, increasing domestic and community violence in the countries engaged in war.
War teaches people that violence is an acceptable method for settling conflicts. Children growing up in
environments in which violence is an established way of settling conflicts may choose violence to settle conflicts in
their own lives. Teenage gangs may mirror the activity of military forces Men, sometimes former military servicemen
who have been trained to use violence, commit acts of violence against women; there have been instances of men
murdering their wives on return from battlefield.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
164 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

164

War turns the environment
War destroys the environment- both during and preparing for war
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Finally, war and the preparation for war have profound impacts on the physical environment (see Chapter 5). The
disastrous consequences of war for the environment are often clear. Examples include bomb craters in Vietnam that
have filled with water and provide breeding sites for mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases; destruction
of urban environments by aerial carpet bombing of major cities in Europe and Japan during World War II; and the
more than 600 oil-well fires in Kuwait that were ignited by retreating Iraqi troops in 1991, which had a devastating
effect on the ecology of the affected areas and caused acute respiratory symptoms among those exposed. Less
obvious are the environmental impacts of the preparation for war, such as the huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil
fuels used by the military before (and during and after) wars and the environmental hazards of toxic and radioactive
wastes, which can contaminate air, soil, and both surface water and groundwater. For example, much of the area in
and around Chelyabinsk, Russia, site of a major nuclear weapons production facility, has been determined to be
highly radioactive, leading to evacuation of local residents (see chapter 10).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
165 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

165

War outweighs disease
Solving health problems eliminates a root cause of war
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

War is the one of the most serious threats lo public health. Public health professionals can do much to
prevent war and its health consequences. Preventing war and its consequences should be part of the
curricula of schools of public health, the agendas of public health organizations, and the practice of public health
professionals. Activities by public health professionals to prevent war and its health consequences are an
essential part of our professional obligations. The greatest threat to the health of people worldwide lies
not in specific forms of acute or chronic diseasesand not even in poverty, hunger, or homelessness.
Rather, it lies in the consequences of war. As stated in a resolution adopted by the World Health Assembly, the
governing body of the World Health Organization: "The role of physicians and other health workers in the
preservation and promotion of peace is the most significant factor for the attainment of health for all."
War is not inevitable. For perhaps 99 percent of human history, people lived in egalitarian groups in
which generosity was highly valued and war was rare. War first occurred relatively recently in human
history along with changes in social organization, especially the development of nation-states. Even at present, when
war seems ever-present, most people live peaceful, nonviolent lives. If we can learn from history, we
may be able to move beyond war and create a culture of peace.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
166 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

166

Turns Everything

War causes destroys health, human rights, the environment, and causes domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys families, communities,
and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection and promotion of health, medical
care, and other human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and
contributes to social injustice. It leads many people to think that violence is the only way to resolve conflictsa
mindset that contributes to domestic violence, street crime, and other kinds of violence. And it contributes to the
destruction of the environment and overuse of nonrenewable resources. In sum. war threatens much of the fabric of
our civilization.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
167 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

167

AIDS
War helps transmit HIV/AIDS
Unicef 96
(Unicef, 1996, Sexual violence as a weapon of war http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm)
In addition to rape, girls and women are also subject to forced prostitution and trafficking during times
of war, sometimes with the complicity of governments and military authorities. During World War II, women
were abducted, imprisoned and forced to satisfy the sexual needs of occupying forces, and many Asian women were also
involved in prostitution during the Viet Nam war. The trend continues in today's conflicts. The State of the World's
Children 1996 report notes that the disintegration of families in times of war leaves women and girls especially vulnerable to
violence. Nearly 80 per cent of the 53 million people uprooted by wars today are women and children. When fathers,
husbands, brothers and sons are drawn away to fight, they leave women, the very young and the elderly to fend for
themselves. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar and Somalia, refugee families frequently cite rape or the fear of rape as a
key factor in their decisions to seek refuge. During Mozambique's conflict, young boys, who themselves had been
traumatized by violence, were reported to threaten to kill or starve girls if they resisted the boys' sexual advances. Sexual
assault presents a major problem in camps for refugees and the displaced, according to the report. The incidence of rape was
reported to be alarmingly high at camps for Somali refugees in Kenya in 1993. The camps were located in isolated areas, and
hundreds of women were raped in night raids or while foraging for firewood. UNHCR (the Office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees) has had to organize security patrols, fence camps with thorn bushes and relocate the most
vulnerable women to safer areas. Some rape victims who were ostracized were moved to other camps or given priority for
resettlement abroad. UNHCR has formal guidelines for preventing and responding to sexual violence in the camps, and it
trains field workers to be more sensitive to victims' needs. Refugee women are encouraged to form committees and become
involved in camp administration to make them less vulnerable to men who would steal their supplies or force them to provide
sex in return for provisions. The high risk of infection with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including
HIV/AIDS, accompanies all sexual violence against women and girls. The movement of refugees and
marauding military units and the breakdown of health services and public education worsens the impact
of diseases and chances for treatment. For example, one study has suggested that the exchange of sex for
protection during the civil war in Uganda in the 1980s was a contributing factor to the country's high
rate of AIDS.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
168 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

168

Animal Rights T/

War hurts animal rights
Ernst 09
(Stephanie Ernst, 5-29-09, Animals in War: You Don't Have to Be Human to Die by the Millions
http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/animals_in_war_you_dont_have_to_be_human_to_die_by_the_millions)
The Animals in War Memorial in London, unveiled in 2004, bears the following as part of its inscription: "They
had no choice." "They" refers to the literally millions of animals killed in twentieth-century wars--horses,
mules, donkeys, pigeons, elephants, glow worms, and camels among them. Indeed, "eight million horses and countless
mules and donkeys died in the First World War. They were used to transport ammunition and supplies to the front
and many died, not only from the horrors of shellfire but also in terrible weather and appalling
conditions" (emphasis mine), a brief history on the monument's Web site explains--and that was only one war and only one
set of animals among many different animals.
A BBC article further explains, "The monument pays special tribute to the 60 animals awarded the PDSA Dickin Medal - the
animals' equivalent of the Victoria Cross - since 1943." Fifty-four of the 60, including 32 pigeons, were used in World War
II. And before anyone is inclined to say or think "just pigeons" or "just messages," consider what the birds were forced to
endure to get the messages back and forth. Examples: "Winkie, a pigeon that flew 129 miles with her wings
clogged with oil to save a downed bomber crew," and "Mary of Exeter, another pigeon, which flew back with her
neck and right breast ripped open, savaged by hawks kept by the Germans at Calais." (Note the BBC's irritating use of
"which" and "that" here instead of "who.") Sometimes people make remarks about such animals "giving" their lives. But they
didn't give their lives. They didn't choose to enlist. Their fate was decided for them. It was the ultimate, no-
recourse draft. For that reason, I am glad for that so-true inscription: "They had no choice." And animals certainly don't have
to be dragged to active battlefields to suffer and die because of humans' wars. The U.S. military shoots, injures, and kills
animals on our soil regularly, as part of training.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
169 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

169

Biodiversity

War destroys Forests and Biodiversity
Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)

Throughout history, war has invariably resulted in environmental destruction. However, advancements in military technology
used by combatants have resulted in increasingly severe environmental impacts. This is well illustrated by the devastation to
forests and biodiversity caused by modern warfare. Military machinery and explosives have caused unprecedented levels of
deforestation and habitat destruction. This has resulted in a serious disruption of ecosystem services, including erosion
control, water quality, and food production. A telling example is the destruction of 35% of Cambodias intact forests due to
two decades of civil conflict. In Vietnam, bombs alone destroyed over 2 million acres of land.[13] These environmental
catastrophes are aggravated by the fact that ecological protection and restoration become a low priority during and after war.
The threat to biodiversity from combat can also be illustrated by the Rwanda genocide of 1994. The risk to the already
endangered population of mountain gorillas from the violence was of minimal concern to combatants and victims during the
90-day massacre.[14] The threat to the gorillas increased after the war as thousands of refugees, some displaced for decades,
returned to the already overpopulated country. Faced with no space to live, they had little option but to inhabit the forest
reserves, home to the gorilla population. As a result of this human crisis, conservation attempts were impeded. Currently, the
International Gorilla Programme Group is working with authorities to protect the gorillas and their habitats. This has proven
to be a challenging task, given the complexities Rwandan leaders face, including security, education, disease, epidemics, and
famine.[15]


Chemical and Biological Warfare would destroy the environment-Vietnam proves
Sierra Club, 2003

(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)

One of the most striking examples of military disregard for environmental and human health is the use of chemical and
biological agents in warfare. The American militarys use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War is one of the most
widely known examples of using environmental destruction as a military tactic. Agent Orange is a herbicide that was sprayed
in millions of liters over approximately 10% of Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. It was used to defoliate tropical forests to
expose combatants, and destroy crops to deprive peasants of their food supply.[16] [17] The environmental and health
effects were devastating. The spraying destroyed 14% of South Vietnams forests, including 50% of the mangrove forests.
Few, if any, have recovered to their natural state. [18] A key ingredient of Agent Orange is dioxin, the most potent
carcinogen ever tested.[19] It is therefore not surprising that Agent Orange has been linked to an array of health problems in
Vietnam including birth defects, spontaneous abortions, chloracne, skin and lung cancers, lower IQ and emotional problems
for children (Forgotten Victims).[20] Similar to toxic chemical spills, Agent Orange continues to threaten the health of
Vietnamese. In 2001, scientists documented extremely high levels of dioxin in blood samples taken from residents born years
after the end of the Vietnam War. Studies attribute such high levels to food chain contamination: Soil contaminated with
dioxin becomes river sediment, which is then passed to fish, a staple of the Vietnamese diet.[21] This is a clear reminder that
poisoning our environments is akin to poisoning

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
170 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

170

Cap
War has become privatized, fueling a stronger capitalism
Ferguson 08
Francis Ferguson, PhD Economist , 3-22-08, The Privatization of War
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_francis__080320_the_privatization_of.htm
Since 2000, there has been a huge increase in private contracts let by the US government. Spending on private
contractors has risen from $174.4 billion to $377.5 billion, an increase of 86%. Over this same period, private
contractors' collections for the Department of Defense increased from $133 billion to $279 billion annually, an
increase of 102.3%. These expenditures represent a unique new source of revenue and profit for American
business, because much of what it being purchased are services which would previously have been done by
military personnel. (source http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1071) With these tasks shifting to private
contractors, workers can be hired in low wage nations such and put to work doing menial labor for the troops.
This is not to say these services come cheap. They do not. Contractors such as Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR)
charge handsomely for the meals, laundry and logistics provided. They just don't pay the workers who perform
these tasks much. The difference, of course, is profit. What was once a relatively minor expense to taxpayers in
the form of Army pay for soldiers performing kitchen duties, now becomes a major source of bottom line
revenue for private companies who previously got nothing from these services. In addition to new opportunities
for profit in a war theater, there are new opportunities for corruption. Third World contract workers have
reported their employers withholding their passports, effectively making them indentured servants. KBR and
it's subsidiaries have been discovered charging premium prices for meals they never served and with supplying
contaminated drinking water to the troops. Government investigators report literally billions of dollars have
gone missing with no accounting for who received them or what was done with the money. The Center for
Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&fil=IQ) has a listing of contractors in Iraq
and Afghanistan and the value of the contracts they hold. Many of the contracts are awarded without
competitive bidding, and billions of dollars have literally gone missing. The Chicago Tribune reports ongoing
investigations of Kellogg Brown and Root and various of their sub-contractors for gross violations and fraud.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kbr-war-profiteers-feb21,1,5231766.story. All of this is
symptomatic of deeper problems. We have privatized war, an in so doing, we have reduced the populace's
natural resistance to war and increased its profitability. With contracting, our military can be smaller. This
means the conflicts can be more easily handled with a voluntary, professional military. Conscription can more
easily be avoided along, as can the political backlash from potential draftees and their relatives. With
privatization, a greater portion of military spending flows as profit to American businesses. Spending on
contractor services can expand massively within the context of war. Wartime allows emergency measures and
expenditures which can proceed without customary bidding or oversight. The result is a river of profit with
little economic gain for the nation.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
171 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

171

Civil Liberties T/

In times of war nations ignore civil liberties to deal with threats Britain proves
Posner 92
HeinOnline -- 92 Mich. L. Rev. 1679 1993-1994, EXECUTIVE DETENTION IN TIME OF WAR , IN THE HIGHEST
DEGREE ODIOUS: DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL IN WARTIME BRITAIN. By A. W. Brian Simpson. Oxford:
Clarendon, Press. 1992. Pp. x, 453. $62.

The absence of a comparative dimension is a closely related source of Simpson's disparagement of his country's
response to national emergency. Peacetime civil liberties are a luxury that nations engaged in wars of survival do
not believe they can afford. The question for the realistic civil libertarian is not whether Britain curtailed civil
liberties more than either seemed at the time or was in retrospect necessary, but whether it reacted more or
less temperately than other nations in comparable circumstances would do or have done. So far as I can judge,
the answer to this question is more temperately - than the United States, for example, which was far less
endangered.8 Of course there are perils in using a purely relative standard. The administration of Regulation 18B
caused hardships and, in hindsight at least, seems not to have contributed materially to Britain's survival or to
have shortened the war. If there are lessons here that might enable Britain or the United States to deal more
effectively with the problem of internal security in wartime the next time the problem arises, they ought to be
drawn. But the only lesson Simpson draws is that Britain should not have destroyed "about 99 per cent of public
records dealing with detention, which is in line with general practice" (p. 422) and should not be refusing access,
half a century later, to most of the rest. I am sure this observation is right, but it makes for rather a tepid ending
to the book; the ending reads as if the British government's greatest sin with respect to the wartime detention
program was to make it difficult for academics to write the program's history.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
172 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

172

Dehumanization T/

Dehumanization is used as propaganda during wars
Vinulan-Arellano 03. [Katharine, March 22 yonip.com Stop Dehumanization of People to Stop Wars
http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/nomorewars.html]

In war time, dehumanization is a key element in propaganda and brainwashing. By portraying the enemy as less
than human, it is much easier to motivate your troops to rape, torture or kill. Ethnic cleansing or genocide would
always be perceived as a crime against humanity if human beings belonging to another race or religion are not
dehumanized.
Throughout history, groups or races of human beings have been dehumanized. Slaves, Negroes, Jews, and now,
Muslims. Up to now, women are dehumanized in many societies -- they are made sexual objects, treated as second-
class human beings. The proliferation of the sex trade are indications of the prevailing, successful dehumanization
of women, worldwide. During wars, mass rape of women is common.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
173 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

173

Democracy T/

Administrations use wartime to consolidate power and destroy democratic institutions

Forward Newspaper, 2008

L.L.C. Apr 11, 2008, The President in Wartime. (2008, April 11). Retrieved July 23, 2009, from Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW).
(Document ID: 1478699201). New York, N.Y.: Apr 11, 2008. Vol. 111, Iss. 31700; pg. 12, 1 pgs

The Bush administration recently declassified a secret Justice Department memo from 2003 that shows just how serious a
threat our democracy faces in the current war on terrorism. Unfortunately, the threat revealed in the memo is not from Al
Qaeda, but from us. The memo was addressed to the legal department of the Pentagon. It was meant to advise the military on
how far it may lawfully go in roughing up captured terrorism suspects during interrogation. The answer was, pretty far
indeed. It was the considered legal opinion of the chief legal office of the United States, the Department of Justice, that the
president of the United States is - well, above the law. "In wartime, it is for the President alone to decide what methods to
use to best prevail against the enemy," wrote the memo's author, John Yoo, then a Justice Department lawyer. In fact, Yoo
wrote, "Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not bring a
prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context." That is, the law would conflict with the
Constitution's designation of the president as commander in chief, charged with doing whatever necessary to protect the
nation during wartime. There's "original intent" for you. And who decides what constitutes "wartime"? According to the
Constitution, the Senate does. But that's old stuff. Nowadays, we're at war whenever the president says we are. All he has to
do is decide we're under attack - or threatened with attack - and order our troops to open fire. And when does the war end?
When the president says so. Right now, for example, we face an enemy so shadowy and ubiquitous - terrorism - that the war
could last, we're told, for a generation. Until then, according to the Bush Justice Department, the president may do whatever
he thinks necessary to protect us. In other words, anything he wants. The Yoo memo was withdrawn a year after its drafting,
following a revolt by government lawyers. But a similar Yoo memo, issued to the CIA, remains.in force. Congress passed a
law overriding it a few years ago, but the president vetoed the bill. It's hard to imagine what terrorists could do that would
threaten our democracy more than this president's notion of his power. Next time we choose a president, we ought to find out
how the contenders define the job.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
174 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

174

Disease T/

War increases the spread of fatal disease.
Boston Globe 07. [05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to_us_combat_deploymen
ts/]

A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected an estimated 2,500
US troops in the last four years because of massive deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and
Afghanistan, military officials said. Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly,
usually shows up in the form of reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or legs. But a more virulent form of
the disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if left untreated. In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has
become so commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil." But in the United States, the appearance of it
among civilian contractors who went to Iraq or among tourists who were infected in other parts of the world has
caused great fear because family doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of leishmaniasis
(pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious diseases in the United States in
recent years as a result of military deployments, as well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business
opportunities in the developing world, health officials say. Among those diseases appearing more frequently in
the United States are three transmitted by mosquitoes: malaria, which was contracted by 122 troops last year in
Afghanistan; dengue fever; and chikungunya fever.


War would increase immune system deficiency and create dangers of new and deadly diseases
Sagan, former professor at Stanford and Harvard, 84
(Carl Sagan, former professor at Stanford and Harvard, Pulitzer prize winning author, 1984, Foreign Affairs, Nuclear War
and Climatic Catastrophe p. Lexis)
Each of these factors, taken separately, may carry serious consequences for the global ecosystem: their interactions may be
much more dire still. Extremely worrisome is the possibility of poorly underatood or as yet entirely uncontemplated
synergisms (where the net consequences of two or more assaults on the environment are much more than the sum of the
component parts). For example, more than 100 rads (and possibly more than 200 rads) of external and ingested
ionizing radiation is likely to be delivered in a very large nuclear war to all plants, animals and unprotected
humans in densely populated regions of northern mid-latitudes. After the soot and dust clear, there can, for such wars, be a
200 to 400 percent increment in the solar ultraviolet flux that reaches the ground, with an increase of many orders of
magnitude in the more dangerous shorter-wavelength radiation. Together, these radiation assaults are likely to
suppress the immune systems of humans and other species, making them more vulnerable to disease. At
the same time, the high ambient-radiation fluxes are likely to produce, through mutation, new varieties of
microorganisms, some of which might become pathogenic. The preferential radiation sensitivity of
birds and other insect predators would enhance the proliferation of herbivorous and pathogen-carrying
insects. Carried by vectors with high radiation tolerance, it seems possible that epidemics and global pandemics
would propagate with no hope of effective mitigation by medical care, even with reduced population sizes and
greatly restricted human mobility. Plants, weakened by low temperatures and low light levels, and other animals would
likewise be vulnerable to preexisting and newly arisen pathogens.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
175 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

175

Disease T/

War helps the spread of disease
VOA News, 05
(Voice of America News, 8-31-05, Poverty and Conflict Contribute the Spread of
Infectious Diseases, http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-08/2005-08-31-voa23.cfm)
Dr. Garcia says war also spreads disease because it often creates large populations of refugees. And they're
moving from one town to another, or one country to another (and) they may bring with them some
prevalence of disease that may not be a disease that is present in that other country.
Mr. Parkinson adds, It's also probably no coincidence that the great Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 was
associated with troop movements in Europe and especially afflicted the United States because that was the time of
the U.S. involvement in the war, and the troop movements back and forth created a great vector for infection.
The epidemic itself killed more people than died in the entire war -- an estimated 20 to 40 million people died from the
epidemic.
Where there are soldiers and conflict, there are also prostitutes and rape. This has led to a rapid spread of
AIDS in many war-torn African countries, say public health officials.
Conflict impacts disease in other ways, too, said Dr. Joseph Malone, director of the U.S. Navy's program to track emerging
global infections. Basic services such as clean water, availability of food, are threatened when there's
substantial conflict and generally the health care infrastructure and availability of medicines is generally
reduced whenever there's conflict and even any supplies that might be available can be diverted to non-
helpful uses.


Military conflicts spread fatal diseases globally
Boston Globe 07
[Boston Globe 05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to_us_combat_deploymen
ts/]

A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected an estimated 2,500 US
troops in the last four years because of massive deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and
Afghanistan, military officials said. Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly, usually
shows up in the form of reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or legs. But a more virulent form of the
disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if left untreated. In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has become
so commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil." But in the United States, the appearance of it among
civilian contractors who went to Iraq or among tourists who were infected in other parts of the world has caused
great fear because family doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of leishmaniasis
(pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious diseases in the United States in
recent years as a result of military deployments, as well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business
opportunities in the developing world, health officials say.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
176 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

176

Domestic Violence T/

War creates a cycle of violence that spills over to domestic violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

War often creates a cycle of violence, increasing domestic and community violence in the countries engaged in war.
War teaches people that violence is an acceptable method for settling conflicts. Children growing up in
environments in which violence is an established way of settling conflicts may choose violence to settle conflicts in
their own lives. Teenage gangs may mirror the activity of military forces Men, sometimes former military servicemen
who have been trained to use violence, commit acts of violence against women; there have been instances of men
murdering their wives on return from battlefield.


War causes domestic violence and crime
Levy and Sidel, 7
(Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor Sidel- Professor of Social
Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys
families, communities, and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection
and promotion of health, medical care, and other human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports
health. It limits human rights and contributes to social injustice. It leads many people to think that violence
is the only way to resolve conflictsa mindset that contributes to domestic violence, street crime,
and other kinds of violence. And it contributes to the destruction of the environment and overuse of
nonrenewable resources. In sum. war threatens much of the fabric of our civilization.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
177 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

177

Econ T/

War leads to economic recession
Baumann, 08
(Nick Baumann, assistant editor, 2-29-08, Is the Economy a Casualty of War?
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/02/economy-casualty-war)
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States
into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the
housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate's Joint Economic
Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been "weakening the American economy" and "a day
of reckoning" has finally arrived. Stiglitz's contention that the war is causing the nation's economic woes has
become an increasingly popular meme in Democratic circles. (And a source of indignation in Republican ones.
Before Stiglitz's testimony, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said, "People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider
the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure.") Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), a leading anti-war voice and cochair of the
Congressional Progressive Caucus, is among leading Democrats who echo Stiglitz's view. "The war is the primary
reason for this recession and we have to drum that home," she told me. Meanwhile, a coalition of progressive and
anti-war groupsincluding MoveOn.org and Americans United for Changeannounced a $20 million campaign to convince
voters that the war is related to the nation's ongoing economic troubles, an effort that is headlined by former Senator John
Edwards and his wife Elizabeth. Polls show that voters trust the Democrats over the Republicans to manage both the Iraq
War and the economy, so pitching these two issues as interconnected could make political sense. The war and the economy
are undoubtedly linked, but there's a potential problem for anyone who claims the war led to a recession: Many economists
say this isn't so.


War creates economic slowdowns and hurts the dollar
Hart and Shapiro, 08
(Robert Shapiro is formerly the undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and currently the head of Sonecon,
LLC, an economic consulting firm. Gary Hart is a former U.S. Senator from Colorado and currently a professor at the
University of Colorado.1-30-08, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/30/the-iraq-recession-debate_n_84060.html)
I think there is a sound case that the war policy has produced conditions that contribute in a fairly modest
way to the slow down. There are two main factors as I see it in regards to the slow down: the [crisis in the] housing
sector, which has reduced people's sense of their wealth... and the subprime mess, which is reducing business investment and
is doing so by screwing up the balance sheets of financial institutions.
Having said that, there is no doubt that the Iraq war is a significant factor in the current level of oil prices.
Not the most important factor but a significant factor... For American consumers whose consumption is being
squeezed, relatively more of their income has to go to energy, and that expense is just getting exported.
It's not stimulating the U.S. economy. The war is [also] a part of America' current account deficit. It
contributes to that and [that] is what's driving down the dollar.
Media and politicians rarely distinguish between government spending and government investments. War costs are
spending... When spent unnecessarily, that is without contributing to national security (i.e., Iraq), war costs are, in
effect, money down a rat hole. All spending over and above revenues creates deficits that must be
financed with borrowing, either from foreigners or future generations. So money spent on an
unnecessary war requires borrowing which drives down the value of the dollar and hurts our economy.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
178 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

178

Edelman

Wars sacrifice soldiers to protect future generations, making the queer expendable to protect
conceptions of family norms
Donna Miles, Writer, Jan. 18, 2005
(Staff Writer for American Forces Press Service, Bush Begins Inaugural Celebration With Military 'Salute',
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=24328)
The president credited the men and women in uniform for helping extend that same power to more than 50 million
people in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past four years. He called the first free elections in Afghanistan's 5,000-year
history and the upcoming elections in Iraq "landmark events in the history of liberty." "And none of it would have been
possible without the courage and the determination of the United States armed forces," he said. Bush told the troops their
service and sacrifice in the war on terror is making America safer for today and the future. "Your sacrifice has made it
possible for our children and grandchildren to grow up in a safer world," he said. But this success has
come at a great cost and through tremendous sacrifice, the president noted. He acknowledged the long
separations families must endure, the wounds many service members will carry with them for the rest of
their lives, the heroes who gave their lives, and the families who grieve them. "We hold them in our hearts,"
Bush said. "We lift them up in our prayers."


In times of war the life of the child is elevated above sacrificial adults, sacrificing the queer

Deen, @ Ipsnews.net, Jan 9 2004
(POLITICS: U.N. Must Protect Children in War NGOs, http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21855)

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 9 (IPS) - A coalition of groups is urging U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to
prepare an annual list of governments and groups that recruit or use child soldiers or fail to protect children
during military conflicts. Such a regular list, it says, would keep such violators of international obligations
constantly ''named and shamed''. ''From Congo and Liberia to Iraq, Myanmar and Colombia, girls and boys are
subject to appalling violence and deprivation of their fundamental rights,'' said the Watchlist on Children and
Armed Conflict in a 43-page report released Friday. The study, which estimates 300,000 children under the age of
18 are still directly involved in armed conflicts worldwide, was released ahead of a Security Council meeting on child
soldiers scheduled for Jan. 20. It says many countries do not adequately protect children, a situation exacerbated by
impeded access of civilians to much-needed humanitarian assistance in times of conflict. As a result, says the study,
''more children die from malnutrition, diarrhoea and other preventable diseases in conflict situations than die as a direct
result of fighting.'' It wants Annan to expand existing lists of violators beyond those countries and
groups that use child soldiers, to include nations that do not adequately protect children.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
179 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

179

Environment

Modern warfare devastates the environment- it destroys ecosystems

Worldwatch Institute, 2008

(January/February issue, Modern Warfare Causes Unprecedented Environmental Damage,
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5544)
Washington, D.C. Modern warfare tactics, as seen in the American war in Vietnam, the Rwandan and Congolese civil
wars, and the current war in Iraq, have greatly increased our capacity to destroy the natural landscape and produce
devastating environmental effects on the planet, according to Sarah DeWeerdt, author of War and the Environment,
featured in the January/February 2008 issue of World Watch. Wartime destruction of the natural landscape is nothing new,
but the scope of destruction seen in more recent conflicts is unprecedented. For one thing, there is the sheer firepower of
current weapons technology, especially its shock-and-awe deployment by modern superpowers. The involvement of guerrilla
groups in many recent wars draws that firepower toward the natural ecosystemsoften circumscribed and endangered
oneswhere those groups take cover, writes DeWeerdt. The deliberate destruction of the environment as a military strategy,
known as ecocide, is exemplified by the U.S. response to guerrilla warfare in Vietnam. In an effort to deprive the
communist Viet Cong guerrillas of the dense cover they found in the hardwood forests and mangroves that fringed the
Mekong Delta, the U.S. military sprayed 79 million liters of herbicides and defoliants (including Agent Orange) over about
one-seventh of the land area of southern Vietnam. By some estimates, half of the mangroves and 14 percent of hardwood
forests in southern Vietnam were destroyed during Operation Trail Dust, threatening biodiversity and severely altering
vegetation. Less deliberate, but still devastating, were the environmental effects that stemmed from the mass migration of
refugees during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Nearly 2 million Hutus fled Rwanda over the course of just a few weeks to
refugee camps in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making it the most massive population movement in
history. Approximately 720,000 of these refugees settled in refugee camps on the fringes of Virunga National Park, the first
United Nations World Heritage site declared endangered due to an armed conflict. The refugees stripped an estimated 35
square kilometers of forest for firewood and shelter-building materials. The dense forests also suffered as a result of the wide
paths clear-cut by the Rwandan and Congolese armies traveling through the park to reduce the threat of ambush by rebel
groups. The longterm ecological effects of the current war in Iraq remain to be seen. Looking to the effects of the recent Gulf
War as a guide, scientists point to the physical damage of the desert, particularly the millimeter-thin layer of microorganisms
that forms a crust on the topsoil, protecting it from erosion. Analysis of the area affected by the Gulf War has already shown
an increase in sandstorms and dune formation in the region, and one study suggests that desert crusts might take thousands of
years to fully recover from the movement of heavy vehicles. Warfare is likely to have the most severe, longest-lasting
effects on protected areas that harbor endangered species, and slow-to-recover ecosystems such as deserts. Even in the most
fragile environments, sometimes natureand peoplecan surprise us, writes DeWeerdt. But turn and look in another
direction and you are likely to see warfares enduring scars.


War destroys infrastructure harming the environment
Sierra Club, 2003

(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)
The degradation of infrastructure and basic services brought on by war can wreak havoc on the local environment and public
health. Countries water supply systems, for example, can be contaminated or shut down by bomb blasts or bullet damage to
pipes.[7] In Afghanistan, destruction to water infrastructure combined with weakened public service during the war resulted
in bacterial contamination, water loss through leaks and illegal use.[8] The consequence was an overall decline in safe
drinking water throughout the country. Water shortages can also lead to inadequate irrigation of cropland. Agricultural
production may also be impaired by intensive bombing and heavy military vehicles traveling over farm soil.[9] The presence
of landmines can also render vast areas of productive land unusable.[10] Additional war-related problems which compound
degradation of the natural and human environment include shortages in cooking fuel and waste mismanagement during and
after military conflicts. During the most recent warfare in Iraq, individuals were forced to cut down city trees to use as
cooking fuel.[11] In Afghanistan, the creation of poorly located, leaky landfill sites resulted in contaminated rivers and
groundwater.[12]

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
180 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

180

Environment

War destroys the environment- both during and preparing for war
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Finally, war and the preparation for war have profound impacts on the physical environment (see Chapter 5). The
disastrous consequences of war for the environment are often clear. Examples include bomb craters in Vietnam that
have filled with water and provide breeding sites for mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases; destruction
of urban environments by aerial carpet bombing of major cities in Europe and Japan during World War II; and the
more than 600 oil-well fires in Kuwait that were ignited by retreating Iraqi troops in 1991, which had a devastating
effect on the ecology of the affected areas and caused acute respiratory symptoms among those exposed. Less
obvious are the environmental impacts of the preparation for war, such as the huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil
fuels used by the military before (and during and after) wars and the environmental hazards of toxic and radioactive
wastes, which can contaminate air, soil, and both surface water and groundwater. For example, much of the area in
and around Chelyabinsk, Russia, site of a major nuclear weapons production facility, has been determined to be
highly radioactive, leading to evacuation of local residents (see chapter 10).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
181 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

181

Fascism


War desensitizes culture and politics to fascist authoritarian structures

Kallis, 04
(Aristotle, DOI: 10.1177/0265691404040007 2004; 34; 9 European History Quarterly Aristotle A. Kallis
Consensus Ideological Production, Political Experience and the Quest for Studying Inter-War Fascism in Epochal
and Diachronic Terms)
A further revision of the early spirit of fascism came in the form of its idiosyncratic coexistence with traditional right-wing
authoritarian structures. In intellectual terms, fascism had very little to do with conservative notions of authoritarianism, in
spite of its oppositional convergence with radical forms of conservatism.67It advocated instead a more direct, transcendental
type of communication between nation and charismatic leader, as well as a collective representation and negotiation of
sectional interests within the framework of the party and its various societal extensions. However, the coopting of the fascist
leaderships by powerful traditional lite groups sealed the fate of fascisms relations to the mainstream Right by forcing the
former to operate in a system which perpetuated central elements of the conventional Rightist authoritarian tradition.
Compared to this (more conventional) type of rule, fascism offered a populist solution to the problem of generating social
support and ensuring active societal unity through the ritualization of controlled mass participation. Yet, this combination of
novelty with an essentially traditional framework of politics was hardly conducive to the pursuit of the mythical core of
fascist nationalist utopianism. The result was a tension inside the regimes with at least a fascist variant between fascism and
authoritarianism a tension that was never fully resolved, but which affected the evolution of inter-war fascism in two
ways. First, it completed the ideologicalpolitical expropriation of fascism by the Right, in contrast to its initially mixed (or
at least not exclusively right-wing) intellectual roots and active revolutionary anti-system spirit. Second, it compelled fascism
to wage a constant struggle to defend its own political contours from the restrictive grip of its conservative sponsors/partners
and the authoritarian legacies of its political framework. In analytical terms, this means that a categorical distinction between
the regime-variant of fascism and conservative authoritarianism is meaningless, in so far as fascism accepted an institutional,
not violently revolutionary, approach to its own political emancipation from the mainstream Right and thus could never
fully eliminate continuities between new and old Right.68 By the time that even the most advanced fascist systems of
Germany and Italy had accelerated their rhythm of consolidation with their newfound self-confidence, they had absorbed
already crucial features of conventional authoritarianism (not least the leaders monopoly of power) into their general
worldview. Kallis, Studying Inter-war Fascism 31

Fascism requires social homogenization

Bataille et al. 79
(The Psychological Structure of Fascism Author(s): Georges Bataille and Carl R. Lovitt Source: New German
Critique, No. 16 (Winter, 1979), pp. 64-87 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/487877 Accessed: 22/07/2009 12:32)
XII. The Fundamental Conditions of Fascism. As has already been indicated, heterogeneous processes as a whole can only
enter into play once the fundamental homogeneity of society (the apparatus of production) has become dissociated because of
its internal contradictions. Further, it can be stated that, even though it generally occurs in the blindest fashion, the
development of heterogeneous forces necessarily comes to signify a solution to the problem posed by the contradictions of
homogeneity. Once in power, developed heterogeneous forces dispose of the means of coercion necessary to resolve the
differences that had arisen between previously irreconcilable elements. But it goes without saying that, at the end of a
movement that excludes all subversion, the thrust of these resolutions will have been consistent with the general direction of
the existing homogeneity, namely, with the interests of the capitalists.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
182 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

182

Gendered Violence T/

War causes sexual violence and reifies the subjugation of women.
Eaton 04. [Shana JD Georgetown University Law Center 35 Geo. J. Int'l L. 873 Summer lexis]

While sexual violence against women has always been considered a negative side effect of war, it is only in
recent years that it has been taken seriously as a violation of humanitarian law. In the "evolution" of war,
women themselves have become a battlefield on which conflicts are fought. Realizing that rape is often more
effective at achieving their aims than plain killing, aggressors have used shocking sexual violence against women
as a tool of conflict, allowing battling forces to flaunt their power, dominance, and masculinity over the other
side. The stigma of rape is used to effectuate genocide, destroy communities, and demoralize opponents-
decimating a woman's will to survive is often only a secondary side effect.
Sexual violence against women during wartime had to reach horrifying levels before the international
community was shocked enough to finally take these atrocities seriously. It took the extremely brutal
victimization of vast numbers of women, played out against a backdrop of genocide, to prove that rape is not
simply a natural side effect of war to be lightly brushed aside.
The conflicts in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia put women's rights directly in the spotlight, and the
international community could no longer avoid the glare. In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ethnic cleansing was
central to the conflict. Raping women helped to achieve this aim in a number of ways, from forced
impregnation, where offspring would have different ethnicities than their mothers, to the use of sexual violence
to prevent women from wanting to have sex again (thus limiting their likelihood of bearing children in the
future). Additionally, rape was used as a means of destroying families and communities. Raping a woman
stigmatized her, making it unlikely that she would ever want to return home, and in many cases, ensuring that if
she did return home that she would be rejected. Civilians, particularly women, came to be used as tools to
achieve military ends, putting the human rights of these women at the heart of the conflict.


War conditions cause sexual violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Women are especially vulnerable during war (see Chapter 12). Rape has been used as a weapon in many wars-
in Korea, Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Indonesia, Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, the former Yugslavia, and elsewhere.
As acts of humiliation and revenge, soldiers have raped the female family members of their enemies. For
example, at least 10,000 women were raped by military personnel during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The social chaos brought about by war also creates situations and conditions conductive to sexual violence.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
183 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

183

Health T/

Funds are prioritized for war over health services
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Many countries spend large amounts of money per capita for military purposes. The countries with the highest
military expenditures are shown in Table I -1. War and the preparation for war divert huge amounts of resources
from health and human services and other productive societal endeavors. This diversion of resources occurs in
many countries. In some less developed countries, national governments spend S10 to $20 per capita on military
expenditures but only SI per capita on al l health-related expenditures. The same type of distorted priorities also
exist in more developed countries. For example, the United States ranks first among nations in military expenditures
and arms exports, but 38th among nations in infant mortality rate and 45th in life expectancy at birth. Since 2003.
during a period when federal, state, and local governments in the United States have been experiencing budgetary
shortfalls and finding it difficult to maintain adequate health and human services, the U.S. government has spent
almost $500 bi l l i on for the Iraq War, and is spending (in 2007) more than $2 billion a week on the war.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
184 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

184

Heg T/

One more military engagement would deplete US ground forces and utterly destroy US hegemony

Perry 06

(The U.S. Military: Under Strain and at Risk, The National Security Advisory Group, January 2006, William J. Perry, Chair)
In the meantime, the United States has only limited ground force capability ready to respond to other contingencies. The
absence of a credible strategic reserve in our ground forces increases the risk that potential adversaries will be tempted to
challenge the United States Since the end of World War II, a core element of U.S. strategy has been maintaining a military
capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating aggression in more than one theater at a time. As a global power with
global interests, the United States must be able to deal with challenges to its interests in multiple regions of the world
simultaneously. Today, however, the United States has only limited ground force capability ready to respond outside the
Afghan and Iraqi theaters of operations. If the Army were ordered to send significant forces to another crisis today, its only
option would be to deploy units at readiness levels far below what operational plans would require increasing the risk to
the men and women being sent into harms way and to the success of the mission. As stated rather blandly in one DoD
presentation, the Army continues to accept risk in its ability to respond to crises on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere.
Although the United States can still deploy air, naval, and other more specialized assets to deter or respond to aggression,
the visible overextension of our ground forces has the potential to significantly weaken our ability to deter and respond to
some contingencies.


War causes overstretch reducing hegemony- UK proves

Ferguson, 03

(Niall, Hegemony or Empire?, September/October 2003, Foreign Affairs)
Yet another, narrower definition is offered by Geoffrey Pigman, in his introduction to a useful and original chapter in Two
Hegemonies on agricultural trade liberalization in the 1990s. Pigman describes a hegemon's principal function as
underwriting a liberal international trading system that is beneficial to the hegemon but, paradoxically, even more beneficial
to its potential rivals. Pigman traces this now widely used definition of the word back to the economic historian Charles
Kindleberger's seminal work on the interwar economy, which describes a kind of "hegemonic interregnum." After 1918,
Kindleberger suggested, the United Kingdom was too weakened by war to remain an effective hegemon, but the United
States was still too inhibited by protectionism and isolationism to take over the role. This idea, which became known,
somewhat inelegantly, as "hegemonic stability theory," was later applied to the post-1945 period by authors such as Arthur
Stein, Susan Strange, Henry Nau, and Joseph Nye. In this literature, the fundamental question was how far and for how long
the United States would remain committed to free trade once other economies -- benefiting from precisely the liberal
economic order made possible by U.S. hegemony -- began to catch up with it. Would Americans revert to protectionist or
mercantilist policies in an effort to perpetuate their hegemony, or stick with free trade at the risk of experiencing relative
decline? This is what Stein called "the hegemon's dilemma," and it appeared to him to be essentially the same problem faced
by the United Kingdom before 1914. Paul Kennedy drew a similar parallel in his influential The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
185 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

185

Homelessness

Wars create homelessness
Markee 03
(Markee, Patrick,Senior Policy Analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, 3-27-03
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/FileLib/PDFs/war_and_homelessness.pdf)
It is axiomatic that wars create homelessness in the territories where combat occurs. Every war that the
United States has been involved in, from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, has at least temporarily
displaced populations and destroyed the homes of civilians. Even the undeclared wars that the United
States has sponsored and supported, in Latin America and elsewhere, produced hundreds of thousands of
refugees and uprooted rural and urban populations. However, since the Civil War there have been no sustained
military battles fought on United States territory, so most Americans have no first-hand contact with the immediate impact of
homelessness resulting from war. In contrast, our armed forces veterans do have first-hand experience with
homelessness that is a direct consequence of American military and domestic policies. This briefing paper
provides an overview of the impact of homelessness on armed forces veterans, both historically and currently. Throughout
American history there has been high incidence of homelessness among veterans, primarily as a result of combat related
disabilities and trauma and the failure of government benefits to provide adequate housing assistance for low-income and
disabled veterans. The paper concludes that, absent a dramatic change in Federal policies, the war on Iraq will
create a new generation of homeless veterans.


War leaves veterans unemployed and homeless
Markee 03
(Markee, Patrick,Senior Policy Analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, 3-27-03
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/FileLib/PDFs/war_and_homelessness.pdf)
The post-Civil War era witnessed a much more significant growth in homelessness nationwide. Indeed,
asKusmer notes, even the words tramp and bum, as applied to the homeless, can be traced to the Civil War era.3 One
reason was the enormous economic dislocation generated by the war and the succeeding economic
recession, and by the 1870s vagrancy was recognized as a national issue. Many of the new nomads riding
the rails and congregating in cities were Civil War veterans, and many had suffered physical injuries and trauma during the
war. As the early 1870s recession deepened, many cities responded by creating new antivagrancy legislation. In 1874 the
number of reported vagrants in Boston was 98,263, more than three times the number just two years earlier. From 1874 to
1878 the number of vagrancy arrests in New York City rose by half.4 The homelessness crisis of the Great Depression, which
affected many World War I veterans, was dramatically abated in the early 1940s by the enlistment of tens of thousands of
Americans in the armed forces and by the wartime economic upswing. In New York City, according to Kusmer, In one two-
month period in 1943, 100 Bowery residents joined the armed forces, while another 200 acquired jobs in hospitals,
restaurants, or on the railroads.5 With the end of World War II, however, homelessness re-emerged as a
significant problem in many cities. In New York City, demand for emergency shelter rose in the late 1940s, with as
many as 900 men bedding down in the Lodging House Annex (later the Municipal Shelter) on East 3rd Street in the 1948-49
winter.6 Homelessness would have continued to affect many thousands of World War II veterans were it
not for the national economic upturn and the benefits provided by the G.I. Bill. With the advent of the Vietnam
War, however, the link between homelessness and military veterans finally came to the attention of the
general public. As Kusmer writes, Only a few years after the end of the waranew wave of homeless persons, mostly in
their 20s and 30s and disproportionately black or Hispanic, began to appear on city street corners. Many were Vietnam
veterans, unable to find work after being discharged.7 By the late 1970s, when modern homelessness fully emerged, a
significant portion of the homeless men seen sleeping outdoors in vast numbers in New York City and other large cities were
armed forces veterans. Many veterans suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse disorders, and
physical disabilities caused by their experiences in combat. The 1991 Gulf War, the last major conventional war involving
the United States military, also left many veterans recovering from physical and mental disabilities and confronting
homelessness. A 1997 survey of 1,200 homeless veterans nationwide who resided at mission shelters found that 10 percent of

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
186 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

186

them were Gulf War veterans.8 In New York City, homeless service providers also reported assisting
significant numbers of Desert Storm veterans.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
187 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

187

Homophobia

Wartime consensus favors inherently homophobic military culture
Dennis Sewell, 1993

(January 27, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17, lexis)
If the public reasons why the armed forces are so set against admitting homosexuals bear such little scrutiny, is there an
unspoken reason? A homophobia that dare not speak its name? Certainly there is a profoundly ingrained distaste for
homosexuals prevalent among private soldiers and NCOs. This stems partly from a fear of becoming the object of unwanted
homosexual attentions. Also there is a knee-jerk association of the homosexual with the effeminate or effete. To men brought
up in an exaggeratedly macho culture, one of the most effective taunts within the group is that of being "queer". OFFICERS,
of course, are keen to distance themselves from this way of thinking or behaving. Such attitudes are, they say, part of
ordinary working-class culture and not specific to the military. They themselves, being middle class and having, doubtless,
seen homosexual behaviour at their public schools, affect a personal insoucience about the whole issue. But they insist "the
lads won't have it". This, too, we have heard before. The slow progress made by blacks in becoming senior NCOs or officers
in the British Army owed much to the same kind of argument. Working-class culture was inherently racist, officers would
say. Once the lads were told they were jolly well going to have to lump it, of course they accepted black officers. But in the
case of homosexual servicemen, there is a complicating factor. Whereas officers did not, on the whole, condone racist
attitudes, they are often complicit in fostering homophobic attitudes. They make and enjoy the jokes just as much as the men.
Indeed, for the more insecure, a little queer baiting has been one way of proving their own masculinity. They will find it hard
now to tell the lads that they were wrong all along.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
188 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

188

Inequality

Wars are fought by the poor who are sacrificed for the upper classes turning case
Tyson, Wash Post, 05

(Ann Scott Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn To Military, Recruits' Job Worries Outweigh War Fears, Ann Scott Tyson,
Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, November 4, 2005; Page A01)
As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder than ever to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force, newly released Pentagon
demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on economically depressed, rural areas where
youths' need for jobs may outweigh the risks of going to war. More than 44 percent of U.S. military recruits come from rural
areas, Pentagon figures show. In contrast, 14 percent come from major cities. Youths living in the most sparsely populated
Zip codes are 22 percent more likely to join the Army, with an opposite trend in cities. Regionally, most enlistees come from
the South (40 percent) and West (24 percent). Many of today's recruits are financially strapped, with nearly half coming
from lower-middle-class to poor households, according to new Pentagon data based on Zip codes and census estimates of
mean household income. Nearly two-thirds of Army recruits in 2004 came from counties in which median household
income is below the U.S. median. Such patterns are pronounced in such counties as Martinsville, Va., that supply the
greatest number of enlistees in proportion to their youth populations. All of the Army's top 20 counties for recruiting had
lower-than-national median incomes, 12 had higher poverty rates, and 16 were non-metropolitan, according to the
National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group that analyzed 2004 recruiting data by Zip code.

The USFG recruits Hispanics to high fatality posts in the military
Hil, 2005

(Richard May Life lottery: US military targets poor Hispanics for frontline service in Iraq, New Internationalist)
They have been variously described as 'working class mercenaries', 'green card troops', 'non-citizen' armies, or desperate
recruits of the US Government's 'poverty draft'. They are the huge contingent of Hispanic personnel who--for personal and
economic reasons--have been recruited into the ranks of the US military. According to US journalist Jim Ross, by February
2005 there were 110,000 of them. The biggest single contingent of such troops is made up of Mexicans and Mexican
descendants. Many were in the marine units from Camp Pendleton in San Diego that participated in the initial stages of the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and later fought 'insurgents' in Falluja. Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Central Americans and
Ecuadorians are also well represented. Since the start of the war about a third of the US forces stationed in Iraq--between
31,000 and 37,000 troops out of a total of about 130,000--were non-US citizens serving in the navy, Marine Corps, army and
air force. Following the widespread insurgency in early 2004 the US Government has gone on a nationwide recruitment
drive that has targeted young Hispanics with promises of green cards, scholarships, post-service employment, and various
medical and pension benefits. The US Government's interest in recruiting Latinos is hardly surprising since they make up
about 12.5 per cent of the US population: one in seven 18-year-olds are of Hispanic origin. Invariably poor and jobless, they
are prime candidates for US Military Occupational Specialists hungry for recruits. This recruitment campaign is driven by an
executive order signed in July 2002 by President Bush, which effectively allows recruits in active duty during the 'war on
terror' to apply for citizenship once they join up rather than having to wait years for the granting of a green card. Since 11
September 2001, the Bush Administration has tightened immigration procedures and cut public spending in a number of
areas such as housing and education. This has meant that many young Latinos feel they have little choice but to pursue the
inducements offered by the US military. These non-citizen members of the military have a limited number of Military
Occupational Specialties to choose from when enlisting. As a consequence, noncitizens are over-represented in some of the
most dangerous field operations. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanic troops make up about 17.5 per cent of
front-line forces. Not surprisingly, such troops die or are injured in disproportionate numbers. US Department of Defense
figures suggest a casualty rate for Latino military members of about 13 per cent--almost two-and-a-half times the rate of
other serving members and many times more than in previous conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War.
Significantly, of the first 1,000 US deaths in Iraq, the overwhelming majority was among the lowest-ranked, poorest-paid,
and worst-trained troops. Over 120 were Latinos--about 70 of them Mexican. With few prospects of gaining US citizenship
through the usual channels, and with little hope of employment, decent housing and education, the call to arms clearly
holds some attraction. Yet as the advocacy organization Latinos against the Iraq War has pointed out, the various promises

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
189 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

189

made by the Government frequently fail to materialize when Latino service personnel return home. Many of these troops--
especially those who are injured--find they are in worse circumstances than when they left for Iraq; themselves victims of
the very 'war on terror' they were recruited to vanquish.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
190 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

190

Mental Health T/

War creates many mental health issues
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Given the brutality of war. many people survive wars only to be physically or mentally scarred for life (see Box 1-1). Millions
of survivors are chronically disabled from injuries sustained during war or the immediate aftermath of war.
Approximately one-third of Ihe soldiers who survived ihe civil war in Ethiopia, for example, were injured or disabled, and at
least 40,000 individuals lost one or more limbs during the war.' Antipersonnel landmines represent a serious threat
to many people'' (see Chapter 7). For example, in Cambodia, I in 236 people is an amputee as a result of a landmine
explosion.'
0

Millions more people are psychologically impaired from wars, during which they have been physically or sexually assaulted or have
physically or sexually assaulted others; have been tortured or have participated in the torture of others; have been forced to
serve as soldiers against their will; have witnessed the death of family members; or have experienced the destruction of their
communities or entire nations (sec Chapter4). Psychological trauma may be demonstrated in disturbed and antisocial
behaviors, such as aggression toward family members and others. Many soldiers, on returning from military action, suffer
from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). which also affects many civilian survivors of war.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
191 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

191

Poverty

Wartime spending causes poverty

Henderson, 98

(Errol Anthony Henderson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, The Journal of Politics, Vol.
60, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 503-520, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647920)
This analysis attempted to ascertain to what extent a relationship obtained between military spending and poverty in the
United States. With the declining significance of macroeconomic forces, types of government spending have become salient
in influencing poverty rate changes. Partial support was found for the view that increased military spending, in the aggregate,
is associated with increased poverty though these effects are different for peacetime and wartime. Peacetime military
spending increases poverty, more than likely through its impact on increasing inequality and unemployment, while wartime
spending has the reverse effect. When disaggregated, military personnel spending is shown to decrease poverty while other
components are associated with increasing poverty. Although military personnel spending reduces poverty, military buildups
since the Korean War have increased the share of procurement spending at the expense of personnel expenditures (Chan
1995). In addition, to the extent that increased defense spending is financed through deficit spending, the inflationary impact
also disproportionately harms the poor. While increased aggregate military spending fails as an antipoverty policy, focused
spending on military personnel may decrease poverty, suggesting its potential as a countercyclical instrument. However,
arguments in favor of such military spending increases are most persuasively put forth on the basis of national security
concerns within a hostile international environment or in the presence of an arms race with a major power rival. Neither
condition obtains in the post-Cold War climate. The findings comport with the present discourse on military spending
dominated by discussions of the "peace dividend" resulting from decreased defense budgets (Chan 1995). While these
findings suggest that reduced aggregate defense spending is associated with decreased poverty, defense reductions will have
different impacts across regions, occupations, and ethnic groups. Defense cutbacks will probably have more deleterious
impacts on states that are heavily reliant upon direct and indirect military spending, such as California, Texas, Virginia, New
York, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. In addition, economic conversion initiatives are dominated by concerns for relief for
defense contractors and their usually high-skilled workforce. To be sure, skilled workers in affected regions will face
difficulties as occupations such as aeronautics, industrial and mechanical engineering, and metalworking decline; however,
low-skilled laborers are more likely candidates for poverty.

Empirically war spending has disproportionately hurt the poor

Henderson, 98

(Errol Anthony Henderson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, The Journal of Politics, Vol.
60, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 503-520, Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647920)
This article examines the extent to which military spending is associated with poverty in the United States for the period
1959-92. The relationship is complicated by macroeconomic factors such as economic growth and unemployment. Increased
military spending is associated with increasing poverty; however, there is an inverse relationship between wartime military
spending and poverty and a direct relationship between peacetime military spending and poverty. Also, military personnel
spending is inversely correlated with poverty while Operations and Maintenance (O&M), procurement, and Research and
Development (R&D) spending are directly correlated with poverty. These findings suggest the antipoverty policy alternatives
of increased social welfare spending, defense conversion that is poverty sensitive, or increased spending on military
personnel, which is usually only accompanied by war mobilization. The last option is untenable as social policy and the first
op- tion is unlikely in the present political climate; therefore, the poor must rely on more "efficiently targeted" conversion
initiatives.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
192 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

192

Poverty


Conflict causes chronic poverty
Goodhand 03
(Johnathan Goodhand, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2003 http://www.pik-
potsdam.de/research/research-domains/transdisciplinary-concepts-and-methods/favaia/workspace/documents/world-
development-volume-31-issue-3-special-issue-on-chronic-poverty-and-development-policy/pages629-646.pdf)
Research studies on the costs of conflict show that although the effects of war varyaccording to the nature,
duration and phase of the conflict, the background economic and social conditions and the level of compensatory action by
national governments or the international communityprotracted conflicts are likely to produce chronic poverty.
This particularly applies to collapsed state, warlord type conflicts characterized by the systematic and
deliberate violation of individual and group rights. In such conflicts the deliberate impoverishment of
the population may be used as a weapon of war. 9 Violent conflict is therefore likely to be both a
driver and maintainer of intergenerationally transmitted (IGT) poverty: Poor societies are at risk of
falling into no-exit cycles of conflict in which ineffective governance, societal warfare, humanitarian crises, and the lack of
development perpetually chase one another (Gurr et al., 2001, p. 13). (b) Macro effects of conflict
Conflict has direct and indirect costs. The direct impacts including battlefield deaths, disablement and
displacement have long-term costs for societies. Chronic poverty is likely to increase due to higher
dependency ratios caused by an increased proportion of the old, women and disabled in the population.
But the indirect costs are likely to have a more significant impact on IGT poverty. Many more people die from
wars as a result of lack of basic medical services, the destruction of rural life and transport and collapse of the state, than from
direct battlefield deaths. 10


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
193 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

193

Woman Rights T/

War destroys womens rights
Marshall, founder of the feminist peace network, 04
(Lucinda Marshall Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, Feminist Writer and Activist, 12-18-04
Unacceptable: The Impact of War on Women and Children http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1219-26.htm)
Women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of conflict and war as well as 80% of the 40
million people in world who are now refugees from their homes. It is one of the unspoken facts of militarism that women
often become the spoils of war, their deaths are considered collateral damage and their bodies are
frequently used as battlegrounds and as commodities that can be traded.
"Women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated and humiliated. Custom,
culture and religion have built an image of women as bearing the 'honour' of their communities.
Disparaging a woman's sexuality and destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which
to terrorize, demean and 'defeat' entire communities, as well as to punish, intimidate and humiliate
women," according to Irene Khan of Amnesty International.
Sexual violence as a tool of war has left hundreds of thousands of women raped, brutalized, impregnated and infected with
HIV/AIDS. And hundreds of thousands of women are trafficked annually for forced labor and sexual slavery. Much of this
trafficking is to service western troops in brothels near military bases. Even women serving in the military are subjected to
sexual violence. U.S. servicewomen have reported hundreds of assaults in military academies and while serving on active
duty. The perpetrators of these assaults have rarely been prosecuted or punished.
The impact of war on children is also profound. In the last decade, two million of our children have been
killed in wars and conflicts. 4.5 million children have been disabled and 12 million have been left homeless.
Today there are 300,000 child soldiers, including many girls who are forced to 'service' the troops.



War restricts womens freedom and suppresses their basic human rights
Abeyesekera, director of a humans rights organization, 03
(Sunila Abeyesekera, director of Inform, a Sri Lankan human rights organization 02-03
http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/A-Women-s-Human-Rights-Perspective-on-War-and-Conflict)
At the same time, wars and conflicts have led to a host of negative consequences for unarmed women
civilians and dependent family members, children, the old and the infirm. Figures worldwide point to the fact that the
majority of refugees and internally displaced persons are female. The erosion of democratic space that often
accompanies conflict and war also propel women into a more active role in political and social life. In moments when men
and male-dominated traditional political and social formations, such as political parties and trade unions, are reluctant or
unable to come forward in defense of human rights and democratic principles, groups of women have had the courage to
stand up to the armed might of both state and non-state actors. War and conflict also push women into decision-making
positions in their families and communities, in particular in the role of head of household.
Most conflicts and wars emerge out of processes of identity formation in which competing identity groups and communities
resort to violence to affirm their equal status in society. Given this dynamic, conflict and war situations result in the
heightening of all forms of conservatism and extremism including religious fundamentalism, ultra-
nationalism and ethnic and linguistic chauvinism. The hardening of identity-based roles ascribed to men
and women within the community that happen as a part of this process often has disastrous
consequences for women. It restricts their mobility and freedom, imposes dress codes, confines them to
the domestic sphere, brings them under the rigid control of male members of the family and the
community and, most critically, places them in the role of 'bearers of the community's honour' and
traditions. Thus, the rape and violation of the women of the 'enemy' community becomes a critical
military strategy in all identity-based wars and conflict.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
194 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

194


Racism

Wartime culture results in racism

Dieckmann et al., 97

(Bernhard Dieckmann, Christoph Wulf, Michael Wimmer, Violence--racism, nationalism, xenophobia, 134
War is as important as any other medium-term socio-economic or political factor in leading to a rise in racism. In
fact, anyone studying the history of race during the twentieth century cannot avoid the conclusiuon that the
worst persecution of minorities has occurred during wartime. Apart from genocide, illustrated by the Annenian
genocide in World War I and the Nazi Holocaust in World War Two, states such as Britain and Brazil experienced
some of their worst twentieth century outbreaks of violence during the First World War. The explanations as to
why war leads to an increase in intolerance are many, but revolve around the increase in ostracisation of out-
groups, facilitated by the seizure of control, directly or indirectly, by the military, as members of the dominant
society fell closer together to fight the external enemy.


War props up systems of racism and domination.
Martin 90. [Brian, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the University of Wollongong, ,
Uprooting War, Freedom Press, [http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/index.html]

Antagonism between ethnic groups can be used and reinforced by the state to sustain its own power. When one
ethnic group controls all the key positions in the state, this is readily used to keep other groups in subordinate
positions, and as a basis for economic exploitation. This was clearly a key process in apartheid in South Africa,
but is also at work in many other countries in which minority groups are oppressed. From this perspective, the
dominant ethnic group uses state power to maintain its ascendancy. But at the same time, the use of political
and economic power for racial oppression helps to sustain and legitimate state power itself. This is because the
maintenance of racial domination and exploitation comes to depend partly on the use of state power, which is
therefore supported and expanded by the dominant group. From this perspective it can be said that the state
mobilises racism to help maintain itself.
There are several other avenues used by the state to mobilise support. Several of these will be treated in the
following chapters, including bureaucracy and patriarchy. In each case, structured patterns of dominance and
submission are mobilised to support the state, and state in turn helps to sustain the social structure in question,
such as bureaucracy or patriarchy. To counter the state, it is necessary both to promote grassroots mobilisation
and to undermine the key structures from which the state draws its power and from which it mobilises support.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
195 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

195

Rape

War facilitates the rape of women to force unwanted pregnancies and to further ethnic
cleansing
Robson 93
(Robson, has a Master's degree in African Literature and is an award winning writer, 06-93
http://www.newint.org/issue244/rape.htm)
No-one will ever know the exact number of women and girls raped during the conflict in former
Yugoslavia. But Heraks accounts of his forced participation in rapes of Bosnian Muslim women his commander had
told him it was good for morale accord with evidence recounted to human-rights observers and journalists
throughout the region. Though all figures must be treated with caution in a war so plagued by propaganda, these witnesses
tell of the organized and systematic rape of at least 20,000 women and girls by the Serbian military and the murder of many
of the victims. Muslim and Croatian as well as some Serbian women are being raped in their homes, in schools,
police stations and camps all over the country. The sexual abuse of women in war is nothing new. Rape
has long been tolerated as one of the spoils of war, an inevitable feature of military conflict like pillage
and looting. What is new about the situation in Bosnia is the attention it is receiving and the recognition that it is being
used as a deliberate military tactic to speed up the process of ethnic cleansing. According to a recent report
by European Community investigators, rapes are being committed in particularly sadistic ways to inflict
maximum humiliation on victims, their families, and on the whole community.
1
In many cases the intention is
deliberately to make women pregnant and to detain them until pregnancy is far enough advanced to
make termination impossible. Women and girls aged anything between 6 and 70 are being held in camps throughout
the country and raped repeatedly by gangs of soldiers. Often brothers or fathers of these women are forced to rape them as
well. If they refuse, they are killed.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
196 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

196

Rights T/

Wars undermine human rights
Ganesan and Vines 04. [Arvind, Business and Human Rights Program Director @ HRW Alex, Senior Researcher @
HRW, Head of Africa Programme Chatham House, Royal Institue of Intl Affairs, Engine of War: Resources,
Greed, and the Predatory State, Human Rights Watch World Report 2004
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/download/14.pdf]

Internal armed conflict in resource-rich countries is a major cause of human rights violations around the world.
An influential World Bank thesis states that the availability of portable, high-value resources is an important
reason that rebel groups form and civil wars break out, and that to end the abuses one needs to target rebel
group financing. The focus is on rebel groups, and the thesis is that greed, rather than grievance alone, impels
peoples toward internal armed conflict.
Although examination of the nexus between resources, revenues, and civil war is critically important, the picture
as presented in the just-described greed vs. grievance theory is distorted by an overemphasis on the impact of
resources on rebel group behavior and insufficient attention to how government mismanagement of resources
and revenues fuels conflict and human rights abuses. As argued here, if the international community is serious
about curbing conflict and related rights abuses in resource-rich countries, it should insist on greater
transparency in government revenues and expenditures and more rigorous enforcement of punitive measures
against governments that seek to profit from conflict.
Civil wars and conflict have taken a horrific toll on civilians throughout the world. Killings, maiming, forced
conscription, the use of child soldiers, sexual abuse, and other atrocities characterize numerous past and
ongoing conflicts. The level of violence has prompted increased scrutiny of the causes of such wars. In this
context, the financing of conflict through natural resource exploitation has received increased scrutiny over the
last few years.
When unaccountable, resource-rich governments go to war with rebels who often seek control over the same
resources, pervasive rights abuse is all but inevitable. Such abuse, in turn, can further destabilize conditions,
fueling continued conflict. Factoring the greed of governments and systemic rights abuse into the greed vs.
grievance equation does not minimize the need to hold rebel groups accountable, but it does highlight the
need to ensure that governments too are transparent and accountable. Fundamentally, proper management of
revenues is an economic problem, and that is why the role of IFIs is so important. But it is an economic problem
that also has political dimensions and requires political solutions. Political will and pressure, including targeted
U.N. sanctions where appropriate, can motivate opaque, corrupt governments to be more open and
transparent. Where such pressure is lacking, as in Liberia prior to enforcement of sanctions, continued conflict,
rights abuse, and extreme deprivation of civilians all too commonly are the result.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
197 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

197

Rights T/

Modern warfare involves crippling civilian infrastructure and violating human rights
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine,
Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition
2, 2007)

Modern military technology, especially the use of high-precision bombs, rockets, and missile warheads, has now
made it possible to attack civilian populations in industrialized societies indirectlybut with devastating resultsby
targeting the facilities on which life depends, while avoiding the stigma of direct attack on the bodies and habitats of
noncombatants. The technique has been termed "bomb now, die later."
U.S. military action against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the Iraq War has included the specific and
selective destruction of key aspects of the infrastructure necessary to maintain ci vi l i an life and health (see Chapter
15). During the bombing phase of the Persian Gulf War this deliberate effort almost totally destroyed Iraq's
electrical-power generation and transmission capacity and its civilian communications networks. In combination
with the prolonged application of economic sanctions and the disruption of highways, bridges, and facilities for
refining and distributing fuel by conventional bombing, these actions had severely damaging effects on the health
and survival of the civilian population, especially infants and children. Without electrical power, water purification
and pumping ceased immediately in all major urban areas, as did sewage pumping and treatment. The appearance
and epidemic spread of infectious diarrheal disease in infants and of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid fever and
cholera, were rapid. At the same lime, medical care and public health measures were totally disrupted. Modern
multistory hospitals were left without clean water, sewage disposal, or any electricity beyond what could he
supplied by emergency generators designed to operate only a few hours per day. Operating rooms, x-ray equipment,
and other vital facilities were crippled. Supplies of anesthetics, antibiotics, and other essential medications were
rapidly depleted. Vaccines and medications requiring refrigeration were destroyed, and all immunization programs
increased. Because almost no civilian telephones, computers, or transmission lines were operable, the Ministry of
Health was effectively immobilized. Fuel shortages and the disruption of transportation limited civilian access to
medical care.
Many reports provide clear and quantitative evidence of violations of the requirements of immunity for civilian
populations, proportionality, and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. They mock the concept of life integrity
rights. In contrast to the chaos and social disruption that routinely accompany armed conflicts, these deaths have
been the consequence of and explicit military policy, with clearly foreseeable consequences to human rights of
civilians. The U.S. military has never conceded that its policies violated human rights under the Geneva Conventions
or the guidelines under which U.S. military personnel operate. Yet the ongoing development of military technology
suggests thatabsent the use of weapons of mass destructionviolations of civilians human rights will be the
preferred method of warfare in the future.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
198 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

198

Social Service T/

Increased military spending from war would tradeoff with health care and other social services
Tasini , executive director of labor research association ran for senate in NY, 8-13-7 (Jonathan , Guns Versus
Butter -- Our Real Economic Challenge , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/guns-versus-butter-
our_b_60150.html)

Guns versus butter. It's the classic debate that really tells us a lot about our priorities that we set for the
kind of society we can expect to live in -- how much money a country spends on the military versus how
much money is expended on non-military, domestic needs. To perhaps explain the obvious, buying a gun (or
missile defense or a sophisticated bomber) means you don't have those dollars for butter (or a national
health care plan or free college education). At some basic level, we all know that those tradeoffs exist but,
sometimes, numbers bring home the meaning of this equation in stunning fashion. What made me think of this is a set of
revealing numbers that jumped out at me the other day -- numbers that underscore why there is, in my opinion, something
lacking in the message of most of the Democratic presidential candidates and our party's leadership.


War spending trades off with Medicaid Bush and the Iraq war proves
Star Tribune 5 ("Social programs would bear brunt of deficit reduction", February 8, @Lexis)
President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget Monday that would drastically cut or shut down 150
government programs and slash spending on Medicaid, farming and low-income housing, while boosting
money for defense and homeland security. In what Bush described as the most austere budget of his presidency,
discretionary spending would grow by 2.1 percent - less than the projected rate of inflation. Meanwhile, non-defense
spending would be cut by nearly 1 percent - the first such proposed cut since the Reagan administration. Hardest
hit is Medicaid, which could cost Minnesota as much as $712 million over the next decade.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
199 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

199

Starvation

War causes starvation
Messer 96
(Ellen Messer, University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1996, http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu22we/uu22we0j.htm)
After the wars, communities decimated and depopulated by physical and human losses can remain
underproductive and hungry for years, as food wars and the conditions leading up to them remain a
legacy of armed conflict that is not easily remedied without outside assistance. Individuals, households, and
communities must regain access to land, water, and other sources of livelihood, and human resources and social infrastructure
must somehow recover. Communities in many cases must be re-formed, especially where areas have experienced complete or
selective depopulation. Production and markets must be re-established, so that goods can flow and livelihoods rebound.
During prolonged warfare, whole generations may be conscripted into the military; with no other
schooling, they must later be socialized into peacetime occupations if they are not to revert to violence
and brigandage as a source of entitlements. In the African conflicts of Mozambique, Liberia, and Sierra Leone,
destruction of kinship units was a deliberate military strategy to remove intergenerational ties and community bonds and
create new loyalties to the military. These grown youths now need sustenance, and basic and specialty education, if they are
to contribute to a peacetime economy and society, and to general food security. After decades of civil war, these
countries also lack skilled agricultural, social, and health professionals to speed recovery. They require
agricultural, health, educational, and economic services to rebuild societies, as well as physical infrastructure
such as agricultural works, transport and communication lines, and market-places destroyed in the wars.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
200 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

200

Terror

Wars, like the Iraq war, have increased a chance of a terror attack
People Press 05
(Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 7-21-05, http://people-press.org/report/251/more-say-iraq-war-hurts-
fight-against-terrorism)
The public is growing more skeptical that the war in Iraq is helping in the effort to fight terrorism. A
plurality (47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism, up from 41% in February of this year.
Further, a plurality (45%) now says that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at
home, up from 36% in October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the
U.S. (22% now and 32% in October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no effect on the chances of a
terrorist attack in the U.S. Older Americans are more skeptical than younger people that the war in Iraq is helping the effort
to fight terrorism. A 56% majority of those age 50 and over say the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism,
up from 39% in February. Those younger than age 50 are divided on this issue, with 45% saying the war in Iraq has helped
and 41% saying it hurt the war on terrorism; that pattern has remained stable since February.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
201 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

201



**X TURNS CASE**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
202 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

202

AIDS T/ Readiness
AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes govt control
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12,
no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security
http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike other diseases, AIDS
has an incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it will produce significant casualties on the
front lines of a war. It will still, however, deplete force strength in many states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed
forces in sub-Saharan countries are HIV-positive, and in a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe,
it may be as high as 80 percent.147 In high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes military readiness, directly
threatening national security. Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related
illnesses are now the leading cause of death in the army and police forces of these countries, accounting for more
than 50% of inservice and post-service mortalities. In badly infected countries, AIDS patients occupy 75% of military
hospital beds and the disease is responsible for more admissions than battlefield injuries. The high rate of HIV
infection has meant that some African armies have been unable to deploy a full contingent, or even half of their
troops, at short notice.. [In South Africa, because] participation in peace-support operations outside the country is
voluntary, the S[outh] A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling with the problem of how to ensure the
availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even the use of members for internal
crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse conditions or stationing in areas where local
in- frastructure is limited, presents certain problems. Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea and the common cold,
can be serious enough to require the hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in some cases, can
prove fatal if they are not treated immediately.148 Armed forces in severely affected states will be unable to recruit
and train soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying colleagues, the potential recruitment pool itself will
dwindle, and officers corps will be decimated. Military budgets will be sapped, military blood supplies tainted, and
organizational structures strained to accommodate unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also threaten
civilians at home and abroad. Increased levels of sexual activity among military forces in wartime means that the
military risk of becoming infected with HIV is as much as 100 times that of the civilian risk. It also means that
members of the armed forces comprise a key means of transmitting the virus to the general population; with sex
and transport workers, the military is considered one of the three core transmission groups in Africa.149 For this
reason, conflict-ridden states may become reluctant to accept peacekeepers from countries with high HIV rates.
Rather than contributing directly to military defeat in many countries, however, AIDS in the military is more likely to
have longer term implications for national security. First, IDs theoretically could deter military action and impede
access to strategic resources or areas. Tropical diseases erected a formidable, although obviously not
insurmountable, obstacle to colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French and later American efforts to
open the Panama Canal, similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control efforts effectively checked yellow fever
and malaria. Second, in many countries AIDS already strains military medical systems and their budgets, and it only
promises to divert further spending away from defense toward both military and civilian health. Third, AIDS in the
military promises to have its greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further
destabilizing the state. Terminally ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their government, and their
government may be in more need of defending as AIDS siphons funds from housing, education, police, and
administration. Finally, high military HIV/AIDS rates could alter regional balances of power. Perhaps 40.50 percent of
South Africa.s soldiers are HIV-infected. Despite the disease.s negative impact on South Africa.s absolute power,
Price-Smith notes, AIDS may increase that nation.s power relative to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with
potentially important regional consequences.150 AIDS poses obvious threats to the military forces of many countries,
particularly in sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not present the same immediate security problems for the United
States. The authors of a Reagan-era report on the effects of economic and demographic trends on security worried
about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education, and funding on the defense budget,151 but a decade of
relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These surpluses have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS
spending have not reappeared and are unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, given the relatively low levels of
HIV-infection in the United States. AIDS presents other challenges, including prevention education and measures to
limit infection of U.S. soldiers and peacekeepers stationed abroad, particularly in high risk settings, and HIV

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
203 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

203

transmission by these forces to the general population. These concerns could limit U.S. actions where American
interests are at stake.152

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
204 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

204

AIDS T/ Readiness

Aids kills military readiness
Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the 21st Century Trust, World
Policy Journal, Global Public Health Trumps the Nation-State Volume XXI, No 3, Fall 2004,
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)

The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS pandemic has the
potential to derail the economic prospects of billions of peopleparticularly in Russia, China, and Indiaand to
thereby alter the global military balance.
5
Eurasia (defined as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the worlds
population, and its combined GNP is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more
importantly, the region includes four of the worlds five militaries with over one million members and four declared
nuclear states. Since HIV has a relatively long incubation period, its effects on military readiness are unusually harsh.
Officers who contract the disease early in their military careers do not typically die until they have amassed
significant training and expertise, so armed forces are faced with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace
officers.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
205 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

205

Disesase T/ Readiness

Diseases kill military readiness- empirically proven
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12,
no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security
http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and outcome of military
conflict by eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond notes, .All those military histories glorifying
great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the
best generals and weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies..142
During the European conquest of the Americas, the conquistadors shared numerous lethal microbes with their
native American foes, who had few or no deadly diseases to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez
and his men first attacked the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520, they left behind smallpox that wiped out half the Aztec
population. Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their vulnerability to a disease that appeared harmless to
the Europeans, and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in conquering the Aztec nation.143 Spanish
conquest of the Incan empire in South America followed a similar pattern: In 1532 Francisco Pizarro and his army of
168 Spaniards defeated the Incan army of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had killed the Incan emperor and
his heir, producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to defeat a large, but divided
enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the ability of military forces to prosecute and win
a war. The German Army chief of staff in the First World War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed Germany.s
loss of that war at least partly on the negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German
troops.145 In the Second World War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in certain areas than did military
action.146 Throughout history, then, IDs have had a significant potential to decimate armies and alter military history.


Pandemics kill military readiness
Major Hesko, 6 (Gerald, Air Command And Staff College Pandemic Influenza: Military Operational Readiness
Implications April 2006)

There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of the past century with
the potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult
to accurately predict, scientists theorize that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic
is imminent.
If a pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community, the number of
Americans affected could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in untold suffering and deaths. Although
an influenza pandemic, if it occurs, has the potential to devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming
consequence is the effects it could have on the operational readiness of the United States military establishment.
With our current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with other smaller engagements world-wide, if an
influenza pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational readiness, preparedness and ability to defend
our vital national interests could be decreased or threaten. As a result of the pending threat of an influenza
pandemic, the United States military, must take decisive actions to mitigate the potential devastation an influenza
pandemic might have on operational readiness.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
206 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

206

Disease T/ Readiness

Disease turns military readiness
Suburban Emergency Management Project, 7 (Disease Outbreak Readiness Update, U.S. Department of
Defense
Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=449)

An infectious disease pandemic could impair the militarys readiness, jeopardize ongoing military operations abroad,
and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel
reporting sick or being absent during a pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007).
Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the U.S. House
of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation. (1) The 40% number (above) comes from the Homeland
Security Councils estimate that 40% of the U.S. workforce might not be at work due to illness, the need to care for
family members who are sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military and civilian personnel and contractors
would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
207 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

207

Disease T/ War

Disease increases the likelihood of war and genocide
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William & Mary, Security Studies 12,
no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National Security
http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)

How might these political and economic effects produce violent conflict? Price-Smith offers two possible answers:
Disease .magnif[ies].both relative and absolute deprivation and.hasten[s] the erosion of state capacity in seriously
affected societies. Thus, infectious disease may in fact contribute to societal destabilization and to chronic low-
intensity intrastate violence, and in extreme cases it may accelerate the processes that lead to state failure..83
Disease heightens competition among social groups and elites for scarce resources. When the debilitating and
deadly effects of IDs like AIDS are concentrated among a particular socio-economic, ethnic, racial, or geographic
group, the potential for conflict escalates. In many parts of Africa today, AIDS strikes rural areas at higher rates than
urban areas, or it hits certain provinces harder than others. If these trends persist in states where tribes or ethnic
groups are heavily concentrated in particular regions or in rural rather than urban areas, AIDS almost certainly will
interact with tribal, ethnic, or national differences and make political and military conflict more likely. Price-Smith
argues, moreover, that .the potential for intra-elite violence is also increasingly probable and may carry grave
political consequences, such as coups, the collapse of governance, and planned genocides..84

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
208 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

208

Ecodestruction T/ Disease

Worldwatch Institute, 96 (Infectious Diseases Surge: Environmental Destruction, Poverty To Blame
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1593)

Rates of infectious disease have risen rapidly in many countries during the past decade, according to a new study
released by the Worldwatch Institute. Illness and death from tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and AIDS are up
sharply; infectious diseases killed 16.5 million people in 1993, one-third of all deaths worldwide, and slightly more
than cancer and heart disease combined.
The resurgence of diseases once thought to have been conquered stems from a deadly mix of exploding populations,
rampant poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and severe environmental degradation, says the
new report, Infecting Ourselves: How Environmental and Social Disruptions Trigger Disease. Infectious diseases take
their greatest toll in developing countries, where cases of malaria and tuberculosis are soaring, but even in the
United States, infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992.
Research Associate Anne Platt, author of the report, says, "Infectious diseases are a basic barometer of the
environmental sustainability of human activity. Recent outbreaks result from a sharp imbalance between a human
population growing by 88 million each year and a natural resource base that is under increasing stress."
"Water pollution, shrinking forests, and rising temperatures are driving the upward surge in infections in many
countries," the report says. "Only by adopting a more sustainable path to economic development can we control
them."
"Beyond the number of people who die, the social and economic cost of infectious diseases is hard to overestimate,"
Platt says. "It can be a crushing burden for families, communities, and governments. Some 400 million people suffer
from debilitating malaria, about 200 million have schistosomiasis, and nine million have tuberculosis."
By the year 2000, AIDS will cost Asian countries over $50 billion a year just in lost productivity. "Such suffering and
economic loss is doubly tragic," says Platt, "because the cost of these diseases is astronomical, yet preventing them
is not only simple, but inexpensive."
The author notes, "The dramatic resurgence of infectious diseases is telling us that we are approaching disease and
medicine, as well as economic development, in the wrong way. Governments focus narrowly on individual cures and
not on mass prevention; and we fail to understand that lifestyle can promote infectious disease just as it can
contribute to heart disease. It is imperative that we bring health considerations into the equation when we plan for
international development, global trade, and population increases, to prevent disease from spreading and further
undermining economic development."
The report notes that this global resurgence of infectious disease involves old, familiar diseases like tuberculosis and
the plague as well as new ones like Ebola and Lyme disease. Yet all show the often tragic consequences of human
actions:
Population increases, leading to human crowding, poverty, and the growth of mega-cities, are prompting dramatic
increases in dengue fever, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.
Lack of clean water is spreading diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty percent of all disease in
developing countries is related to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation.
Poorly planned development disrupts ecosystems and provides breeding grounds for mosquitoes, rodents, and
snails that spread debilitating diseases.
Inadequate vaccinations have led to resurgences in measles and diphtheria.
Misuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant strains of pneumonia and malaria.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
209 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

209

Ecodestruction T/ Disease

Environmental collapse threatens health and civilization collapse
WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)

In a fundamental sense, ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems - for the human species and all other forms
of life (see Figure 1.1). The needs of the human organism for food, water, clean air, shelter and relative climatic
constancy are basic and unalterable. That is, ecosystems are essential to human well-being and especially to human
health defined by the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Those who live in materially comfortable, urban environments commonly take for granted ecosystem services to
health. They assume that good health derives from prudent consumer choices and behaviours, with access to good
health care services. But this ignores the role of the natural environment: of the array of ecosystems that allow
people to enjoy good health, social organization, economic activity, a built environment and life itself. Historically,
overexploitation of ecosystem services has led to the collapse of some societies (SG3). There is an observable
tendency for powerful and wealthy societies eventually to overexploit, damage and even destroy their natural
environmental support base. The agricultural-based civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mayans, and
(on a micro-scale) Easter Island all provide well documented examples. Industrial societies, although in many cases
more distant from the source of the ecosystem services on which they depend, may reach similar limits. Resource
consumption in one location can lead to degradation of ecosystem services and associated health effects in other
parts of the world (SG3). At its most fundamental level of analysis, the pressure on ecosystems can be
conceptualized as a function of population, technology and lifestyle. In turn, these factors depend on many social
and cultural elements. For example, fertilizer use in agricultural production increasingly is dependent on resources
extracted from other regions and has led to eutrophication of rivers, lakes and coastal ecosystems. Notwithstanding
ecosystems' fundamental role as determinants of human health, sociocultural factors play a similarly important role.
These include infrastructural assets; income and wealth distribution; technologies used; and level of knowledge. In
many industrialized countries, changes in these social factors over the last few centuries have both enhanced some
ecosystem services (through more productive agriculture, for instance) and improved health services and education,
contributing to increases in life expectancy. The complex multifactorial causation of states of health and disease
complicates the attribution of human health impacts to ecosystem changes. A precautionary approach to ecosystem
management is appropriate.

Environmental destruction causes new diseases
WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys
tems/ecosysq1.pdf)

Disturbance or degradation of ecosystems can have biological effects that are highly relevant to infectious disease
transmission (C14). The reasons for the emergence or re-emergence of some diseases are unknown, but the
following mechanisms have been proposed: altered habitat leading to changes in the number of vector breeding
sites or reservoir host distribution; niche invasions or transfer of interspecies hosts; biodiversity change
(including loss of predator species and changes in host population density); human-induced genetic changes in
disease vectors or pathogens (such as mosquito resistance to pesticides or the emergence of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria); and environmental contamination by infectious disease agents (such as faecal contamination of source
waters).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
210 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

210

Ecodestruction T/ War

Environmental degradation increases war, instability, and hurts the economy
UN, 4 (United Nations News Center, Environmental destruction during war exacerbates instability November
5, 2004, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=12460&Cr=conflict&Cr1=environment,

"These scars, threatening water supplies, the fertility of the land and the cleanliness of the air are recipes for
instability between communities and neighbouring countries," he added.
Citing a new UNEP report produced in collaboration with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Toepfer stressed that environmental degradation
could undermine local and international security by "reinforcing and increasing grievances within and between
societies."
The study finds that a decrepit and declining environment can depress economic activity and diminish the authority
of the state in the eyes of its citizens. It also points out that the addressing environmental problems can foster trust
among communities and neighbouring countries.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
211 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

211

Ecodestruction T/ Agriculture

Environmental degradation destroys cropland
Homer-Dixon, 91 (Thomas- Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the
University of Toronto, International Security On The Threshold: Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute
Conflict 199, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh/thresh2.htm)
Decreased agricultural production is often mentioned as potentially the most worrisome consequence of
environmental change,
47
and Figure 2 presents some of the causal scenarios frequently proposed by researchers.
This illustration is not intended to be exhaustive: the systemic interaction of environmental and agricultural variables
is far more complex than the figure suggests.
48
Moreover, no one region or country will exhibit all the indicated
processes: while some are already clearly evident in certain areas, others are not yet visible anywhere.
The Philippines provides a good illustration of deforestation's impact, which can be traced out in the figure. Since
the Second World War, logging and the encroachment of farms have reduced the virgin and second-growth forest
from about sixteen million hectares to 6.8-7.6 million hectares.
49
Across the archipelago, logging and land-clearing
have accelerated erosion, changed regional hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns, and decreased the land's
ability to retain water during rainy periods. The resulting flash floods have damaged irrigation works while plugging
reservoirs and irrigation channels with silt. These factors may seriously affect crop production. For example, when
the government of the Philippines and the European Economic Community commissioned an Integrated
Environmental Plan for the still relatively unspoiled island of Palawan, the authors of the study found that only about
half of the 36,000 hectares of irrigated farmland projected within the Plan for 2007 will actually be irrigable because
of the hydrological effects of decreases in forest cover.
50

Figure 2 also highlights the importance of the degradation and decreasing availability of good agricultural land,
problems that deserve much closer attention than they usually receive. Currently, total global cropland amounts to
about 1.5 billion hectares. Optimistic estimates of total arable land on the planet, which includes both current and
potential cropland, range from 3.2 to 3.4 billion hectares, but nearly all the best land has already been exploited.
What is left is either less fertile, not sufficiently rainfed or easily irrigable, infested with pests, or harder to clear and
work.
51

For developing countries during the 1980s, cropland grew at just 0.26 percent a year, less than half the rate of the 1970s.
More importantly, in these countries arable land per capita dropped by 1.9 percent a year.
52
In the absence of a major increase
in arable land in developing countries, experts expect that the world average of 0.28 hectares of cropland per capita will
decline to 0.17 hectares by the year 2025, given the current rate of world population growth.
53
Large tracts are being lost each
year to urban encroachment, erosion, nutrient depletion, salinization, waterlogging, acidification, and compacting. The
geographer Vaclav Smil, who is generally very conservative in his assessments of environmental damage, estimates that two
to three million hectares of cropland are lost annually to erosion; perhaps twice as much land goes to urbanization, and at
least one million hectares are abandoned because of excessive salinity. In addition, about one-fifth of the world's cropland is
suffering from some degree of desertification.
54
Taken together, he concludes, the planet will lose about 100 million hectares
of arable land between 1985 and 2000.
55




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
212 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

212




**NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIOS**



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
213 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

213

Central Asian Conflict

Central Asia is the most likely scenario for global nuclear war
Blank, Research Professional of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the
US Army War College, 2000
(Dr. Stephen J Blank, Research Professional of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US
Army War College June, pg. http://www.milnet.com/pentagon/Russia-2000-assessment-SSI.pdf)

Central Asias physical infrastructure might charitably be called Third World and the region is highly diverse
ethnically and politically. Thus we might quickly end up on the wrong side of a Central Asian ethnic
conflict. In such a case we would also quite likely be opposed by one or more of the key neighboring
states, China, Iran, or Russia, all of whom might find it easier to project and sustain power into the area
(or use proxies for that purpose) than we could.


Central Asia is the most likely scenario for a global nuclear war
Stephen Blank,, Director of Strategic Studies Institute at US Army War College, 1999 Central Asian Survey (18;
2), *Every Shark East of Suez: Great Power Interests, Policies and Tactics in the Transcaspian Energy Wars+

Thus many structural conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where third parties intervene
now exist in the Transcaucasus. And similarly many conditions exist for internal domestic strife if the leadership of any
of these governments changes or if one of the many disaffected minority groups revolts. Many Third World conflicts
generated by local structural factors have a great potential for unintended escalation. Big powers often
feel obliged to rescue their proxies and protgs . One or another big power may fail to grasp the stakes for the other
side since interests here are not as clear as in Europe. Hence commitments involving the use of nuclear weapons or
perhaps even conventional war to prevent defeat of a client are not well established or clear as in Europe. For instance, in
1993 Turkish noises about intervening on behalf of Azerbaijan induced Russian leaders to threaten a
nuclear war in that case. This episode tends to confirm the notion that `future wars involving Europe and America as allies
will be fought either over resources in chaotic Third World locations or in ethnic upheavals on the southern fringe of Europe
and Russia . 95 Sadly, many such causes for conflict prevail across the Transcaspian. Precisely because Turkey
is a Nato members but probably could not prevail in a long war against Russia or if it could, would
conceivably trigger a potential nuclear blow (not a small possibility given the erratic nature of Russia s
declared nuclear strategies), the danger of major war is higher here than almost every-where else in the
CIS or the so-called arc of crisis from the Balkans to China.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
214 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

214

China-US

US China war goes nuclear
Hadar, adjunct scholar at Cato, 96
(Louis Hadar , The Sweet and Sour Sino-American Relationship, 1/23/96, http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-248.html)

Some analysts, including Nicholas D. Kristof, former Beijing chief of the New York Times, have drawn a historical
parallel between the rise of Germany as a world economic and military power at the end of the 19th century
and China's rise in the last decade of the 20th century. They suggest that, given the similar authoritarian and
insecure nature of the regimes in post-Bismarck Germany the post-Deng China, China could emerge as a
leading anti-status quo player, challenging the dominant position of the United States, which like Great Britain
in the 19th century occupies the leading economic and military position in the world. "The risk is that Deng's successor will
be less talented and more aggressive--a Chinese version of Wilhelm II," writes Kristof. "Such a ruler unfortunately may be
tempted to promote Chinese nationalism as a unifying force and ideology, to replace the carcass of communism." For all the
differences between China and Wilhelmine Germany, "the latter's experience should remind us of the difficulty that the world
has had accommodating newly powerful nations," warns Kristof, recalling that Germany's jockeying for a place in the front
rank of nations resulted in World War I.(66) Charles Krauthammer echoes that point, contending that China is "like late
19th-century Germany, a country growing too big and too strong for the continent it finds itself on."(67)
Since Krauthammer and other analysts use the term "containment" to describe the policy they urge Washington to adopt
toward China, it is the Cold War with the Soviet Union that is apparently seen as the model for the future Sino- American
relationship. Strategist Graham Fuller predicts, for example, that China is "predisposed to a role as leader of the
dispossessed states" in a new cold war that would pit an American-led West against an anti-status quo
Third World bloc.(68) Although Krauthammer admits that China lacks the ideological appeal that the Soviet
Union possessed (at least in the early stages of the Cold War), he assumes that, like the confrontation with the
Soviet Union but unlike the British-German rivalry, the contest between America and China will remain
"cold" and not escalate into a "hot" war. That optimism is crucial. Advocates of containment may be
able to persuade a large number of Americans to adopt an anti-China strategy if the model is the tense
but manageable Soviet-American rivalry. However, not many Americans are likely to embrace
containment if the probable outcome is a bloody rerun of World War I--only this time possibly with
nuclear weapons.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
215 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

215

Economic Collapse

Economic decline leads to global nuclear war and totalitarian regimes
Cook, former analyst for the US Treasury Department, 2007
Richard Cook, Writer, Consultant, and Retired Federal Analyst U.S. Treasury Department, 6/14/2k7 "It's Official: The
Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun," Global Research, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964

Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to war rather than face
the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide depression of the 1930s leading to World
War II. Conditions in the coming years could be as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the
U.S. decides once and for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they dont
want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes? Maybe well finally have a revolution
either from the right or the center involving martial law, suspension of the Bill of Rights, etc., combined
with some kind of military or forced-labor dictatorship. Were halfway there anyway. Forget about a
revolution from the left. They wouldnt want to make anyone mad at them for being too radical.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
216 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

216

India/Pakistan War

India Pakistan War leads to extinction
Gertz, Staff Writer at the Washington Times, 2001
(Bill Gertz, Staff writer at the Washington Times 12/31/2001, I ndia, Pakistan prepare nukes, troops for war, Lexis)


Pakistan and India are readying their military forces - including their ballistic missiles and nuclear
weapons - for war, The Washington Times has learned. U.S. intelligence officials say Pakistani military moves include
large-scale troop movements, the dispersal of fighter aircraft and preparations for the transportation of nuclear weapons from
storage sites. India also is moving thousands of its troops near the border with Pakistan and has dispersed some aircraft to
safer sites away from border airfields, say officials familiar with intelligence reports of the war moves. Pakistan is moving
the equivalent of two armored brigades - several thousand troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles - near the
northern part of its border with India. Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged heavy mortar fire over their border in southern
Kashmir today, Agence France-Presse reported. Five Indian soldiers were seriously injured in the heaviest shelling in four
months, a senior Indian army official said. More than 1,000 villagers were evacuated from their homes overnight for the
operation, according to the report. Officials say the most alarming signs are preparations in both states for the use of nuclear-
tipped missiles. Intelligence agencies have learned of indications that India is getting its short-range Prithvi ballistic missiles
ready for use. The missiles are within range of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Meanwhile, Pakistan is mobilizing its
Chinese-made mobile M-11 missiles, also known as the Shaheen, which have been readied for movement from a base near
Sargodha, Pakistan. Intelligence reports indicate that India will have all its forces ready to launch an attack as early as this
week, with Thursday or Friday as possible dates. Pakistan could launch its forces before those dates in a pre-emptive strike.
Disclosure of the war preparations comes as President Bush on Saturday telephoned leaders of both nations, urging them to
calm tensions, a sign of administration concern over the military moves in the region. The administration also fears that a
conflict between India and Pakistan would undermine U.S. efforts to find terrorists in Afghanistan. U.S.
military forces are heavily reliant on Pakistani government permission to conduct overflights for
bombing and other aircraft operations into Afghanistan, primarily from aircraft carriers located in the
Arabian Sea. With tensions growing between the states, U.S. intelligence officials are divided over the ultimate meaning of
the indicators of an impending conflict. The Pentagon's Joint Staff intelligence division, known as J-2, late last week had
assessed the danger of conflict at "critical" levels. Other joint intelligence centers outside the Pentagon, including those
supporting the U.S. military forces responsible for the Asia-Pacific region and for Southwest Asia, assess the danger of an
India-Pakistan war as less than critical but still "serious." Intelligence officials are especially worried about
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal because control over the weapons is decentralized. Even before the latest
moves, regional commanders could order the use of the weapons, which are based on missiles or fighter-
bombers.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
217 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

217

Iraq Pullout

Iraq pullout causes Middle-Eastern nuclear war
Gerecht, resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2007
(Reuel, The Consequences of Failure in Iraq, Jan 15,
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25407,filter.all/pub_detail.asp)

If we leave Iraq any time soon, the battle for Baghdad will probably lead to a conflagration that
consumes all of Arab Iraq, and quite possibly Kurdistan, too. Once the Shia become both badly bloodied
and victorious, raw nationalist and religious passions will grow. A horrific fight with the Sunni Arabs
will inevitably draw in support from the ferociously anti-Shiite Sunni religious establishments in Jordan
and Saudi Arabia, and on the Shiite side from Iran. It will probably destroy most of central Iraq and whet
the appetite of Shiite Arab warlords, who will by then dominate their community, for a conflict with the
Kurds. If the Americans stabilize Arab Iraq, which means occupying the Sunni triangle, this won't happen. A strong,
aggressive American military presence in Iraq can probably halt the radicalization of the Shiite community. Imagine an Iraq
modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The worst elements in the Iranian regime are
heavily concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence, the two organizations most
active inside Iraq. The Lebanese Hezbollah is also present giving tutorials. These forces need increasing strife to prosper.
Imagine Iraqi Shiites, battle-hardened in a vicious war with Iraq's Arab Sunnis, spiritually and operationally linking up with a
revitalized and aggressive clerical dictatorship in Iran. Imagine the Iraqi Sunni Islamic militants, driven from Iraq, joining up
with groups like al Qaeda, living to die killing Americans. Imagine the Hashemite monarchy of Jordan overwhelmed with
hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Arab refugees. The Hashemites have been lucky and clever since World War II.
They've escaped extinction several times. Does anyone want to take bets that the monarchy can survive the implantation of an
army of militant, angry Iraqi Sunni Arabs? For those who believe that the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is
the epicenter of the Middle East, the mass migration of Iraq's Sunni Arabs into Jordan will bury what
small chances remain that the Israelis and Palestinians will find an accommodation. With Jordan in
trouble, overflowing with viciously anti-American and anti-Israeli Iraqis, peaceful Palestinian evolution
on the West Bank of the Jordan river is about as likely as the discovery of the Holy Grail. The
repercussions throughout the Middle East of the Sunni-Shiite clash in Iraq are potentially so large it's
difficult to digest. Sunni Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will certainly view a hard-won and
bloody Shiite triumph in Iraq as an enormous Iranian victory. The Egyptians or the Saudis or both will
go for their own nukes. What little chance remains for the Americans and the Europeans to corral
peacefully the clerical regime's nuclear-weapons aspirations will end with a Shiite-Sunni death struggle
in Mesopotamia, which the Shia will inevitably win. The Israelis, who are increasingly likely to strike
preemptively the major Iranian nuclear sites before the end of George Bush's presidency, will feel even
more threatened, especially when the Iranian regime underscores its struggle against the Zionist enemy
as a means of compensating for its support to the bloody Shiite conquest in Iraq. With America in full retreat
from Iraq, the clerical regime, which has often viewed terrorism as a tool of statecraft, could well revert to the mentality and
tactics that produced the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996. If the Americans are retreating, hit them. That would not be
just a radical Shiite view; it was the learned estimation of Osama bin Laden and his kind before 9/11. It's questionable to
argue that the war in Iraq has advanced the radical Sunni holy war against the United States. There
should be no question, however, that an American defeat in Mesopotamia would be the greatest
psychological triumph ever for anti-American jihadists. Al Qaeda and its militant Iraqi allies could
dominate western Iraq for years--it could take awhile for the Shiites to drive them out.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
218 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

218

Iran

Iran attack will cause a global nuclear war that leads to human extinction
Hirch Professor at the University og Califorina at San Diego 2008
(Seymour Hirsch, Professor of physics @ the University of California @ San Diego, 4/10/2k8
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=HIR20060422&articleId=2317)

Iran is likely to respond to any US attack using its considerable missile arsenal against US forces in Iraq
and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf. Israel may attempt to stay out of the conflict, it is not clear whether Iran
would target Israel in a retaliatory strike but it is certainly possible. If the US attack includes nuclear
weapons use against Iranian facilities, as I believe is very likely, rather than deterring Iran it will cause a much
more violent response. Iranian military forces and militias are likely to storm into southern Iraq and the
US may be forced to use nuclear weapons against them, causing large scale casualties and inflaming the
Muslim world. There could be popular uprisings in other countries in the region like Pakistan, and of
course a Shiite uprising in Iraq against American occupiers. Finally I would like to discuss the grave
consequences to America and the world if the US uses nuclear weapons against Iran. First, the likelihood of terrorist
attacks against Americans both on American soil and abroad will be enormously enhanced after these
events. And terrorist's attempts to get hold of "loose nukes" and use them against Americans will be
enormously incentivized after the US used nuclear weapons against Iran. , it will destroy America's
position as the leader of the free world. The rest of the world rightly recognizes that nuclear weapons are
qualitatively different from all other weapons, and that there is no sharp distinction between small and
large nuclear weapons, or between nuclear weapons targeting facilities versus those targeting armies or
civilians. It will not condone the breaking of the nuclear taboo in an unprovoked war of aggression against a non-nuclear
country, and the US will become a pariah state. Third, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will cease to exist,
and many of its 182 non-nuclear-weapon-country signatories will strive to acquire nuclear weapons as a
deterrent to an attack by a nuclear nation. With no longer a taboo against the use of nuclear weapons,
any regional conflict may go nuclear and expand into global nuclear war. Nuclear weapons are million-
fold more powerful than any other weapon, and the existing nuclear arsenals can obliterate humanity
many times over. In the past, global conflicts terminated when one side prevailed. In the next global
conflict we will all be gone before anybody has prevailed.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
219 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

219

Japanese Relations (Spratly Islands)

US-Japan alliance is key to prevent war over the Spratly Islands.
Okimoto President of Okamoto Associates and Special Adviser to the Cabinet and Chairman of
the Japanese prime minister's Task Force on Foreign Relations 2002
[Yukio, Japan and the United States: The Essential Alliance, spring 2002, Vol. 25, No. 2,
http://www.twq.com/02spring/okamoto.pdf]

The Japan-U.S. alliance also probably serves as a deterrent against any one nation seizing control of the
Spratly Islands and, by extension, the sea lanes and resources of the South China Sea. Formally, the area is
outside the Far East region that the United States and Japan agree is covered by Article 6 of the security treaty. For the
countries vying for control of the sea, however, the proximity of two of the worlds great maritime forces must
at least urge them to use caution as they pursue their competition.


Spratly Conflict goes nuclear
Nikkei 1995
[The Nikkei weekly, Developing Asian nations should be allowed a grace period to allow their economies to grow before
being subjected to trade liberalization demands, says Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, July 3, 1995, lexis]

Developing Asian nations should be allowed a grace period to allow their economies to grow before being subjected to trade
liberalization demands, says Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. He dismisses an argument put forward
by some industrialized countries that fair trade can be realized when trading conditions are the same for all countries. It is not
fair when small developing countries are obliged to compete with Japan and the U.S. under the same conditions, the
outspoken champion of Asian interests insists. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum originated as a loose
discussion platform. But it has become an institution, and agendas are prepared ahead of meetings. However, Mahathir is
dissatisfied with its management, because, he says, group policy is decided by a handful of leading nations. He is also
resentful of some countries' opposition to the Malaysian-proposed East-Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC), aimed at
promoting economic cooperation in the region. The EAEC, which the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
defines as a part of APEC, doesn't stand in opposition to APEC, he says. "The EAEC and APEC can coexist," he says. The
EAEC is just a conference, not a trade bloc like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAF-TA), he adds. Mahathir has
gone to some lengths to bring Japan on board. Without the world's No. 2 economy, the EAEC will not be taken seriously by
the international community, he says. Some have suggested also sending out invitations to Australia and New Zealand. But in
order to join the EAEC, those two nations should not only just call themselves Asian countries, he says. They should also
share values and culture with their Asian partners, he stresses, because the caucus is a group of Asian countries. Mahathir
strongly opposes the use of weapons to settle international disputes. The prime minister hails the ASEAN Regional Forum as
a means for civilized nations of achieving negotiated settlement of disputes. Many members of the forum, including
Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Thailand, have problems with their neighbors, but they are trying to solve them through
continued dialogue, he adds. Three scenarios Mahathir sees Asia developing in three possible ways in future. In his worst-
case scenario, Asian countries would go to war against each other, possibly over disputes such as their
conflicting claims on the Spratly Islands. China might then declare war on the U.S., leading to full-scale,
even nuclear, war.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
220 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

220

Japanese Relations (Middle Eastern Conflict)


US-Japan alliance is key to preventing war in the Middle East
Okimoto President of Okamoto Associates and Special Adviser to the Cabinet and Chairman of
the Japanese prime minister's Task Force on Foreign Relations 2002
[Yukio, Japan and the United States: The Essential Alliance, spring 2002, Vol. 25, No. 2,
http://www.twq.com/02spring/okamoto.pdf]

Recent events have focused international attention on relations between the United States and Islamic
countries, which, with a few exceptions, are strained. Some have suggested that Japan can become a potential
intermediary between the United States and the Muslim world because of Japans close relations with
Arab governments, Muslim oil-producing states, and the nations of Central Asia; its relatively more flexible
stance on human rights policies; and the absence of a strong tie to Israel. Japan can contribute to a U.S.-
Islamic dialogue by asserting its view that vast disparities in income and an inconsistent U.S.
commitment to human rights are impediments to the U.S. goal of stemming the rise of terrorism in the
Islamic world. In recent years, the United States has drifted away from the consensus prevalent in most of the
industrialized world that extreme poverty is a primary driver of terrorism and political violence. The United States also needs
to explain its reluctance to confront the regimes of its friends in the Middle East with the same human rights standards as
those applied to Myanmar, China, or Indonesia.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
221 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

221

Japanese Relations (China/Taiwan Conflict)
US-Japan alliance is key to preventing China Taiwan war
Okimoto President of Okamoto Associates and Special Adviser to the Cabinet and Chairman of
the Japanese prime minister's Task Force on Foreign Relations 2002
[Yukio, Japan and the United States: The Essential Alliance, spring 2002, Vol. 25, No. 2,
http://www.twq.com/02spring/okamoto.pdf]

Regardless of whether Chinas development takes the bright path or the fearful one, however, reason for
concern exists on one issue: the resolution of the status of Taiwan. Chinese citizens from all walks of
life have an attachment to the reunification of Taiwan and the mainland that transcends reason. The
U.S.-Japan alliance represents a significant hope for a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan problem. Both
Japan and the United States have clearly stated that they oppose reunification by force. When China
conducted provocative missile tests in the waters around Taiwan in 1996, the United States sent two aircraft carrier groups
into nearby waters as a sign of its disapproval of Chinas belligerent act. Japan seconded the U.S. action, raising in Chinese
minds the possibility that Japan might offer logistical and other support to its ally in the event of hostilities. Even though
intervention is only a possibility, a strong and close tie between Japanese and U.S. security interests
guarantees that the Chinese leadership cannot afford to miscalculate the consequences of an unprovoked
attack on Taiwan. The alliance backs up Japans basic stance that the two sides need to come to a
negotiated solution.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
222 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

222

Japanese Relations (Korea)
US-Japan alliance is key to preventing North Korean War
Okimoto President of Okamoto Associates and Special Adviser to the Cabinet and Chairman of
the Japanese prime minister's Task Force on Foreign Relations 2002
[Yukio, Japan and the United States: The Essential Alliance, spring 2002, Vol. 25, No. 2,
http://www.twq.com/02spring/okamoto.pdf]

Despite its years of famine; its evaporating industrial and energy infrastructure; and its choking, inhumane society, the
DPRK government still refuses to retreat to its place on the ash heap of history. Despite the poverty of the
people, the North Korean military maintains an arsenal of thousands of rocket launchers and pieces of
artillerysome of which are possibly loaded with chemical and biological warheadsawaiting the
signal to wipe Seoul off the map. The DPRKs immense stock of weapons includes large numbers of Nodong missiles
capable of striking Japans western coastal regions and probably longer-range missiles capable of hitting every major
Japanese city. The United States has two combat aircraft wings in the ROK, in Osan and Kunsan. In addition, some 30,000
U.S. Army troops are stationed near Seoul. Most military experts admit that the army troops serve a largely
symbolic function; if an actual war were to erupt, a massive North Korean artillery bombardment could
pin down both the U.S. Eighth Army and the ROK armed forces at the incipient stage. The firepower the USFJ
can bring to bear upon the Korean Peninsula within a matter of hours makes the U.S.-Japan alliance the
Damoclean sword hanging over the DPRK. The DPRK leaders are masters of deception and
manipulation, but they know that launching a military strike against the ROK will expose them to a
strong and final counterstrike from U.S. forces in Japan.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
223 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

223

Japanese Relations (Sino-Russian Ties)

A. Strengthening the US-Japan alliance is critical to loosen Sino-Russian ties and checking
agression
Brookes, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 5
(Peter Brooks, Senior Fellow at the heritage foundation, 8/15/05 An Alarming Alliance: Sino Russian ties tightening The
Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed081505a.cfm
The first- ever joint Chinese-Russian military exercises kick off Thursday in Northeast Asia. The exercises are small
in scale but huge in implication. They indicate a further warming of the "strategic partnership" that Moscow and Beijing
struck back in 1996. More importantly, they signal the first real post-Cold War steps, beyond inflammatory rhetoric,
by Russia and China to balance and, ultimately, diminish U.S. power across Asia. If America doesn't
take strategic steps to counter these efforts, it will lose influence to Russia and China in an increasingly
important part of the world. Unimaginable just a few years ago, the weeklong military exercises dubbed "Peace
Mission 2005" will involve 10,000 troops on China and Russia's eastern coasts and in adjacent seas. This unmistakable
example of Sino-Russian military muscle-flexing will also include Russia's advanced SU-27 fighters, strategic TU-95 and
TU-22 bombers, submarines, amphibious and anti-submarine ships. The exercise's putative purpose is to "strengthen the
capability of the two armed forces in jointly striking international terrorism, extremism and separatism," says China's
Defense Ministry. But the Chinese defense minister was more frank in comments earlier this year. Gen. Cao Gangchuan said:
"The exercise will exert both immediate and far-reaching impacts." This raised lots of eyebrows especially in the United
States, Taiwan and Japan. For instance, although Russia nixed the idea, the Chinese demanded the exercises be held
500 miles to the south a move plainly aimed at intimidating Taiwan. Beijing clearly wanted to send a
warning to Washington (and, perhaps, Tokyo) about its support for Taipei, and hint at the possibility that if
there were a Taiwan Strait dust-up, Russia might stand with China. The exercise also gives Russia an
opportunity to strut its military wares before its best customers Chinese generals. Moscow is Beijing's largest arms
supplier, to the tune of more than $2 billion a year for purchases that include subs, ships, missiles and fighters. Rumors
abound that Moscow may finally be ready to sell strategic, cruise-missile-capable bombers such as the long-range TU-95 and
supersonic TU-22 to Beijing strengthening China's military hand against America and U.S. friends and allies in Asia.
Russia and China are working together to oppose American influence all around their periphery. Both
are upset by U.S. support for freedom in the region notably in the recent Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia) and
Tulip (Kyrgyzstan) revolutions all of which fell in what Moscow or Beijing deems its sphere of influence. In fact, at a
recent meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (i.e., Russia, China and the four 'Stans'), Moscow and Beijing
conspired to get Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to close U.S. airbases. As a result, Uzbekistan gave America 180 days to get out,
despite the base's continued use in Afghanistan operations. (Quick diplomacy by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saved
the Kyrgyz base, but it remains on the ropes.) Moreover, it shouldn't be overlooked that the "Shanghai Six" have invited Iran,
India and Pakistan to join the group as observers, expanding China and Russia's influence into South Asia and parts of the
Middle East. What to do? First, the Pentagon must make sure the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review balances U.S.
forces to address both the unconventional terrorist threat and the big-power challenge represented by a Russia-China strategic
partnership. Second, the United States must continue to strengthen its relationship with its ally Japan to
ensure a balance of power in Northeast Asia and also encourage Tokyo to improve relations with
Moscow in an effort to loosen Sino-Russian ties. Third, Washington must persevere in advancing its new
relationship with (New) Delhi in order to balance Beijing's growing power in Asia and take advantage of India's
longstanding, positive relationship with Russia. And be ready to deal. Russia has historically been wary of China. America
must not ignore the possibilities of developing a long-term, favorable relationship with Russia despite the challenges
posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed rule. These unprecedented military exercises don't make a
formal Beijing-Moscow alliance inevitable. But they represent a new, more intimate phase in the Sino-Russian
relationship. And China's growing political/economic clout mated with Russia's military would make for
a potentially potent anti-American bloc. For the moment, Beijing and Moscow are committed to
building a political order in Asia that doesn't include America atop the power pyramid. With issues from
Islamic terrorism to North Korean nukes to a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, the stakes in Asia are huge.
Washington and its friends must not waste any time in addressing the burgeoning Sino-Russian entente.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
224 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

224

North Korea

North Korean War goes nuclear
CNN 2003
[CNN, N K. Warns of nuclear conflict, 2/26/2003 ,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/25/nkorea.missile/index.html]

Pyongyang cites upcoming U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises scheduled to begin on March 4, as "reckless war
moves" designed to "unleash a total war on the Korean peninsula with a pre-emptive nuclear strike". "The situation of the
Korean Peninsula is reaching the brink of a nuclear war," the statement, issued by the official Korean
Central News Agency, says. The North also called on South Koreans to "wage a nationwide anti-U.S. and anti-war
struggle to frustrate the U.S. moves for a nuclear war." The United States denies it has any plans to attack North Korea,
consistently saying it is seeking a diplomatic and political solution to the increasing tensions sparked by Pyongyang's
decision to reactivate its nuclear program. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Tuesday wrapped up a four-day tour of
Japan, China and South Korea during which he lobbied Asian leaders to support a multi-lateral approach to pressure North
Korea to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Powell repeated the U.S. position that it had no intention of invading North Korea
and had no plans to impose fresh economic sanctions on the impoverished communist nation. While Japan and South Korea
indicated they might support a regional initiative to sway Pyongyang, China -- a key ally and aid donor to the North --
appeared to remain unconvinced. China says the United States must deal with Pyongyang equally on a one-to-one basis. "We
believe diplomatic, political pressure still has a role to play. And there are countries who have considerable influence with the
North Koreans who will continue to apply pressure," Powell said Tuesday. "We also made it clear that if they begin
reprocessing (nuclear material), it changes the entire political landscape. And we're making sure that is communicated to
them in a number of channels." Powell would not be drawn on how would Washington react if Pyongyang did begin
reprocessing but did say that the U.S. had "no intention of invading" North Korea. Tensions on the peninsula have
been ratcheting up over the past few weeks with North Korea becoming increasingly provocative. On Monday,
the North fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, an act many believe was designed to upstage the
inauguration of new South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun. (Roh sworn in) Last week, a North Korean MiG-19 fighter
briefly flew into South Korean air space. (MiG incursion) The North has also threatened to abandon the 1953
armistice that ended the fighting of the Korean War.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
225 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

225

Pakistan Collapse

Pakistan Collapse leads to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism
Brooks, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 2007
Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 7/2/2007 (Peter, BARACK'S BLUNDER
INVADE A NUCLEAR POWER?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08022007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/baracks_blunder_opedcolumnists_peter_brookes.htm?
page=2)

The fall of Musharraf's government might well lead to a takeover by pro-U.S. elements of the Pakistani military -
but other possible outcomes are extremely unpleasant, including the ascendance of Islamist factions. The last thing
we need is for Islamabad to fall to the extremists. That would exacerbate the problem of those terrorist
safe havens that Obama apparently thinks he could invade. And it would also put Pakistan's nuclear
arsenal into the wrong hands. That could lead to a number of nightmarish scenarios - a nuclear war with
India over Kashmir, say, or the use of nuclear weapons by a terrorist group against any number of targets,
including the United States.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
226 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

226

Sino-Russian Conflict

Sino Russian War leads to Extinction
Sharavin Head of the Institute for Political and military analysis 2001,
(Alexander Sharavin, head of the institute for political and military analysis, 10/1/2001 The Third Threat
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5470.html)

Russia may face the "wonderful" prospect of combating the Chinese army, which, if full mobilization is called,
is comparable in size with Russia's entire population, which also has nuclear weapons (even tactical
weapons become strategic if states have common borders) and would be absolutely insensitive to losses
(even a loss of a few million of the servicemen would be acceptable for China). Such a war would be more horrible
than the World War II. It would require from our state maximal tension, universal mobilization and
complete accumulation of the army military hardware, up to the last tank or a plane, in a single direction
(we would have to forget such "trifles" like Talebs and Basaev, but this does not guarantee success either). Massive
nuclear strikes on basic military forces and cities of China would finally be the only way out, what
would exhaust Russia's armament completely. We have not got another set of intercontinental ballistic missiles and
submarine-based missiles, whereas the general forces would be extremely exhausted in the border combats. In the long
run, even if the aggression would be stopped after the majority of the Chinese are killed, our country
would be absolutely unprotected against the "Chechen" and the "Balkan" variants both, and even against
the first frost of a possible nuclear winter.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
227 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

227

Sunni/Shiite Conflict

A war between Sunnis and Shiites would spill over resulting in extinction
Hutson Correspondent for Renew America 2007
(Warner Todd Huston, Correspondent for Renew America, recently appeared 1/24/2007, Media: Bushs flawed portrayal
of the enemy in the State of the Union http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/huston/070124)

Once again, a National U.S. paper "arguably" chooses sides with Europe's interests over that of
America. Under Bush's rubric, a country such as Iran which enjoys diplomatic representation and
billions of dollars in trade wit major European countries is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the
terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different
faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush said, referring to the different branches of the Muslim religion. Trade?
How is trade an assurance of the benevolence of any nation? Nations didn't stop trading with Nazi Germany even as Hitler
was Blitzkrieging through Europe, for instance. Even the USA was still trading with the Confederacy after the Civil War had
already begun. The fact that Europe is still trading with Iran as if everything is hunkeydorie does NOT say one word as to the
Iranian regime's status as a bunch of nice guys. Trade is one of the last things that is affected by war. Business is
business, after all. Further Bush did not "lump together" al-Qaeda and Iran as if they were
indistinguishable, as the Post seems to be claiming. Here is what Bush actually said: In recent times, it has also become
clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to
dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists
like Hezbollah a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken. The president said that the Shia
extremists in Iran are "second only to al Qaeda" among the enemies we face. He did not, however, say they were one and the
same. The Post's simple-minded efforts to make Bush himself look simple minded only makes the Post out to be practicing
partisan political demagogy. Bush's saying that Shia and Sunni extremism are only "different faces of the same totalitarian
threat" is not to say they are wholly the same, only that they share a similar end game: total domination over the Middle East
in the near term and the world in the long term. Using WWII as an example again, it would like saying that the
Nazis and the Japanese were indistinguishable merely because they both wanted to rule the world. No
one would make such an absurd claim. Yet both threatened our extinction. Just as both Shia and Sunni
extremism today threatens our interests and our way of life. Unfortunately, the Post seems to see no threat from
Iran in particular and Shia extremism in general. Perhaps no one let the Washington Post in on the badly kept secret that Iran
has been sending weapons, manpower, advisors and thousands of IEDs into Iraq to attack us since the
first day Saddam's hold over the country ended. Not to mention the constant threat and rhetoric against
us emanating from the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
228 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

228

Russia-US

Russia-US conflict guarantees nuclear Armageddon nuclear stockpiles
Bostrom Professor of philosophy at Yale, 2002
(Nick, Professor of Philosophy at Yale. Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and Related Hazards,
2002, www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html)
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and the USSR.
An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that
might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was a real worry among those best
acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might
annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large
nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a
risk that other states may one day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange,
between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart
humankinds potential permanently.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
229 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

229

Taiwan/China War

China Taiwan War would draw in the US and lead to extinction
Straits Times 2000
[The Straits Times, No One Gains in War over Taiwan, 6/25/00, Lexis]


THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale war between the US
and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China would better serve its national interests,
then a full-scale war becomes unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far
and near and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told the US
and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and logistics support to any US forces
attacking China as belligerent parties open to its retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan,
the Philippines and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And
the conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to overturn the existing
world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to redefine Europe's political landscape. The
balance of power in the Middle East may be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities
between India and Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and dangerous
phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General Matthew Ridgeway, commander
of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using
nuclear weapons against China to save the US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the
military and political aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US was
confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the use of nuclear weapons. If the
US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the latter acquired a similar capability, there is little
hope of winning a war against China 50 years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that
China possesses about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also seems
prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed recently that Beijing was
considering a review of its "non first use" principle regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan
Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson
International Centre for Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were strong
pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use of nuclear weapons
mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said
that should that come to pass, we would see the destruction of civilisation. There would be no victors in
such a war. While the prospect of a nuclear Armaggedon over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it
cannot be ruled out entirely, for China puts sovereignty above everything else.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
230 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

230

Taiwan

Taiwan is the most probable scenario for nuclear war
Johnson President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, 2001
(Chalmers Johnson, President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, The Nation, 5/14/2k1
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010514&c=1&s=Johnson)

China is another matter. No sane figure in the Pentagon wants a war with China, and all serious US
militarists know that China's minuscule nuclear capacity is not offensive but a deterrent against the
overwhelming US power arrayed against it (twenty archaic Chinese warheads versus more than 7,000 US warheads).
Taiwan, whose status constitutes the still incomplete last act of the Chinese civil war, remains the most
dangerous place on earth. Much as the 1914 assassination of the Austrian crown prince in Sarajevo led to a war that no
one wanted, a misstep in Taiwan by any side could bring the United States and China into a conflict that
neither wants. Such a war would bankrupt the United States, deeply divide Japan and probably end in a
Chinese victory, given that China is the world's most populous country and would be defending itself
against a foreign aggressor. More seriously, it could easily escalate into a nuclear holocaust. Since any
Taiwanese attempt to declare its independence formally would be viewed as a challenge to China's sovereignty, forward-
deployed US forces on China's borders have virtually no deterrent effect. The United States uses satellites to observe changes
in China's basic military capabilities. But the coastal surveillance flights by our twelve (now eleven) EP-3E Aries II spy
planes, like the one that was forced down off Hainan Island, seek information that is useful only in an imminent battle. They
are inherently provocative and inappropriate when used to monitor a country with which we are at peace. The United States
itself maintains a 200-mile area off its coasts in which it intercepts any aircraft attempting similar reconnaissance.
America's provocative military posture in East Asia makes war with China more likely because it
legitimizes military strategies in both Beijing and Taipei as well as in Washington and Tokyo.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
231 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

231


Terrorism Nuclear Escalation

Nuclear Terrorism leads to global nuclear war
Chesney, JD candidate at Harvard Law, 1997
(Robert, Loyola of Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Journal, November)
The horrible truth is that the threat of nuclear terrorism is real, in light of the potential existence of a black
market in fissile material. Nuclear terrorists might issue demands, but then again, they might not. Their target could be
anything: a U.S. military base in a foreign land, a crowded U.S. city, or an empty stretch of desert
highway. In one fell swoop, nuclear terrorists could decapitate the U.S. government or destroy its
financial system. The human suffering resulting from a detonation would be beyond calculation, and in
the aftermath, the remains of the nation would demand both revenge and protection. Constitutional
liberties and values might never recover. When terrorists strike against societies already separated by fundamental
social fault lines, such as in Northern Ireland or Israel, conventional weapons can exploit those fault lines to achieve
significant gains.
n1
In societies that lack such pre-existing fundamental divisions, however, conventional weapon attacks do
not pose a top priority threat to national security, even though the pain and suffering inflicted can be substantial. The bedrock
institutions of the United States will survive despite the destruction of federal offices; the vast majority of people will
continue to support the Constitution despite the mass murder of innocent persons. The consequences of terrorists
employing weapons of mass destruction, however, would be several orders of magnitude worse than a
conventional weapons attack. Although this threat includes chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapon's
devastating [*32] potential is in a class by itself.
n2
Nuclear terrorism thus poses a unique danger to the
United States: through its sheer power to slay, destroy, and terrorize, a nuclear weapon would give
terrorists the otherwise-unavailable ability to bring the United States to its knees. Therefore, preventing
terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons should be considered an unparalleled national security priority
dominating other policy considerations.


Nuclear terrorism will cause global nuclear war, leading to extinction
Sid-Ahmed, Egyptian political analyst for the Al-Ahram newspaper, 2004:
(Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Egyptian political analyst for the Al-Ahram newspaper, Al-Ahram online, August 26,
2004,http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm)

A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if -- and this is far from
certain -- the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at the time, with no knowledge of nuclear
technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs
dropped on Japan, nuclear weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated. This
completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory measures can determine the course of
events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a
sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out, these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD,
proved to be unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it would
further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in which we are now living.
Societies would close in on themselves, police measures would be stepped up at the expense of human
rights, tensions between civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It
would also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of world order is
imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical scenario is if the attack succeeds. This
could lead to a third world war, from which no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war
which ends when one side triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When
nuclear pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
232 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

232

Terror = Extinction

Terrorist attack risks extinction.
Alexander Prof and Director of Inter-University for Terrorism Studies 3
(Yonah, Terrorism Myths and Realities, Washington Times, Prof and Director of Inter-University
For Terrorism Studies)
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated dramatically that the
international community failed, thus far at least, to understand the magnitude and implications of the
terrorist threats to the very survival of civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended
to regard terrorism as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national security
concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were stunned by the unprecedented tragedy
of 19 al Qaeda terrorists striking a devastating blow at the center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise,
Israel and its citizens, despite the collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the
second intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack at a time of intensive diplomatic
efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked cease-fire arrangements (hudna). Why are the United
States and Israel, as well as scores of other countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by
new terrorist "surprises"? There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors that contribute
to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the religionization of politics, double standards of
morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare.
Unlike their historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of violence in
terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The internationalization and brutalization
of current and future terrorism make it clear we have entered an Age of Super Terrorism (e.g. biological,
chemical, radiological, nuclear and cyber) with its serious implications concerning national, regional and
global security concerns.









Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
233 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

233


**NUKE WAR IMPACTS**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
234 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

234

Nuclear War Disease

Nuclear war collapses global infrastructure and causes mass disease pandemics
Sagan, Former Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, 1985,
(Carl, The Nuclear Winter, http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_nuclear_winter.html)

In addition, the amount of radioactive fallout is much more than expected. Many previous calculations simply
ignored the intermediate time-scale fallout. That is, calculations were made for the prompt fallout -- the plumes of
radioactive debris blown downwind from each target-and for the long-term fallout, the fine radioactive particles lofted into
the stratosphere that would descend about a year later, after most of the radioactivity had decayed. However, the radioactivity
carried into the upper atmosphere (but not as high as the stratosphere) seems to have been largely forgotten. We found for the
baseline case that roughly 30 percent of the land at northern midlatitudes could receive a radioactive dose greater than 250
rads, and that about 50 percent of northern midlatitudes could receive a dose greater than 100 rads. A 100-rad dose is the
equivalent of about 1000 medical X-rays. A 400-rad dose will, more likely than not, kill you. The cold, the dark and the
intense radioactivity, together lasting for months, represent a severe assault on our civilization and our species.
Civil and sanitary services would be wiped out. Medical facilities, drugs, the most rudimentary means for
relieving the vast human suffering, would be unavailable. Any but the most elaborate shelters would be
useless, quite apart from the question of what good it might be to emerge a few months later. Synthetics burned in the
destruction of the cities would produce a wide variety of toxic gases, including carbon monoxide, cyanides,
dioxins and furans. After the dust and soot settled out, the solar ultraviolet flux would be much larger than its
present value. Immunity to disease would decline. Epidemics and pandemics would be rampant,
especially after the billion or so unburied bodies began to thaw. Moreover, the combined influence of
these severe and simultaneous stresses on life are likely to produce even more adverse consequences --
biologists call them synergisms -- that we are not yet wise enough to foresee.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
235 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

235

Nuclear War Extinction

Nuke war is the highest risk for human extinction
Kateb 1992
(George, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture, Thinking About Human Extinction (1): Nuclear Weapons and Individual Rights, p. 111-
112)

Schell's work attempts to force on us an acknowledgment that sounds far-fetched and even ludicrous, an acknowledgment hat
the possibility of extinction is carried by any use of nuclear weapons, no matter how limited or how
seemingly rational or seemingly morally justified. He himself acknowledges that there is a difference between possibility and
certainty. But in a matter that is more than a matter, more than one practical matter in a vast series of practical matters, in
the "matter" of extinction, we are obliged to treat a possibility-a genuine possibility-as a certainty. Humanity
is not to take any step that contains even the slightest risk of extinction. The doctrine of no-use is based on the
possibility of extinction. Schell's perspective transforms the subject. He takes us away from the arid stretches of strategy and
asks us to feel continuously, if we can, and feel keenly if only for an instant now and then, how utterly distinct the nuclear
world is. Nuclear discourse must vividly register that distinctiveness. It is of no moral account that extinction may
be only a slight possibility. No one can say how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that
by some sequence or other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural
extinction. If it is not impossible it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by extinction nullifies all
calculations of probability as it nullifies all calculations of costs and benefits. Abstractly put, the
connections between any use of nuclear weapons and human and natural extinction are several. Most
obviously, a sizable exchange of strategic nuclear weapons can, by a chain of events in nature, lead to the earth's
uninhabitability, to "nuclear winter," or to Schell's "republic of insects and grass." But the consideration of extinction
cannot rest with the possibility of a sizable exchange of strategic weapons. It cannot rest with the imperative that a sizable
exchange must not take place. A so-called tactical or "theater" use, or a so-called limited use, is also
prohibited absolutely, because of the possibility of immediate escalation into a sizable exchange or
because, even if there were not an immediate escalation, the possibility of extinction would reside in the precedent
for future use set by any use whatever in a world in which more than one power possesses nuclear weapons. Add other
consequences: the contagious effect on nonnuclear powers who may feel compelled by a mixture of fear
and vanity to try to acquire their own weapons, thus increasing the possibility of use by increasing the
number of nuclear powers; and the unleashed emotions of indignation, retribution, and revenge which, if not acted on
immediately in the form of escalation, can be counted on to seek expression later. Other than full strategic uses are not
confined, no matter how small the explosive power: each would be a cancerous transformation of the world. All
nuclear roads lead to the possibility of extinction. It is true by definition, but let us make it explicit: the doctrine of
no-use excludes any first or retaliatory or later use, whether sizable or not. No-use is the imperative derived from the
possibility of extinction. By containing the possibility of extinction, any use is tantamount to a declaration of war
against humanity. It is not merely a war crime or a single crime against humanity. Such a war is waged
by the user of nuclear weapons against every human individual as individual (present and future), not as
citizen of this or that country. It is not only a war against the country that is the target. To respond with nuclear weapons,
where possible, only increases the chances of extinction and can never, therefore, be allowed. The use of nuclear weapons
establishes the right of any person or group, acting officially or not, violently or not, to try to punish those responsible for the
use. The aim of the punishment is to deter later uses and thus to try to reduce the possibility of extinction, if, by chance, the
particular use in question did not directly lead to extinction. The form of the punishment cannot be specified. Of course the
chaos ensuing from a sizable exchange could make punishment irrelevant. The important point, however, is to see that those
who use nuclear weapons are qualitatively worse than criminals, and at the least forfeit their offices. John
Locke, a principal individualist political theorist, says that in a state of nature every individual retains the right to punish
transgressors or assist in the effort to punish them, whether or not one is a direct victim. Transgressors convert an otherwise
tolerable condition into a state of nature which is a state of war in which all are threatened. Analogously, the use of
nuclear weapons, by containing in an immediate or delayed manner

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
236 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

236

the possibility of extinction, is in Locke's phrase "a trespass against the whole species" and places the users in a
state of war with all people. And people, the accumulation of individuals, must be understood as of course
always indefeasibly retaining the right of selfpreservation, and hence as morally allowed, perhaps enjoined, to
take the appropriate preserving steps.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
237 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

237

Nuclear War Pollution

Nuclear arms race would cause pollution and destroy the environment
Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/war-and-environment.html)

The looting of Iraqi nuclear facilities in 2003, which occurred after U.S. led forces entered the country, has offered another
blow to social and environmental security in the region. The most troubling of cases concerns the Tuwaitha nuclear plant,
located 48 kilometres south of Baghdad, where an estimated two hundred blue plastic barrels containing uranium oxide were
stolen. After dumping the radioactive contents and rinsing out the barrels in the rivers, poverty-stricken residents used the
containers for storing basic amenities like water, cooking oil and tomatoes. Extra barrels were sold to other villages or used to
transport milk to distanced regions, thus making the critical problem increasingly widespread.[22] The mishandling of the
radioactive material has profound effects on the environment and on the people and animals that depend on it. Toxic
substances seep into the ground (rendering the soil unsafe), disperse through the air (spreading wide-scale pollution), and
taint water and food supplies. Iraqs national nuclear inspector has forecasted that over a thousand people could die of
leukemia.[23] In addition to stolen radiological materials, computers and important documents have also gone missing.[24]
Given the right mix of technology and materials, radiological weapons such as dirty bombs and possibly even weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) could be produced. It is worth noting that uranium oxide can be refined with the proper machinery
and expertise in order to produce enriched uranium, a key ingredient in a nuclear bomb.[25] There is concern that such
materials could end up in the hands of the very terrorist groups the US and UK military are trying to disable. [26]
Unfortunately the coalition forces inability to effectively secure nuclear sites in Iraq may well have exacerbated the situation
the war was supposed to avoid: the unlawful proliferation and use of WMD weapons.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
238 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

238

Nuclear War Phytoplankton Scenario

A.) Nuclear war produces aerosol spikes killing phytoplankton

Crutzen and Birks 83
(Paul, Director of the Air Chemistry Division of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, and John, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of the
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, in The Aftermath: The Human and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, ed. Peterson,
p.84)
If the production of aerosol by fires is large enough to cause reductions in the penetration of sunlight to
ground level by a factor of a hundred, which would be quite possible in the event of an all-out nuclear war, most of
the phytoplankton and herbivorous zooplankton in more than half of the Northern Hemisphere oceans would die
(36). This effect is due to the fast consumption rate of phytoplankton by zooplankton in the oceans. The effects
of a darkening of such a magnitude have been discussed recently in connection with the probable occurrence of such
an event as a result of the impact of a large extraterrestrial body with the earth (37). This event is believed by
many to have caused the widespread and massive extinctions which took place at the Cretacious-Tertiary boundary
about 65 million years ago.

B.) Phytoplankton depletion collapses the global carbon cycle causing extinction

Bryant 03
(Donald, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, The beauty in small things
revealed, Volume 100, Number 17, August 19, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/17/9647)

Oxygenic photosynthesis accounts for nearly all the primary biochemical production of organic matter on
Earth. The byproduct of this process, oxygen, facilitated the evolution of complex eukaryotes and supports
their/our continuing existence. Because macroscopic plants are responsible for most terrestrial photosynthesis, it is
relatively easy to appreciate the importance of photosynthesis on land when one views the lush green diversity of grasslands
or forests. However, Earth is the "blue planet," and oceans cover nearly 75% of its surface. All life on Earth
equally depends on the photosynthesis that occurs in Earth's oceans. A rich diversity of marine
phytoplankton, found in the upper 100 m of oceans, accounts only for 1% of the total photosynthetic biomass, but
this virtually invisible forest accounts for nearly 50% of the net primary productivity of the biosphere (1).
Moreover, the importance of these organisms in the biological pump, which traps CO2 from the atmosphere and
stores it in the deep sea, is increasingly recognized as a major component of the global geochemical carbon
cycle (2). It seems obvious that it is as important to understand marine photosynthesis as terrestrial photosynthesis, but the
contribution of marine photosynthesis to the global carbon cycle was grossly underestimated until
recently. Satellite-based remote sensing (e.g., NASA sea-wide field sensor) has allowed more reliable determinations of
oceanic photosynthetic productivity to be made (refs. 1 and 2; see Fig. 1).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
239 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

239

Nuclear War Ozone Scenario

A). Nuclear war causes massive ozone depletion

Sagan and Turco 90
(Carl, David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell, and Richard, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at UCLA, A Path Where No
Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, p. 57)

But in a nuclear war, the atmosphere would be so perturbed that our normal way of thinking about the ozone layer
needs to be modified. To help refocus our understanding, several research groups have constructed models that
describe the ozone layer following nuclear war. The principal work has been carried out by research teams at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (ref. 4.9). Both find that there is an
additional mechanism by which nuclear war threatens the ozone layer. With massive quantities of smoke injected into
the lower atmosphere by the fires of nuclear war, nuclear winter would grip not only the Earth's surface, but the high
ozone layer as well. The severely disturbed wind currents caused by solar heating of smoke would, in a matter
of weeks, sweep most of the ozone layer from the northern midlatitudes deep into the Southern Hemisphere. The
reduction in the ozone layer content in the North could reach a devastating 50% or more during this phase. As time
progressed, the ozone depletion would be made still worse by several effects: injection of large quantities of
nitrogen oxides and chlorine-bearing molecules along with the smoke clouds; heating of the ozone layer
caused by intermingling of hot smoky air (as air is heated, the amount of ozone declines); and decomposition of
ozone directly on smoke particles (carbon particles are sometimes used down here near the ground to cleanse air of
ozone).

B). Ozone depletion causes extinction

Greenpeace 95
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer, http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html)

When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between chlorofluorocarbons and ozone layer
depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible
scientists have since confirmed this hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful
ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist. Exposure to
increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin cancer, and immune system suppression in
humans as well as innumerable effects on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and Molina's theory was
taken so seriously, so quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
240 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

240

Nuke War Oceans

Nuclear war would result in the death of the entire ocean ecosystem
Perkins, professor of effects of nuclear war, 01
(Simon Perkins, professor in the effects of nuclear war, May 22, 2001, Climate Conditions
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~samp/nuclearage/lonterm.html )
Assuming that you have been lucky enough to survive the initial hazards of a nuclear explosion what would happen next?
Above ground zero the huge clouds of dust and debris will rise to 10 miles into the atmosphere. When merged
together these clouds will effectively block out all sunlight plunging the sky into darkness for at least several
weeks after. During this period the temperature will fall dramatically. Along the continent this could be as much as a
40c drop. For counties along the Northern Hemisphere this is enough produce an Arctic winter. Fortunately for us small
islands like the UK will have a less dramatic temperature decrease due tot he warming effect of the oceans. Looking at some
past examples of volcanic eruptions can give us some idea of biological effects; the severe cold would destroy most crops,
rivers would freeze over and many animals would die of cold and hunger. The effect on tropical plants and
creatures would be even more profound and biologists have concluded that many species will become extinct. Surely
most of the plants and animals in the deep oceans would have a better chance? The average drop in the world's oceans would
be only about 1 C
3
and as most species are acclimatised to the cold conditions anyway. This would be the case in the Artic
regions were species are used to long dark periods but for those in tropical waters most would die from lack of nutrients and
light. The lack of light would disrupt the food chain of microscopic creatures dependent of photoplankton
(algae). Within a few months all the fish would die off , the population decline for many species would
be irreversible.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
241 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

241

Nuclear War Biodiversity Scenario (1/2)

A). Nuclear winter following exchange kills all plant and animal life
SGR 03
(Scientists for Global Responsibility, Newsletter, Does anybody remember the Nuclear Winter? July 27,
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/NuclearWinter_NL27.htm)

Obviously, when a nuclear bomb hits a target, it causes a massive amount of devastation, with the heat, blast and
radiation killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people instantly and causing huge damage to infrastructure.
But in addition to this, a nuclear explosion throws up massive amounts of dust and smoke. For example, a large
nuclear bomb bursting at ground level would throw up about a million tonnes of dust. As a consequence of a nuclear war,
then, the dust and the smoke produced would block out a large fraction of the sunlight and the sun's heat from the
earth's surface, so it would quickly become be dark and cold - temperatures would drop by something in the
region of 10-20C - many places would feel like they were in an arctic winter. It would take months for the sunlight to get
back to near normal. The drop in light and temperature would quickly kill crops and other plant and animal life while
humans, already suffering from the direct effects of the war, would be vulnerable to malnutrition and
disease on a massive scale.

B). We have high probability degree changes devastate entire ecosystems risking extinction

Sagan and Turco, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment, A Path Where No
Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 22)

Life on Earth is exquisitely dependent on the climate (see Appendix A). The average surface temperature of the
Earth averaged, that is, over day and night, over the seasons, over latitude, over land and ocean, over coastline and
continental interior, over mountain range and desertis about 13C, 13 Centigrade degrees above the temperature at which
fresh water freezes. (The corresponding temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is 55F.) It's harder to change the temperature of
the oceans than of the continents, which is why ocean temperatures are much more steadfast over the diurnal and seasonal
cycles than are the temperatures in the middle of large continents. Any global temperature change implies much
larger local temperature changes, if you don't live near the ocean. A prolonged global temperature drop of a few
degrees C would be a disaster for agriculture; by 10C, whole ecosystems would be imperiled; and by
20C, almost all life on Earth would be at risk. The margin of safety is thin.

C) Nuclear war collapses ecosystems and kills all biodiversity

Ehrlich et al, 1983
(Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford University; Mark A. Harwell, Cornell University; Carl Sagan, Cornell University; Anne H. Ehrlich, Stanford University; Stephen J.
Gould, Harvard University; biologists on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological Consequences of Nuclear War (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25 and 26 April
1983)., Science, New Series, Vol. 22, No. 4630, Dec. 23, 1983, pg 1293-1300, jstor)

The 2 billion to 3 billion survivors of the immediate effects of the war would be forced to turn to natural ecosystems as
organized agriculture failed. Just at the time when these natural ecosystems would be asked to support a human population
well beyond their carrying capacities, the normal functioning of the ecosystems themselves would be severely
curtailed by the effects of nuclear war. Subjecting these ecosystems to low temperature, fire, radiation, storm, and other
physical stresses (many occurring simultaneously) would result in their increased vulnerability to disease and pest outbreaks,
which might be prolonged. Primary productivity would be dramatically reduced at the prevailing low light levels; and,
because of UV-B, smog, insects, radiation, and other damage to plants, it is unlikely that it would recover quickly to normal
levels, even after light and temperature values had recovered. At the same time that their plant foods were being limited

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
242 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

242

severely, most, if not all, of the vertebrates not killed outright by blast and ionizing radiation would either freeze or face a
dark world where they would starve or die of thirst because surface waters would be frozen and thus unavailable. Many of the
survivors would be widely scattered and often sick, leading to the slightly delayed extinction of many additional species.
Natural ecosystems provide civilization with a variety of crucial services in addition to food and shelter. These include
regulation of atmospheric composition, moderation of climate and weather, regulation of the
Nuclear War Biodiversity Scenario (2/2)

hydrologic cycle, generation and preservation of soils, degradation of wastes, and recycling of nutrients. From the human
perspective, among the most important roles of ecosystems are their direct role in providing food and their maintenance of a
vast library of species from which Homo sapiens has already drawn the basis of civilization (27). Accelerated loss of these
genetic resources through extinction would be one of the most serious potential consequences of nuclear war. Wildfires
would be an important effect in north temperate ecosystems, their scale and distribution depending on such factors as the
nuclear war scenario and the season. Another major uncertainty is the extent of fire storms, which might heat the lower levels
of the soil enough to damage or destroy seed banks, especially in vegetation types not adapted to periodic fires. Multiple
airbursts over seasonally dry areas such as California in the late summer or early fall could burn off much of the state's forest
and brush areas, leading to catastrophic flooding and erosion during the next rainy season. Silting, toxic runoff, and
rainout of radio- nuclides could kill much of the fauna of fresh and coastal waters, and concentrated radioactivity
levels in surviving filter-feeding shellfish populations could make them dangerous to consume for long periods of time. Other
major consequences for terrestrial ecosystems resulting from nuclear war would include: (i) slower detoxification of air and
water as a secondary result of damage to plants that now are important metabolic sinks for toxins; (ii) reduced
evapotranspiration by plants contributing to a lower rate of entry of water into the atmosphere, especially over continental
regions, and therefore a more sluggish hydrologic cycle; and (iii) great disturbance of the soil surface, leading to accelerated
erosion and, probably, major dust storms (28). Revegetation might superficially resemble
that which follows local fires. Stresses from radiation, smog, erosion, fugitive dust, and toxic rains, however, would
be superimposed on those of cold and darkness, thus delaying and modifying postwar succession in ways that would retard
the restoration of ecosystem services (29). It is likely that most ecosystem changes would be short term. Some structural and
functional changes, however, could be longer term, and perhaps irreversible, as ecosystems undergo qualitative
changes to alternative stable states (30). Soil losses from erosion would be serious in areas experiencing widespread
fires, plant death, and extremes of climate. Much would depend on the wind and precipitation patterns that would develop
during the first postwar year (4, 5). The diversity of many natural communities would almost certainly be
substantially reduced, and numerous species of plants, animals, and microorganisms would become extinct.


D). Biodiversity collapse causes extinction

Diner Judge Advocate Generals Corps-1994
[Major David N., United States Army Military Law Review Winter, p. lexis]

By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity
increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure. The spreading Sahara Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in
the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be expected if this trend continues. Theoretically, each new animal or plant
extinction, with all its dimly perceived and intertwined affects, could cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction.
Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one by one, the rivets
from an aircraft's wings, n80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
243 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

243


**NUKE WAR PROBABILITY**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
244 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

244

Nuclear War Evaluated First
Nuclear war precedes all ethics

Nye, Harvard Professor, 86
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. 24

This leads us to the last and most difficult problem with nuclear weapons: that they risk nuclear holocaust. This
holocaust is a case of extreme (excessive?) violence, since it may very well entail the end of all human civilization
as well as the destruction of numerous other forms of life (probably everything except cockroaches). It is difficult to
see how such a war can be viewed as following St. Augustine's just war standard of creating peace. Even outside the
precepts of just war, it is hard to see the utilitarian aspects of such a war. It is extremely hard to defend as a step
towards ultimate good, unless you believe that the world needs to be completely destroyed and started anew.
Since nuclear holocaust is a combination of massive destruction and residual effects, possibly including the
remaking of all life on the planet through genetic mutations and nuclear winter, it is essentially just an extension,
albeit extreme, of the combination of excessive violence and residual effects. Since our earlier analysis of these two
areas failed to provide an ethical framework for either of them even in isolation, we shall not even begin to try to
defend their combination, nuclear holocaust, as ethically acceptable.



Nuclear war is the end of all ethics

Nye, Harvard Professor, 86
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. 24

The first of these ethical points is rather simple: if the intent of the overall war is ethically unsound, then the use
of any weapons in such a cause is wrong, be they clubs or nuclear missiles. This fact does not let us differentiate ethically
between nuclear and non-nuclear arms, but merely returns us to a basis for our original assumption that war can be just.
This point does bear on the ethicality of all- out nuclear war, however, since although the announced intent of the
war may be to save the earth from the yoke of Communism or Imperialism, the actual end of the war would probably be a
silent, smoking planet. Each of us must draw our own conclusions as to the ethicality of such an action, based on our own
cultural, religious, political, and ethical backgrounds. But it is an old ethical axiom that no right action aims at greater evil in
the results, and my personal feelings on all out war is that there is no provocation that can ethically support such
devastation.9 In the eloquent words of John Bennett, "How can a nation live with its conscience and . . . kill
twenty million children in another nation . . .?"10















Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
245 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

245




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
246 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

246

Schell

Extinction from nuclear war dwarfs all other impact calculus you must treat the RISK of
extinction as morally equivalent to its certainty

Schell, 82
Jonathan Fate of the Earth, pp. 93-96 1982

To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation just as it would be a misrepresentation
to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the
adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects in the ozone and elsewhere, may
be moderate. And if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand them
without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished
in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our
sense of urgency. Yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use
all their weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere
may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. We are left with uncertainty, and are forced
to make our decisions in a state of uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster our resolve in spite
of our awareness that the life of the species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the
peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When
the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized that if the great
powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face the possibility of extinction. They also
realized that in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They knew that the
path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass of "the basic power of the
universe" and of a means by which man could release that energy altered the relationship between man and the source of
his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the life of the human species doubtful. In that
sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon was
detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it.
At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to
destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely knowable. But it is
clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being
added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere
risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than that of any
other risk and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been
contained within the framework of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some
purpose but an abyss in which all human purpose would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the
possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risk that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs
in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a mathematician's analogy, we can say that although
the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still
infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if
we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although,
scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring
about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of
nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. In weighing the fate
of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery.
We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility
should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the
threat we now post to the world and to ourselves.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
247 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

247

Nuclear War Likely

With all the problems that the status quo presents a nuclear war will defiantly happen but with so
many nuclear countries we cannot find out where it will start.
Hirsch 05 [Jorge, Ph.D. @ Univ. of Chicago, professor of physics at Cal, member of the American Physical Society, a
society of physicists opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, Dec. 16, 2005, Nuclear Deployment for an Attack on Iran
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8263]

The nuclear hitmen: Stephen Hadley, Stephen Cambone, Robert Joseph, William Schneider Jr., J.D. Crouch II, Linton
Brooks, and John Bolton are nuclear-weapons enthusiasts who advocate aggressive policies and occupy key positions in the
top echelons of the Bush administration. A nuclear doctrine that advocates nuclear strikes against non-nuclear
countries that precisely fit the Iran profile: the "Nuclear Posture Review" and the "Doctrine for Joint
Nuclear Operations." The doctrine of preemptive attack adopted by the Bush administration and already
put into practice in Iraq, and the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" (NSPD
17), which promises to respond to a WMD threat with nuclear weapons. 150,000 American soldiers in
Iraq, whose lives are at risk if a military confrontation with Iran erupts, and who thus provide the
administration with a strong argument for the use of nuclear weapons to defend them. Americans'
heightened state of fear of terrorist attacks and their apparent willingness to support any course of action
that could potentially protect them from real or imagined terrorist threats. The allegations of involvement of
Iran in terrorist activities around the world [1], [2], including acts against America [1], [2], and its alleged possession of
weapons of mass destruction. The determination of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that Iran has connections
with al-Qaeda. Senate Joint Resolution 23, "Authorization for Use of Military Force," which allows the
president "to take action to deter and prevent acts of terrorism against the United States" without
consulting Congress, and the War Powers Resolution [.pdf], which "allows" the president to attack
anybody in the "global war on terror." The Bush administration's willingness to use military power based on
unconfirmed intelligence and defectors' fairy tales. The fact that Iran has been declared in noncompliance [.pdf] with the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which makes it "legal" for the U.S. to use nuclear weapons against Iran. The course of
action followed by the Bush administration with respect to Iran's drive for nuclear technology, which can only lead to a
diplomatic impasse. The Israel factor [1], [2] .


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
248 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

248

Nuclear War Likely Escalation

Mutually assured destruction insures a quick escalation of a nuclear war hence leading to all out
destruction.
Nuclear Files 2009, Project of the Nuclear Age Peace Project.
(Mutually Assured Destruction, http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/cold-
war/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm)


When the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States, the Cold War had entered a new phase. The cold war
became a conflict more dangerous and unmanageable than anything Americans had faced before. In the old cold war
Americans had enjoyed superior nuclear force, an unchallenged economy, strong alliances, and a trusted Imperial President to
direct his incredible power against the Soviets. In the new cold war, however, Russian forces achieved nuclear equality. Each
side could destroy the other many times. This fact was officially accepted in a military doctrine known as
Mutual Assured Destruction, a.k.a. MAD. Mutual Assured Destruction began to emerge at the end of the
Kennedy administration. MAD reflects the idea that one's population could best be protected by leaving
it vulnerable so long as the other side faced comparable vulnerabilities. In short: Whoever shoots first,
dies second.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
249 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

249

Nuclear War Likely Middle East Prolif

The Arms Race in the Middle East is creating a breeding ground for a chance of a nuclear war.
Nuclear war is guaranteed if the status quo continues.
Cirincione, 8/21/2007
[Joseph, "The Middle East Nuclear Surge," http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/08/nuclear_surge.html]

Iran is still probably five to 10 years away from gaining the ability to make nuclear fuel or nuclear bombs. But
its program is already sending nuclear ripples through the Middle East. The race to match Iran's capabilities has
begun. Almost a dozen Muslim nations have declared their interest in nuclear energy programs in the past
year. This unprecedented demand for nuclear programs is all the more disturbing paired with the unseemly rush of nuclear
salesman eager to supply the coveted technology. While U.S. officials were reaching a new nuclear agreement with India last
month, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France signed a nuclear cooperation deal with Libya and agreed to help
the United Arab Emirates launch its own civilian nuclear program. Indicating that this could be just the
beginning of a major sale and supply effort, Sarkozy declared that the West should trust Arab states with
nuclear technology. Sarkozy has a point: No one can deny Arab states access to nuclear technology, especially as they are
acquiring it under existing international rules and agreeing to the inspection of International Atomic Energy Agency officials.
But is this really about meeting demands for electric power and desalinization plants? There is only one nuclear power
reactor in the entire Middle Eastthe one under construction in Busher, Iran. In all of Africa there are only two, both in
South Africa. (Israel has a research reactor near Dimona, as do several other states.) Suddenly, after multiple energy
crises over the 60 years of the nuclear age, these countries that control over one-fourth of the world's oil
supplies are investing in nuclear power programs. This is not about energy; it is a nuclear hedge against
Iran. King Adbdullah of Jordan admitted as much in a January 2007 interview when he said: "The rules have changed on the
nuclear subject throughout the whole region. . . . After this summer everybody's going for nuclear programs." He
was referring to the war in Lebanon last year between Israel and Hezbollah, perceived in the region as
evidence of Iran's growing clout. Other leaders are not as frank in public, but confide similar sentiments in private
conversations. Here is where the nuclear surge currently stands. Egypt and Turkey, two of Iran's main
rivals, are in the lead. Both have flirted with nuclear weapons programs in the past and both have
announced ambitious plans for the construction of new power reactors. Gamal Mubarak, son of the
current Egyptian president and his likely successor, says the country will build four power reactors, with
the first to be completed within the next 10 years. Turkey will build three new reactors, with the first beginning
later this year. Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia and the five other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain,
Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates) at the end of 2006 "commissioned a joint study on the use of nuclear
technology for peaceful purposes." Algeria and Russia quickly signed an agreement on nuclear development in January 2007,
with France, South Korea, China, and the United States also jockeying for nuclear sales to this oil state. Jordan announced
that it, too, wants nuclear power. King Abdullah met Canada's prime minister in July and discussed the purchase of heavy
water Candu reactors. Morocco wants assistance from the atomic energy agency to acquire nuclear
technology and in March sponsored an international conference on Physics and Technology of Nuclear
Reactors. Finally, the Arab League has provided an overall umbrella for these initiatives when, at the
end of its summit meeting in March, it "called on the Arab states to expand the use of peaceful nuclear
technology in all domains serving continuous development." Perhaps these states are truly motivated to
join the "nuclear renaissance" promoted by the nuclear power industry and a desire to counter global
warming. But the main message to the West from these moderate Arab and Muslim leaders is political, not industrial. "We
can't trust you," they are saying, "You are failing to contain Iran and we need to prepare." It is not too late to prove them
wrong. Instead of seeing this nuclear surge as a new market, the countries with nuclear technology to sell have a moral and
strategic obligation to ensure that their business does not result in the Middle East going from a region with one nuclear
weapon state - Israel - to one with three, four, or five nuclear nations. If the existing territorial, ethnic, and political
disputes continue unresolved, this is a recipe for nuclear war.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
250 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

250

Great Power War Likely

Great power wars are not obsolete and are still on the table
Professor John J. Mearsheimer (1998-99 Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations; R. Wendell Harrison
Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago) CFR February 25, 1999
http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/index.html

Now I think the central claim thats on the table is wrong-headed, and let me tell you why. First of all, there are a number
of good reasons why great powers in the system will think seriously about going to war in the future, and Ill give you
three of them and try and illustrate some cases. First, states oftentimes compete for economic resources. Is it hard to
imagine a situation where a reconstituted Russia gets into a war with the United States and the Persian Gulf over Gulf oil? I
dont think thats implausible. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war in the South China Sea over economic
resources? I dont find that hard to imagine.
A second reason that states go to war which, of course, is dear to the heart of realists like me, and thats to enhance their
security. Take the United States out of Europe, put the Germans on their own; you got the Germans on one side and the
Russians on the other, and in between a huge buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it
impossible to imagine the Russians and the Germans getting into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but
feasible, for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war over the South China Sea, not for resource
reasons but because Japanese sea-lines of communication run through there and a huge Chinese navy may threaten it? I
dont think its impossible to imagine that.
What about nationalism, a third reason? China, fighting in the United States over Taiwan? You think thats impossible? I
dont think thats impossible. Thats a scenario that makes me very nervous. I can figure out all sorts of ways, none of
which are highly likely, that the Chinese and the Americans end up shooting at each other. It doesnt necessarily have to be
World War III, but it is great-power war. Chinese and Russians fighting each other over Siberia? As many of you know, there
are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. You start mixing ethnic populations in most areas of the world outside the
United States and its usually a prescription for big trouble. Again, not highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on,
positing a lot of scenarios where great powers have good reasons to go to war against other great powers.



Mandlebaum flows neg he concedes that great power war is still likely with Russia and China

Michael Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies
at Johns Hopkins University, 1999 Is Major War Obsolete?, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/

Now having made the case for the obsolescence of modern war, I must note that there are two major question marks
hanging over it: Russia and China. These are great powers capable of initiating and waging major wars, and in these two
countries, the forces of warlessness that I have identified are far less powerful and pervasive than they are in the industrial
West and in Japan. These are countries, in political terms, in transition, and the political forms and political culture they
eventually will have is unclear. Moreover, each harbors within its politics a potential cause of war that goes with the
grain of the post-Cold War period-with it, not against it-a cause of war that enjoys a certain legitimacy even now; namely,
irredentism.
War to reclaim lost or stolen territory has not been rendered obsolete in the way that the more traditional causes have.
China believes that Taiwan properly belongs to it. Russia could come to believe this about Ukraine, which means that the
Taiwan Strait and the Russian-Ukrainian border are the most dangerous spots on the planet, the places where World War III
could begin.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
251 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

251

Nuke War Not Likely

Nuclear war wont escalate; the US could disarm any nuclear opponent before they could retaliate
Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Press
Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania 2006
(Keir Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Press Associate Professor of
Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006, International Security, The End of Mad The Nuclear
dimension of US Primacy http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)

For nearly half a century, the worlds most powerful nuclear-armed countries have been locked in a
military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the early 1960s, the United States and the Soviet
Union possessed such large, welldispersed nuclear arsenals that neither state could entirely destroy the others nuclear forces
in a rst strike. Whether the scenario was a preemptive strike during a crisis, or a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack, the victim
would always be able to retaliate and destroy the aggressor. Nuclear war was therefore tantamount to mutual suicide. Many
scholars believe that the nuclear stalemate helped prevent conict between the superpowers during the Cold War, and that it
remains a powerful force for great power peace today.1 The age of MAD, however, is waning. Today the United
States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis--vis its plausible great power adversaries.
For the frst time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or
China with a nuclear first strike. A preemptive strike on an alerted Russian arsenal would still likely fail, but a
surprise attack at peacetime alert levels would have a reasonable chance of success. Furthermore, the
Chinese nuclear force is so vulnerable that it could be destroyed even if it were alerted during a crisis.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
252 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

252

Nuke War Not Likely US Russia

A US first strike would cripple Russia, retaliation would be impossible
Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Press
Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania 2006
(Keir Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Press Associate Professor of
Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006, International Security, The End of Mad The Nuclear
dimension of US Primacy http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)

A critical issue for the outcome of a U.S. attack is the ability of Russia to launch on warning (i.e., quickly
launch a retaliatory strike before its forces are destroyed). It is unlikely that Russia could do this. Russian
commanders would need 713 minutes to carry out the technical steps involved in identifying a U.S.
attack and launching their retaliatory forces. They would have to (1) confirm the sensor indications that an attack
was under way; (2) convey the news to political leaders; (3) communicate launch authorization and launch codes to the
nuclear forces; (4) execute launch sequences; and (5) allow the missiles to fly a safe distance from the silos.38 This timeline
does not include the time required by Russian leaders to absorb the news that a nuclear attack is The End of MAD? 21
under way and decide to authorize retaliation. Given that both Russian and U.S. early warning systems have had
false alarms in the past, even a minimally prudent leader would need to think hard and ask tough
questions before authorizing a catastrophic nuclear response.39 Because the technical steps require 713
minutes, it is hard to imagine that Russia could detect an attack, decide to retaliate, and launch missiles
in less than 1015 minutes. The Russian early warning system would probably not give Russias leaders
the time they need to retaliate; in fact it is questionable whether it would give them any warning at all.
Stealthy B-2 bombers could likely penetrate Russian air defenses without detection. Furthermore, low-flying
B-52 bombers could fire stealthy nuclear-armed cruise missiles from outside Russian airspace; these
missilessmall, radar-absorbing, and flying at very low altitude would likely provide no warning
before detonation. Finally, Russias vulnerability is compounded by the poor state of its early warning
system. Russian satellites cannot reliably detect the launch of SLBMs; Russia relies on groundbased radar to
detect those warheads.40 But there is a large east-facing hole in Russias radar network; Russian leaders might
have no warning of an SLBM attack from the Pacific.41 Even if Russia plugged the east-facing hole in its
radar network, its leaders would still have less than 10 minutes warning of a U.S. submarine attack
from the Atlantic, and perhaps no time if the U.S. attack began with hundreds of stealthy cruise missiles
and stealth bombers.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
253 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

253

Nuke War Not Likely Rising Costs
Major war is obsolete nuclear weapons and rising cost check aggression
Michael Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns
Hopkins University, 1999 Is Major War Obsolete?, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/

My argument says, tacitly, that while this point of view, which was widely believed 100 years ago, was not true then, there
are reasons to think that it is true now. What is that argument? It is that major war is obsolete. By major war, I mean war
waged by the most powerful members of the international system, using all of their resources over a protracted period of
time with revolutionary geopolitical consequences. There have been four such wars in the modern period: the wars of the
French Revolution, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Few though they have been,their consequences have
been monumental. They are, by far, the most influential events in modern history. Modern history which can, in fact, be
seen as a series of aftershocks to these four earthquakes. So if I am right, then what has been the motor of political history
for the last two centuries that has been turned off? This war, I argue, this kind of war, is obsolete; less than impossible, but
more than unlikely. What do I mean by obsolete? If I may quote from the article on which this presentation is based, a copy
of which you received when coming in, Major war is obsolete in a way that styles of dress are obsolete. It is something
that is out of fashion and, while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is obsolete in the way
that slavery, dueling, or foot-binding are obsolete. It is a social practice that was once considered normal, useful, even
desirable, but that now seems odious. It is obsolete in the way that the central planning of economic activity is obsolete. It
is a practice once regarded as a plausible, indeed a superior, way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that changing
conditions have made ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. Why is this so? Most simply, the costs have risen
and the benefits of major war have shriveled. The costs of fighting such a war are extremely high because of the advent
in the middle of this century of nuclear weapons, but they would have been high even had mankind never split the
atom. As for the benefits, these now seem, at least from the point of view of the major powers, modest to non-
existent. The traditional motives for warfare are in retreat, if not extinct. War is no longer regarded by anyone, probably
not even Saddam Hussein after his unhappy experience, as a paying proposition. And as for the ideas on behalf of which
major wars have been waged in the past, these are in steep decline. Here the collapse of communism was an important
milestone, for that ideology was inherently bellicose. This is not to say that the world has reached the end of ideology; quite
the contrary. But the ideology that is now in the ascendant, our own, liberalism, tends to be pacific. Moreover, I would
argue that three post-Cold War developments have made major war even less likely than it was after 1945. One of these
is the rise of democracy, for democracies, I believe, tend to be peaceful. Now carried to its most extreme conclusion, this
eventuates in an argument made by some prominent political scientists that democracies never go to war with one
another. I wouldnt go that far. I dont believe that this is a law of history, like a law of nature, because I believe there are
no such laws of history. But I do believe there is something in it. I believe there is a peaceful tendency inherent in
democracy. Now its true that one important cause of war has not changed with the end of the Cold War. That is the
structure of the international system, which is anarchic. And realists, to whom Fareed has referred and of whom John
Mearsheimer and our guest Ken Waltz are perhaps the two most leading exponents in this country and the world at the
moment, argue that that structure determines international activity, for it leads sovereign states to have to prepare to
defend themselves, and those preparations sooner or later issue in war. I argue, however, that a post-Cold War innovation
counteracts the effects of anarchy. This is what I have called in my 1996 book, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, common
security. By common security I mean a regime of negotiated arms limits that reduce the insecurity that anarchy inevitably
produces by transparency-every state can know what weapons every other state has and what it is doing with them-and
through the principle of defense dominance, the reconfiguration through negotiations of military forces to make them
more suitable for defense and less for attack. Some caveats are, indeed, in order where common security is concerned. Its
not universal. It exists only in Europe. And there it is certainly not irreversible. And I should add that what I have called
common security is not a cause, but a consequence, of the major forces that have made war less likely. States enter into
common security arrangements when they have already, for other reasons, decided that they do not wish to go to war.
Well, the third feature of the post-Cold War international system that seems to me to lend itself to warlessness is the novel
distinction between the periphery and the core, between the powerful states and the less powerful ones. This was
previously a cause of conflict and now is far less important. To quote from the article again, While for much of recorded
history local conflicts were absorbed into great-power conflicts, in the wake of the Cold War, with the industrial
democracies debellicised and Russia and China preoccupied with internal affairs, there is no great-power conflict into which
the many local conflicts that have erupted can be absorbed.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
254 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

254

Nuke War Not Likely Deterrence

Nuclear deterrence prevents great power

G John Ikenberry Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University The Rise of
China and the Future of the West Foreign Affairs January/February 2008
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87102/g-john-ikenberry/the-rise-of-china-and-the-future-of-the-west.html

The most important benefit of these features today is that they give the Western order a remarkable capacity to
accommodate rising powers. New entrants into the system have ways of gaining status and authority and opportunities to
play a role in governing the order. The fact that the United States, China, and other great powers have nuclear
weapons also limits the ability of a rising power to overturn the existing order. In the age of nuclear deterrence, great-
power war is, thankfully, no longer a mechanism of historical change. War-driven change has been abolished as a
historical process.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
255 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

255

Nuke War Not Likely International System

The international system prevents wareconomic, military, and ideological trends have changed.
Christopher Fettweiss, April prof security studies naval war college, Comparative Strategy 22.2 April 2003 p 109-
129

Mackinder can be forgiven for failing to anticipate the titanic changes in the fundamental nature of the international system
much more readily than can his successors. Indeed, Mackinder and his contemporaries a century ago would hardly
recognize the rules by which the world is run todaymost significantly, unlike their era, ours is one in which the danger of
major war has been removed, where World War III is, in Michael Mandelbaums words, somewhere between impossible
and unlikely.25 Geopolitical and geo-strategic analysis has not yet come to terms with what may be the central, most
significant trend of international politics: great power war, major war of the kind that pit the strongest states against each
other, is now obsolete.26 John Mueller has been the most visible, but by no means the only, analyst arguing that the
chances of a World War III emerging in the next century are next to nil.27 Mueller and his contemporaries cite three major
arguments supporting this revolutionary, and clearly controversial, claim.
First, and most obviously, modern military technology has made major war too expensive to contemplate. As John Keegan
has argued, it is hard to see how nuclear war could be considered an extension of politics by other meansat the very
least, nuclear weapons remove the possibility of victory from the calculations of the would-be aggressor.28 Their value as
leverage in diplomacy has not been dramatic, at least in the last few decades, because nuclear threats are not credible in
the kind of disagreements that arise between modern great powers. It is unlikely that a game of nuclear chicken would
lead to the outbreak of a major war. Others have argued that, while nuclear weapons surely make war an irrational
exercise, the destructive power of modern conventional weapons make todays great powers shy away from direct
conflict.29 The world wars dramatically reinforced Angells warnings, and today no one is eager to repeat those
experiences, especially now that the casualty levels among both soldiers and civilians would be even higher. Second, the
shift from the industrial to the information age that seems to be gradually occurring in many advanced societies has been
accompanied by a new definition of power, and a new system of incentives which all but remove the possibility that
major war could ever be a cost-efficient exercise. The rapid economic evolution that is sweeping much of the world,
encapsulated in the globalization metaphor so fashionable in the media and business communities, has been
accompanied by an evolution in the way national wealth is accumulated.30 For millennia, territory was the main object of
war because it was directly related to national prestige and power. As early as 1986 Richard Rosecrance recognized that
two worlds of international relations were emerging, divided over the question of the utility of territorial conquest.31 The
intervening years have served only to strengthen the argument that the major industrial powers, quite unlike their less-
developed neighbors, seem to have reached the revolutionary conclusion that territory is not directly related to their
national wealth and prestige. For these states, wealth and power are more likely to derive from an increase in economic,
rather than military, reach. National wealth and prestige, and therefore power, are no longer directly related to territorial
control.32 The economic incentives for war are therefore not as clear as they once may have been. Increasingly, it seems
that the most powerful states pursue prosperity rather than power. In Edward Luttwaks terminology, geopolitics is slowly
being replaced by geoeconomics, where the methods of commerce are displacing military methodswith disposable
capital in lieu of firepower, civilian innovation in lieu of militarytechnical advancement, and market penetration in lieu of
garrisons and bases.33 Just as advances in weaponry have increased the
cost of fighting, a socioeconomic evolution has reduced the rewards that a major war could possibly bring. Angells major
error was one that has been repeated over and over again in the social sciences ever sincehe overestimated the
rationality of humanity. Angell recognized earlier than most that the industrialization of military technology and economic
interdependence assured that the costs of a European war would certainly outweigh any potential benefits, but he was not
able to convince his contemporaries who were not ready to give up the institution of war. The idea of war was still
appealingthe normativecost/benefit analysis still tilted in the favor of fighting, and that proved to be the more important
factor. Today, there is reason to believe that this normative calculation may have changed. After the war, Angell noted that
the only things that could have prevented the war were surrendering of certain dominations, a recasting of patriotic ideals,
a revolution of ideas.34 The third and final argument of Angells successors is that today such a revolution of ideas has
occurred, that a normative evolution has caused a shift in the rules that govern state interaction. The revolutionary
potential of ideas should not be underestimated. Beliefs, ideologies, and ideas are often, as Dahl notes, a major
independent variable, which we ignore at our peril.35 Ideas, added John Mueller, are very often forces themselves, not

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
256 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

256

flotsam on the tide of broader social or economic patterns . . . it does not seem wise in this area to ignore phenomena that
cannot be easily measured, treated with crisp precision, or probed with deductive panache.36 The heart of this argument is
the moral progress that has brought a change in attitudes about international war among the great powers of the
world,37 creating for the first time, an almost universal sense that the deliberate launching of a war can no longer be
justified.38 At times leaders of the past were compelled by the masses to defend the national honor, but today popular
pressures push for peaceful resolutions to disputes between industrialized states. This normative shift has rendered war
between great powers subrationally unthinkable, removed from the set of options for policy makers, just as dueling is
no longer a part of the set of options for the same classes for which it was once central to the concept of masculinity and
honor. As Mueller explained, Dueling, a form of violence famed and fabled for centuries, is avoided not merely because it
has ceased to seem necessary, but because it has sunk from thought as a viable, conscious possibility. You cant fight a
duel if the idea of doing so never occurs to you or your opponent.39 By extension, states cannot fight wars if doing so does
not occur to them or to their opponent. As Angell discovered, the fact that major war was futile was not enough to bring
about its endpeople had to believe that it was futile. Angells successors suggest that such a belief now exists in the
industrial (and postindustrial) states of the world, and this autonomous power of ideas, to borrow Francis Fukuyamas
term, has brought about the end of major, great power war.40



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
257 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

257

Nuke War Not Likely North Korea

North Korea wouldnt Use a nuclear weapon, to many complications
Quester, Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, 2005
(George Quester, Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, Spring 2005, Naval War
College Review, I f the Nuclear Taboo gets broken,
https://portal.nwc.navy.mil/press/Naval%20War%20College%20Review/2005/Article%20by%20Quester%20Spring
%202005.pdf)


Yet on the more positive note, the history of successful nuclear deterrence suggests that nations have indeed
been in awe of nuclear weapons, have been deterred by the prospect of their use, even while they were
intent on deterring their adversaries as well. Would the nations that have been so successfully deterred
(sinceNagasaki) fromusing nuclear weapons not then be stopped in their tracks once deterrence had failed,
once the anticipated horror of the nuclear destruction of even a single city had been realized?2 Another of
the more probable scenarios has been a use of such weapons by North Korea, a state perhaps not quite as
undeterrable as the suicidal pilots of 11 September 2001 but given to rational calculations that are often very difficult to
sort out. This use could come in the form of a North Korean nuclear attack against Japan, South Korea, or even the United
States.3 The nearest targets for a North Korean nuclearweaponwould be South Korea and Japan, but
therewould be many complications should Pyongyang use such weapons against either.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
258 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

258

Nuke War Not Likely Pakistan

Nuclear Power plants have excellent security
CTC Sentinel, The Combating Terrorism Center is an independent educational and research
institution based in the Department of Social Sciences at the West Point, 2009
(CTC Sentinel, The Combating Terrorism Center is an independent educational and research institution based in the
Department of Social Sciences at the West Point, July 2009 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/CTCSentinel-
Vol2Iss7.pdf)


Pakistan has established a robust set of measures to assure the security of its nuclear weapons. These
have been based on copying U.S. practices, procedures and technologies, and comprise: a) physical
security; b) personnel reliability programs; c) technical and procedural safeguards; and d) deception and
secrecy. These measures provide the Pakistan Armys Strategic Plans Division (SPD)which oversees nuclear weapons
operationsa high degree of confidence in the safety and security of the countrys nuclear weapons.2 In
terms of physical security, Pakistan operates a layered concept of concentric tiers of armed forces
personnel to guard nuclear weapons facilities, the use of physical barriers and intrusion detectors to
secure nuclear weapons facilities, the physical separation of warhead cores from their detonation
components, and the storage of the components in protected underground sites. With respect to personnel
reliability, the Pakistan Army conducts a tight selection process drawing almost exclusively on officers
from Punjab Province who are considered to have fewer links with religious extremism or with the Pashtun areas of Pakistan from which
groups such as the Pakistani Taliban mainly garner their support. Pakistan operates an analog to the U.S. Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) that
screens individuals for Islamist sympathies, personality problems, drug use, inappropriate external affiliations, and sexual deviancy.3 The army
uses staff rotation and also operates a two-person rule under which no action, decision, or activity
involving a nuclear weapon can be undertaken by fewer than two persons.4 The purpose of this policy is
to reduce the risk of collusion with terrorists and to prevent nuclear weapons technology getting
transferred to the black market. In total, between 8,000 and 10,000 individuals from the SPDs security division and from Pakistans
Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Military Intelligence and Intelligence Bureau agencies are involved in the security clearance and
monitoring of those with nuclear weapons duties.5 Despite formal command authority structures that cede a role to Pakistans civilian leadership, in
practice the Pakistan Army has complete control over the countrys nuclear weapons. It imposes its executive authority over the
weapons through the use of an authenticating code system down through the command chains that is
intended to ensure that only authorized nuclear weapons activities and operations occur. It operates a tightly
controlled identification system to assure the identity of those involved in the nuclear chain of command, and it also uses a rudimentary Permissive
Action Link (PAL) type system to electronically lock its nuclear weapons. This system uses technology similar to the banking
industrys chip and pin to ensure that even if weapons fall into terrorist hands they cannot be
detonated.6 Finally, Pakistan makes extensive use of secrecy and deception. Significant elements of
Pakistans nuclear weapons infrastructure are kept a closely guarded secret. This includes the precise
location of some of the storage facilities for nuclear core and detonation components, the location of
preconfigured nuclear weapons crisis deployment sites, aspects of the nuclear command and control
arrangements,7 and many aspects of the arrangements for nuclear safety and security (such as the numbers of those removed under personnel
reliability programs, the reasons for their removal, and how often authenticating and enabling (PAL-type) codes are changed). In addition, Pakistan
uses deceptionsuch as dummy missilesto complicate the calculus of adversaries and is likely to have extended this practice to its nuclear
weapons infrastructure. Taken together, these measures provide confidence that the Pakistan Army can fully
protect its nuclear weapons against the internal terrorist threat, against its main adversary India, and
against the suggestion that its nuclear weapons could be either spirited out of the country by a third party
(posited to be the United States) or destroyed in the event of a deteriorating situation or a state collapse in
Pakistan.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
259 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

259

No Nuclear Terror

Nuclear Power plants have excellent security
Heaberlin Head of the Nuclear Safety and Technology Applications Product Line at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory, managed by Battelle 2004,
(Scott W. Heaberlin Head of the Nuclear Safety and Technology Applications Product Line at the Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory, managed by Battelle, A Case for Nuclear-Generated Electricity,, Battelle Press, 2004)

But, of course, airline crashes are not the only way for a terrorist to attack a nuclear power plant. Truck
bombs and armed attacks are certainly something to consider. It turns out that nuclear power plants are one
of the few facilities in our national infrastructure that does consider these things. Every U.S. nuclear
power plant has a trained armed security force who is authorized to use deadly force to protect the plant. Not
wanting to give any terrorists alternative ideas, but if I had a choice of going after a facility either totally unprotected or
protected with only a night watchman versus a facility with a team of military capable troopers armed with automatic
weapons, it would not be a tough choice. That is not to say these wackos are afraid to die. Clearly, they have demonstrated
that they are not. However, one would assume that they do want to have a reasonable chance of successfully
completing their vile mission. In that regard, a nuclear power plant would be a tough nut to crack.








Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
260 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

260

No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (1/6)
The Nuclear Taboo is to strong to break, the longer we wait for a nuclear war the less likely it
becomes
Quester, Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, 2005
(George Quester, Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, Spring 2005, Naval War
College Review, I f the Nuclear Taboo gets broken,
https://portal.nwc.navy.mil/press/Naval%20War%20College%20Review/2005/Article%20by%20Quester%20Spring
%202005.pdf)
One often hears references to a taboo on the use of nuclear weapons, but people usually have
difficulty putting their finger on exactly what that means. A taboo surely is more than simply something
we want to avoid, something we disapprove of, for we do not hear of taboos on bank robberies or on
murder. A taboo, then, refers to something that we are not willing even to think about doing, something
about which we do not weigh benefits and costs but that we simply reject. The best example in ordinary life is
the taboo on incest. If a six-year-old girl asks whether she could marry her brother when they grow up, her parents typically
do not reason with her, perhaps suggesting, Your brother and you are always squabbling about your toys; surely you can
find someone else more compatible to marry.We instead respond simply,No one marries their brother or sister! The child
quickly enough picks up the signal that this is something that is simply not done. Another such taboo is, of course,
cannibalism. Air Force crews are briefed on hundreds of measures they can take to survive after a crash, but one subject
never touched upon is that of avoiding starvation by consuming the body of a dead comrade. The entire question is just not
thinkable. The taboo on nuclear weapons use that seems to have settled into place over the nearly sixty
years sinceNagasaki may indeed have taken this form.We do not hear many discussions of the costs and
benefits of a nuclear escalation, but a somewhat unthinking and unchallenged conclusion that such
escalation is simply out of the question. Related, though hardly identical, is speculation as to whether a customary
international law on the use of nuclear weapons may be said to have emerged, by which the battlefield application of such
weapons has become illegal without any international treaties being signed or ratified, simply because they have gone so long
unused.16 How such a custom or taboo is developed and what happens to it when violated will play an
important part in our assessment of what the world would be like after a new nuclear attack. The fact
that the nuclear taboo is not violated decade after decade, that nuclear weapons are not used again in
anger, arguably strengthens the taboo, but there are also a few ways in which that state of affairs may endanger it. The
reinforcement comes simply from the general sense that such an act must be unthinkable because no one has initiated one for
so long; it is in this sense that customary international lawis held to be settling into place by which the abstinence of other
states presses our own state to abstain. People did not begin speaking about a nuclear taboo for a number of years after
Nagasaki. It was only in the late 1950s, after more than a decade had passed without repetition of the experiences of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the feeling arose that a barrier now existed to treating nuclear weapons as just another
weapon.17 But in time there will be hardly anyone alive who was a victim of the 1945 attacks, hardly anyone who
remembers seeing the first photographs of their victims or who recalls the nuclear testing programs of the 1950s and 1960s.
Further, an unwelcome result of the bans on nuclear testing, intended to shield the environment and discourage horizontal and
vertical nuclear proliferation, is that some of the perceived horror of such weapons may be fading, so that ordinary human
beings will be a little less primed to reject automatically the idea of such weapons being used again. The only fair test of
the long-term viability of the nuclear taboo would, of course, be for the world to manage to keep that
taboo observed and intact. The net trend, the net result, of a prolongation of non-use is most probably
that such non-use will be strengthened and renewed thereby, just as it seems to have been over the
decades of the Cold War and its aftermath. There have been parallel taboos in other areas of warfare,
taboos that have indeed been violated in the last several decades. The world for many years sensed the
development of such a taboo on chemical warfare; the effective prohibition was reinforced by the Geneva Protocol but
observed even by states that had not yet ratified the protocol (the best example being the United States at its entry intoWorld
War II). A similar taboolike aversion was thought to apply to biological warfare.18 The long period since naval forces have
confronted each other on the high seas (broken only by the Argentine-British war over the Falklands) may have had some
similar characteristics. The longer one goes without engaging in some form of warfare, the stranger and less

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
261 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

261

manageable that kind of conflict will seem, and the more the public and others will regard it as simply
not to be contemplated.
[Continues on next page: No text omitted]

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
262 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

262

No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (2/6)
[Continues from previous page: No text omitted]
Similarly, the worlds resistance to the proliferation of nuclear weapons has at times seemed to be
mobilizing a widespread popular feeling that a taboo or customary international lawwas developing on
proliferation as well. Ordinary people and even military professionals in many countries were coming to
assume that nuclear weapons were so horrible, and so different, that it simply made no sense to think of
even acquiring them..



If a nuclear weapon was use countries would rally against the nation preventing retaliation
Quester, Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, 2005
(George Quester, Professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland, Spring 2005, Naval War
College Review, I f the Nuclear Taboo gets broken,
https://portal.nwc.navy.mil/press/Naval%20War%20College%20Review/2005/Article%20by%20Quester%20Spring
%202005.pdf)

This entire question might seem the more interesting at first to those who are pessimistic about future
risks and who might thus regard speculation about an end to the nuclear taboo as overdue. Yet, to repeat,
pessimism may not be necessary, since analysis of the likely consequences of nuclear escalation might
stimulate governments and publics to head it off. The chances are as good as three out of five that no
nuclear event will occur in the period up to the year 2045that there is a better than even chance that the
world will be commemorating a full century, since Nagasaki, of the non-use of such weapons. But analysts
and ordinary citizens around the world to whom the author has put these odds typically dismiss themas too optimistic.
Indeed, the response has often been a bit bizarre, essentially that we have not been thinking at all about
the next use of nuclear weapons, but we think that you are too optimistic about such use being avoided. Such
responses in Israel, Sweden, Japan, or the United States might support the worry that people around the world have simply
been repressing an unpleasant reality, refusing to think about a very real danger. Yet the possibility remains that the relative
inattention is not simply a repression of reality but rather a manifestation of the unthinkableness of nuclear weapons use One
could also introduce another wedge of hope, that any such use of nuclear weapons between now and 2045 would
be followed by reactions and consequences that reinforced rather than eroded the taboo. That would be
the case if the world did not retreat in the face of such use but rallied to punish it, and as a result the
perpetrator did not advance its interests by such an escalation but actually lost the battles and territories
that were at issue.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
263 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

263

No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (3/6)

Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Programs at Brown Unviersity, 2005
(Nina Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Programs at Brown Unviersity, 2005, Stigmatizing the
Bomb, International Security 29.4 (2005) 5-49,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v029/29.4tannenwald.html#authbio)


The nuclear taboo, however, also has an intersubjective or a phenomenological aspect: it is a taboo
because people believe it to be. Political and military leaders themselves began using the term to refer to
this normative perception starting in the early 1950s, even when, objectively, a tradition of nonuse hardly existed. If actors
see the use of nuclear weapons as if it were a taboo, as their rhetoric suggests, then this could affect their
choices and behavior. In the words of sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas, "If men define situations as real,
they are real in their consequences."
18
This subjective (and intersubjective) sense of "taboo-ness" is one of
the factors that makes the tradition of nuclear nonuse a taboo rather than simply a norm. Although one
might be skeptical that this is just empty rhetoric, this belief is not entirely detached from reality.
Evidence for the taboo lies in discourse, institutions, and behavior. The most obvious evidence lies in discoursethe
way people talk and think about nuclear weaponsand how this has changed since 1945. This includes public opinion,
the diplomatic statements of governments and leaders, the resolutions of international organizations, and
the private moral concerns of individual decisionmakers. The discourse evidence is supplemented both
by international law and agreements that restrict freedomof action with respect to nuclear weapons, and
by the changing policies of states that downgrade the role of nuclear weapons (e.g., shifts in NATO policy, he
denuclearization of the army and marines, and the buildup of conventional alternatives). As the inhibition on use has
developed over time, it has taken on more taboo-like qualitiesunthinkingness and taken-for-grantedness. As a systemic
phenomenon, the taboo exists at the collective level of the international community (represented especially
by the United Nations), but this need not mean that all countries have internalized it to the same degree. As
noted earlier, the taboo is a de facto, not a legal, norm. There is no explicit international legal prohibition
on the use of nuclear weapons such as exists for, say, chemical weapons. Although resolutions passed in
the UN General Assembly and other international forums have repeatedly proclaimed the use of nuclear
weapons as illegal, the United States and other nuclear powers have consistently voted against these. U.S.
legal analyses have repeatedly defended the legality of use of nuclear weapons as long as it was for defensive and not
aggressive purposes, as required by the UN charter.
19
As the 1996 World Court advisory opinion on the issue confirmed,
although increasing agreement exists that many, if not most, uses of nuclear weapons are illegal under the traditional laws of
armed conflict, there is by no means agreement that all uses of nuclear weapons are illegal.
20
Nevertheless, legal use has
been gradually chipped away through incremental restrictionsan array of treaties and regimes that
together circumscribe the realm of legitimate nuclear use and restrict freedom of action with respect to
nuclear weapons. These agreements include nuclear weapons-free zones, bilateral and multilateral arms
control agreements, and negative security assurances (i.e., political declarations by the nuclear powers that they
will not use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are members of the NPT). Together, these agreements
enhance the normative presumption against nuclear use. By multiplying the number of forums where a
decision to use nuclear weapons would have to be defended, they substantially increase the burden of
proof for any such decision.
21
Many of these legal constraints have been incorporated into U.S. domestic practice, where
they are reflected in constraints on deployments and targeting, proliferation, arms control, and use.
22
Thus, while the
legality of nuclear weapons remains in dispute, the trend line of decreasing legitimacy and
circumscribed legality is clear.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
264 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

264

No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (4/6)

Nuclear weapons wont be used even if its in their best interest
Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of University of
Montreal-McGill Research Group in International Security, 1995
(T.V. Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of University of Montreal-McGill
Research Group in International Security, December 1995, Nuclear Taboo and War I nitiation in Regional Conflicts,
JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 39 No. 4)

These stringent definitions of social taboos may not be fully applicable in the nuclear context. However, the tradition of
nonuse has been characterized by many scholars as equivalent to a taboo (e.g., Hoffmann 1966,99; Schelling
1980, 260). In this context, the term taboo is used in its figurative and loose sense-as an unwritten and uncodified
prohibitionary norm against nuclear use. It is also used to the extent that both social and nuclear taboos are
based on the fear of consequences of a given course of action. The latter arose as a response to a
realization of the danger or the unforeseeable consequences involved in nuclear war. The analysis in this
article elaborates on the moral, normative, legal, and rational constraints involved in the use of nuclear weapons and their
possible role in the formation and evolution of the taboo U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles initially used the term
taboo to describe the prohibition against the use of nuclear weapons. On October 7, 1953, he was reported to have said:
"Somehow or other we must manage to remove the taboo from the use of these weapons" (quoted in Bundy 1988, 249).
Dulles was in favor of developing usable nuclear weapons to obtain the battlefield military objectives of the United States.
Schelling popularized the concept of a tradition of nonuse in his writings in the 1960s. In his words,
what makes atomic weapons different is a powerful tradition for their nonuse, "a jointly recognized
expectation that they may not be used in spite of declarations of readiness to use them, even in spite of
tactical advantages in their use" (Schelling 1980, 260). A tradition in this respect is based on a habit or
disposition that prevents the use of nuclear weapons as a serious option for consideration by decision
makers.3 As Schelling (1994, 110) argued, the main reason for the uniqueness of nuclear weapons is the
perception that they are unique and that once introduced into combat, they could not be "contained,
restrained, confined, or limited." Although prolonged conventional war can also cause somewhat similar
levels of destruction, the difference is in the perception of the impact. The swiftness with which destruction can
take place is the distinguishing point in this respect.4 Clearly, the nuclear taboo has developed largely as a
function of the awesome destructive power of atomic weapons. The potential for total destruction gives
nuclear weapons an all-or-nothing characteristic unlike any other weapon invented so far, which, in turn,
makes it imperative that the possessor will not use them against another state except as a last-resort
weapon. This means a nuclear state may not use its ultimate capability unless a threshold is crossed (e.g., unless the survival
of the state itself is threatened). Decision makers and the public at large in most nuclear-weapon states believe that great
danger is involved in the use of nuclear weapons with respect to casualties and aftereffects, in both psychological and
physical terms. Breaking the taboo could bring the revulsion of generations to come unless it were for an issue of extremely
vital importance-a situation that thus far has failed to materialize. Not surprisingly, nuclear states, even when they
could have received major tactical and strategic gains by using nuclear weapons, have desisted from
their use.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
265 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

265

No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (5/6)

Super Powers recognize the importance of not breaking the nuclear taboo, even the cold war
wasnt enough to prompt their use
Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of University of
Montreal-McGill Research Group in International Security, 1995
(T.V. Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of University of Montreal-McGill
Research Group in International Security, December 1995, Nuclear Taboo and War I nitiation in Regional Conflicts,
JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 39 No. 4)

The taboo has been observed by all nuclear and opaque-nuclear states thus far. Nations with different
ideological and political systems and military traditions-the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom,
France, China, India, and Israel-have found no occasion to use them, pointing toward the emergence of a
global "recognition that nuclear weapons are unusable across much of the range of traditional military
and political interests" (Russett 1989, 185). The American unwillingness to use them in Korea and Vietnam
to obtain military victory and the Soviet refrain from using them to avert defeat in Afghanistan suggest
the entrenchment of the taboo among the superpowers even during the peak of the cold war period.5 The
Chinese aversion to using them against the Vietnamese to obtain victory in the 1979 war also point out that
other nuclear powers have observed the taboo. In the United States, the taboo or the tradition of nonuse
became well entrenched despite many urgings by military and political leaders to break it during times
of intense crises. It was observed in the 1950s and 1960s when the United States could have gained
major tactical and strategic objectives against its adversaries. Possibly, it began with the revulsion and the fear
that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks engendered in the consciousness of the public and political leadership. Although
the fear of nuclear weapons had been somewhat removed by the end of the 1940s, with the Soviet
attainment of nuclear and missile capability in the early 1960s, a sense of renewed vulnerability began to
creep into the American public perception (Malcolm- son 1990, 8, 35; Weart 1988). This sense of
vulnerability, arising from the awareness that effective defenses against a nuclear attack do not exist,
may have contributed to the development of the nuclear taboo. The Vietnam War saw the entrenchment
of the tradition of nonuse of nuclear weapons. In 1969, President Nixon "could not make the nuclear threat in
Vietnam that he believed he had seen Eisenhower use successfully in Korea" (Bundy 1988, 587-8). Since then, each
passing decade saw the strengthening of this tradition, and the experience of over four decades "has
more firmly established a de facto norm of non-use" (Russett 1989, 185). The Cuban missile crisis further showed
the perils of a crisis spilling over to a possible nuclear war. The crisis underlined the dangers of atomic posturing to the point
of perma- nently discrediting this kind of atomic diplomacy (Bundy 1984, 50).6


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
266 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

266

No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (6/6)

A nuclear victory would have to many consequences for their use
Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of University of
Montreal-McGill Research Group in International Security, 1995
(T.V. Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of University of Montreal-McGill
Research Group in International Security, December 1995, Nuclear Taboo and War I nitiation in Regional Conflicts,
JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 39 No. 4)


The taboo was also likely to have been strengthened by a rational calculation that military victory
following a nuclear attack may not be materially, politically, or psychologically worth obtaining if it
involves the destruction of all or a sizable segment of an enemy's population and results in the
contamination of a large portion of the territory with radio-active debris. Thus the tradition must have
emerged largely from the realization by nuclear states that there are severe limits to what a state can
accomplish by actually using a nuclear weapon (Gaddis 1992, 21). It also implies that after a certain point, the
capacity to destroy may not be useful, as the relation between the power to harm and the power to
modify the behavior of others is not linear (Jervis 1984, 23). Additionally, the effects of nuclear attack may be
beyond the local area of attack but could have wider effects, spatially and temporally (Lee 1993, 18). There
exists no guarantee that aftereffects such as the spread of radioactive debris could be confined to the
target state's territory. Neighboring states that may be neutral or aligned with the nuclear state could be
the victims of a nuclear attack as well. The fear that, once unleashed, nuclear terror could escape
meaningful political and military control and physical limitation may have influenced decision makers'
choices in this regard.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
267 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

267

AT: Schell

Schells views on policy are flawed and impossible to achieve

Review: Freeze: The Literature of the Nuclear Weapons Debate
Author(s): Peter deLeon he Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 181-189
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/173847.pdf
Lastly, one turns to Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, probably the most pretentious (witness its
title) and flawed of these books. But it is also the most important, for in many ways, it has served as the catalyst of the
antinuclear movement. His examples of a thermonuclear holocaust are no more graphic- although better written-than are
those of other authors, nor is his litany of secondary effects (e.g., the effects on the food chain and the possible depletion of
the earth's ozone layer) any more convincing. But these are just preliminary groundwork to Schell's main thesis-that
mankind's major obligation is to its future and the "fact" that nuclear war literally destroys whatever future may exist. No
cause, he argues, can relieve us of that burden. Some (e.g., Kinsley, 1982) have claimed that Schell has no right to impose
his set of values on the body politic. Perhaps, but few should contest Schell's sincerity in explicitly raising the profoundly
moral issues that have too long been neglected in the ethically sterile discussions that have characterized mainstream nuclear
doctrine. Whether Schell is right or wrong in assuming his high moral ground is the normative prerogative and judgment of
the individual reader; at the very worst, however, Schell forces the reader to confront these issues directly. And this,
in spite of his grandiose style of writing, is why this book warrants careful attention. Schell probably does not expect to have
his thesis accepted uncritically; he admits his data are open to wide variation and interpretation. But, given his "evidence" and
logic, Schell has the courage of his conviction to realize where his positions will take him. He admits that the nuclear
weapons demon cannot be put back in the bottle, that even with a nuclear disarmament treaty, the extant scientific knowledge
would always allow a nation to reconstruct this ultimate weapon. Similarly, to rely on conventional weapons to preserve
national sovereignty is to invite a nation to cheat, to build clandestine nuclear weapons and thus begin the nuclear arms race
towards extinction once again. The fundamental culprit to Schell's way of thinking is not Zuckerman's dedicated
nuclear engineer nor Ivan the Targeteer, but the nation-state itself. He openly acknowledges that "the task we
face is to find a means of political action that will permit human beings to pursue any end for the rest of
time. We are asked to replace the mechanism by which the political decisions, whatever they may be,
are reached. In sum, the task is nothing less than to reinvent politics" (p. 226). Schell's proposal, past an
immediate nuclear freeze, is some form of functioning world government, that is, the abandonment of
national sovereignty and perhaps individual liberties as a means of retreating from the nuclear precipice,
for any life, he avers, is better than no life. Schell does not actually say "better red than dead," but he
surely could not disavow such a position.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
268 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

268

AT: Schell

Schells rationality argument contradicts with human nature

Nevin, University of New Hampshire, 82
JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR ON RESISTING EXTINCTION: A REVIEW
OF
JONATHAN SCHELL'S THE FATE OF THE EARTH' JOHN A. NEVIN
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE1982, 38, 349-353 NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER)

Schell relies primarily on rational argument. A rational calculus suggests that although the probability of nuclear
extinction may be small, its value-the termination of life -is minus infinity, and the product of any non- zero probability and
minus infinity is minus infinity. In terms of relative expected utility, then, the choice is clear (Schell, p. 95). The choice
correctly posed and evaluated by Schell is structurally identical to Pascal's wager on the existence of God, which has an
expected utility of plus infinity despite the possibly infinitesimal probability that belief in God is necessary and
sufficient for eternal life. But Pascal's rational argument never made converts-faith appears to derive from certain
immediate experiences, even in his own case. Likewise, I fear that Schell's calculus will not make converts
to disarmament-choice behavior depends not on rational calculation but on experienced events.One
significant event that can be experienced by any reader is exposure to Schell's book itself. As a warning of imminent
disaster and a motivator of action, it is supremely effective in arousing concern and activating behavior. The
problem now is to identify events and contingencies that will foster sustained commitment, by the
species, to the second alternative-survival. Laboratory work on commitment and self-control suggests
that humans and animals will usually choose the smaller but more immediate of two rewards, or the
larger but more delayed of two punishers, to their own long-term detriment. Our current choice, as a
species, of the first alternative-continuation of the arms race-is therefore entirely consistent with
laboratory data. Can knowledge from the laboratory help us switch over to the second alternative? One way in which
animals can be trained to choose the larger, more delayed reward (or the lesser but more immediate punisher) is to adjust
the delay values gradually, while giving repeated exposure to both outcomes; but of course this method is ruled out by the
nature of the nuclear dilemma. Another method is to train the subjects to make an early "commitment" response that
precludes access to one of the choices later. However, as Schell points out, we can never really preclude access to nuclear
weapons, because the methods for making them are well known and cannot be unlearned; the commitment response must
be continuous.
Perhaps the problem is best approached by invoking more immediate, smaller-scale, molecular events. For example, we can
try to get a large audience for Schell's book, which (as noted above) is a strikingly potent stimulus.
We can also expose all people, everywhere, to stimuli correlated with nuclear warfare such as pictures of
the burned and dying and dead at Hiroshima, and films showing the awesome power of nuclear test
explosions, which bring at least some of the future aspects of the first alternative into the present. But
this is not sufficient, because it might merely serve to generate numb passivity or avoidance of the entire
issue. We need, in addition, to instigate and maintain behavior that is compatible with the second alternative, including
open discussion, nonviolent protest, and political action that opposes the momentum of the arms race and leads to
disarmament. Clearly, we have witnessed some of the requisite behavior during this year, as hundreds of thousands of
people in many countries have rallied to demonstrate their opposition to the threat of nuclear war. Political support for
disarmament is on the rise. However, such behavior must be rein- forced if it is to be maintained through the protracted
negotiations and rearrangements of international politics that will be required; and it cannot be reinforced by the
nonoccurrence of a nuclear holocaust, because that nonevent will always be equally well correlated
with pursuit of the arms race until the holocaust occurs. Much more immediate and local reinforcers such as
societal approval, access to political office, and economic well-being will be necessary. of humankind is
thereby placed in doubt. The entire system of sovereign nation-states is therefore a dangerous relic of
pre-nuclear times and must be abandoned.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
269 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

269

AT: Schell

Society wont react to warning about nuclear war, disproving Schells argument

Nevin 82
JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR ON RESISTING EXTINCTION: A REVIEW
OF
JONATHAN SCHELL'S THE FATE OF THE EARTH' JOHN A. NEVIN UNIVERSITY OF NEW
HAMPSHIRE1982, 38, 349-353 NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER)
It is impossible not to acknowledge the power of Schell's presentation, but its very power may lead to two further
problems. First, his account of Armageddon generates strong aversive emotional reactions, and we
know from the study of negative reinforcement that such stimuli strengthen behavior that removes them.
The orienting-response literature also suggests that organisms will orient away from cues that signal
aversive events. We are, therefore, likely to turn away from warnings of nuclear warfare and engage in
other activities. Second, the ultimate horror that Schell portrays is widely regarded as inevitable. The
arms race is often said to possess a sort of impersonal momentum, like a massive object that rolls on
inexorably, regardless of our actions; and certainly the recent history of negotiations to control the arms
race, conducted by people who are well aware of its potential ultimate outcome, does nothing to reassure
us. In the laboratory, uncontrollable aversive events have been shown to produce a state of inactivity termed helplessness.
Taken together, the history of uncontrollability of the arms race, the aversiveness of our reactions to
warnings of nuclear warfare, and the lack of correlation of such warnings with experienced events would
seem to explain the absence of effective privateaction (thinking) to analyze the problem or overt
behavior to effect disarmament. This combination of factors may be responsible for what Robert Jay Lifton has
termed "psychic numbing," a refusal to confront the threat of universal death that hangs over our heads like an
executioner's sword.
How can we approach the absence of relevant action-the refusal to look up at the sword and do something to blunt it or
prevent it from falling-from a behavioral perspective? Consider an analogy. If we saw a person afflicted with a potentially
fatal disease, taking daily doses of an addictive drug that gave temporary relief from distress but in addition exacerbated
the disease, we would diagnose the behavior as maladaptive. Appealing to this person to exercise "self-control" would
not be likely to have much effect. If this person became our client, we would immediately regulate access to the drug
and take steps to eliminate its use, while at the same time arranging a program of behavioral therapy to maintain
abstinence when treatment ended. Schell suggests that human society, living as it does under the constant
threat of self-imposed termination while using its economic resources to build more instruments of
universal death in the name of security, is like this client-"insane," in Schell's words. Immediate therapy
is essential. However, our society is both client and therapist. Consequently, we are enmeshed in a
problem, at the level of society and species, that parallels the problem of "self-control" at the level of the
individual. Schell poses the choice facing humanity in terms very close to the laboratory study of self-
control:



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
270 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

270


**IMPACT TAKEOUTS**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
271 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

271

AT: Giligan

Violence is too deeply entrenched into our society to end poverty, even Gilligan concedes
Alvarez, Professor in the department of criminal justice at Northern Arizona University and
Bachman, Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at the
University of Delware 2007
(Alex Alvarez, Professor in the department of criminal justice at Northern Arizona University and Ronet Bachman,
Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of Delware, 2007 Violence:
the enduring problem Chapter 1 ,Pg. 19-20, http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/17422_Chapter_1.pdf

We also worry about violence constantly, and change our behavior in response to perceived threats of
violence. We avoid certain parts of town, add security features to our homes, and vote for get tough
laws in order to protect ourselves from violent offenders. At the time this chapter was written, Americans were
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and news reports were full of fallen soldiers, car bombings, torture of prisoners, and
beheadings of hostages. In short, whether domestically or internationally, violence is part and parcel of
American life. In fact, the sociologists Peter Iadicola and Anson Shupe assert that violence is the overarching
problem of our age and suggest that every social problem is influenced by the problem of violence.47
James Gilligan, a medical doctor who directed the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, put it this
way: The more I learn about other peoples lives, the more I realize that I have yet to hear the history of
any family in which there has not been at least one family member who has been overtaken by fatal or
life threatening violence, as the perpetrator or the victimwhether the violence takes the form of suicide or
homicide, death in combat, death from a drunken or reckless driver, or any other of the many nonnatural forms of
death.48 So its safe to say that violence is not foreign to us, but rather is something with which we rub
shoulders constantly.We know violence through our own lived experiences and the experiences of our
family, friends, and neighbors, as well as through the media images we view. At a deeper level, this
means that our identities as citizens, parents, children, spouses, lovers, friends, teammates, and
colleagues are often shaped by violence, at least in part. Who we are as individuals and as human beings
is shaped by the culture within which we live.How we define ourselves, the ways in which we relate to
others, and our notions of what we stand for and what we believe in, are all determined in large part by
the influences and experiences of our livesor, as the great English Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson once wrote, I am a
part of all that I have met.49 In a similar vein, although a bit less poetically, the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas
Luckmann suggest, Identity is a phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society.50 In short,
our life experiences shape who we are. Therefore, if violence is a part of our reality, then it plays a role
in shaping us as human beings and influences how we understand the world around us. To acknowledge
this is to understand that violence is part of who we are and central to knowing ourselves and the lives
we lead. Because of this prevalence and its impact on our lives, some have suggested that Americans
have created and embraced a culture of violence. Culture is a nebulous concept that includes values, beliefs, and
rules for behavior. These qualities detail what is expected, what is valued, and what is prohibited.51 Essentially, then, this
argument contends that our history and experiences have resulted in a system of values and beliefs that, to a greater extent
than in some other cultures, condones, tolerates, and even expects a violent response to various and specific situations.52
Other scholars have further developed this theme by arguing that, instead of a culture of violence in the United States, there
are subcultures of violence specific to particular regions or groups. First articulated by the criminologists Wolfgang and
Ferracuti, this viewpoint suggests that members of some groups are more likely to rely on violence. As they suggest Quick
resort to physical combat as a measure of daring, courage, or defense of status appears to be a cultural expectation . . . When
such a cultural response is elicited from an individual engaged in social interplay with others who harbor the same response
mechanism, physical assaults, altercations, and violent domestic quarrels that result in homicide are likely to be relatively
common.53 This argument has been applied to various subcultural groups such as Southerners, young African American
males, and others.54 The South historically has had much higher rates of violence than other regions of the country and many
have suggested that it is a consequence of Southern notions of honor that demand a violent response to certain provocations.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
272 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

272

The argument suggests that Southern culture, in other words, is more violence prone than other regional cultures. Violence,
then, is something that appears to be embedded in our values and attitudes, which is why some have suggested that
violence is as American as apple pie.55

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
273 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

273

Extinction Impossible

It is impossible to kill all humans.
Schilling 00

But others have pointed out that the human animal (as opposed to human civilization) would be almost
impossible to kill off at this point. People have become too widespread and too capable, a few pockets of
individuals would find ways to survive almost any conceivable nuclear war or ecological collapse.
These survivors would be enough to fully repopulate the Earth in a few thousand years and another
technological civilization would be a precedent. Maybe this will happen many times

A nuclear war would only kill hundreds of thousands of people. It is defiantly survivable and the
impact is not huge.
Brian Martin Formal training in physics, with a PhD from Sydney University, 2002
(Activism after nuclear war,
http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/meet/2002/Martin_ActivismNuclearWar.html)

In the event of nuclear war, as well as death and destruction there will be serious political consequences.
Social activists should be prepared. The confrontation between Indian and Pakistani governments earlier
this year showed that military use of nuclear weapons is quite possible. There are other plausible
scenarios. A US military attack against Iraq could lead Saddam Hussein to release chemical or
biological weapons, providing a trigger for a US nuclear strike. Israeli nuclear weapons might also be
unleashed. Another possibility is accidental nuclear war. Paul Rogers in his book Losing Control says
that the risk of nuclear war has increased due to proliferation, increased emphasis on nuclear war-
fighting, reduced commitment to arms control (especially by the US government) and Russian reliance
on nuclear arms as its conventional forces disintegrate. A major nuclear war could kill hundreds of
millions of people. But less catastrophic outcomes are possible. A limited exchange might kill "only"
tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Use of nuclear "bunker-busters" might lead to an immediate
death toll in the thousands or less.


Humanity is resilient: extinction is highly unlikely.

Bruce Tonn, Futures Studies Department, Corvinus University of Budapest, 2005, Human Extinction
Scenarios, www.budapestfutures.org/ downloads/abstracts/Bruce% 20Tonn%20-%20Abstract.pdf)

The human species faces numerous threats to its existence. These include global climate change, collisions with near-
earth objects, nuclear war, and pandemics. While these threats are indeed serious, taken separately they fail to describe
exactly how humans could become extinct. For example, nuclear war by itself would most likely fail to kill everyone on
the planet, as strikes would probably be concentrated in the northern hemisphere and the Middle East, leaving populations
in South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand some hope of survival. It is highly unlikely that any
uncontrollable nanotechnology could ever be produced but even it if were, it is likely that humans could
develop effective, if costly, countermeasures, such as producing the technologies in space or destroying sites of runaway
nanotechnologies with nuclear weapons. Viruses could indeed kill many people but effective quarantine of a healthy
people could be accomplished to save large numbers of people. Humans appear to be resilient to extinction with respect
to single events.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
274 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

274

Nuclear War
The chance of a nuclear war is just as likely as it was a half century ago.
Daily Newscaster November 15, 2008
(World conflict brewing but nuclear war unlikely,
http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:SLntzFWp_iEJ:www.dailynewscaster.com/2008/11/15/world-conflict-brewing-but-
nuclear-war-unlikely/+"World+conflict+brewing+but+nuclear+war+unlikely"&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

In August, oilgeopolitical expert F.W. Engdahl wrote, The signing on August 14th of an agreement between the
governments of the United States and Poland to deploy on Polish soil US interceptor missiles is the most dangerous move
towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis. Now, I dont like being in a position
where I have to contradict the leading analyst of the New World Order, but there is no chance we are
any closer to a nuclear war than we were in the 1950s, 1962, or any time in the last 58 years. I cant speak
for Mr. Engdahl but most NWO conspiracy theorists expect a depopulation event to rid the planet of 5 billion useless eaters.
The Illuminati, they say, need only 500 million of us for slaves when they take over the world. Dont get me wrong, I am not
saying there couldnt be a depopulation event before 2012 but a nuclear war is not in the cards. Nuclear World War III
would make too much of the planet uninhabitable and that would include the One World governors as
well as the 500 million humans they need for slaves. Think about it: why havent we had a nuclear
accident since the 50s? Where is Dr. Strangelove or some insane Air Force General Jack D. Ripper who orders a first
strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union or how about just a plain f up? If things can go wrong, they will go
wrong and the U.S. government or any nuclear power are not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
275 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

275

Biological Attack Not Probable

Biological Warfare wouldnt cause widespread death

Ropeik & Gray, Writers, 02
David Ropeik, George M. Gray, A Practical Guide for Deciding Whats Really Safe and Whats Really Dangerous
in the World Around You, 2002, Pg. 186, Books.Google.com

Fortunately, carrying out an attack with biological agents which kills large numbers of people is difficult. Distributing
these pathogens in a way that exposes large numbers of people is not simple. You dont just brew up some deadly
germs in a lab and go somewhere and shake them out of a jar. For most biological weapons to reach more than just a few
people, they have to be dispersed in the air. To accomplish that, the agent has to be dried, then ground up or milled into
tiny particles that can remain airborne for days, and in some cases further treated to control clumping. These steps take time,
money, special equipment, and expertise. They also require sophisticated protective clothing, filters, and containment
equipment if the people who want to use them as weapons dont want to become their own first victims. The Japanese
terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, before its Tokyo subway attack with the nerve gas sarin, attempted several attacks with
botulinum toxin, anthrax, and other agents but couldnt manage to cause a single death. And the 2001 mailborne
anthrax attacks in the United States demonstrated how difficult it is to use even potent weaponized agents to kill
more than a small number of people.
.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
276 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

276

Indo-Pak
Indo-Pak nuclear conflict unlikely.
The Michigan Daily 02
(Experts say nuclear war still unlikely, http://www.michigandaily.com/content/experts-say-nuclear-war-still-unlikely)

University political science Prof. Ashutosh Varshney becomes animated when asked about the likelihood of nuclear
war between India and Pakistan. "Odds are close to zero," Varshney said forcefully, standing up to pace a little bit
in his office. "The assumption that India and Pakistan cannot manage their nuclear arsenals as well as the
U.S.S.R. and U.S. or Russia and China concedes less to the intellect of leaders in both India and
Pakistan than would be warranted." The world"s two youngest nuclear powers first tested weapons in 1998, sparking
fear of subcontinental nuclear war a fear Varshney finds ridiculous. "The decision makers are aware of what nuclear
weapons are, even if the masses are not," he said. "Watching the evening news, CNN, I think they have
vastly overstated the threat of nuclear war," political science Prof. Paul Huth said. Varshney added that
there are numerous factors working against the possibility of nuclear war. "India is committed to a no-
first-strike policy," Varshney said. "It is virtually impossible for Pakistan to go for a first strike, because the retaliation
would be gravely dangerous." Political science Prof. Kenneth Lieberthal, a former special assistant to President
Clinton at the National Security Council, agreed. "Usually a country that is in the position that Pakistan
is in would not shift to a level that would ensure their total destruction," Lieberthal said, making note of India"s
considerably larger nuclear arsenal. "American intervention is another reason not to expect nuclear war," Varshney said. "If
anything has happened since September 11, it is that the command control system has strengthened. The
trigger is in very safe hands." But the low probability of nuclear war does not mean tensions between the
two countries who have fought three wars since they were created in 1947 will not erupt. "The possibility of
conventional war between the two is higher. Both sides are looking for ways out of the current tension," Lieberthal said.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
277 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

277

Iran

The US wont have a have a nuclear war with Iran, too risky.

Defense experts say a military strike on Iran would be risky and complicated. U.S. forces already are
preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, and an attack against Iran could inflame U.S. problems in the Muslim
world. The U.N. Security Council has demanded Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. But Iran
has so far refused to halt its nuclear activity, saying the small-scale enrichment project was strictly for
research and not for development of nuclear weapons. Bush has said Iran may pose the greatest challenge to the
United States of any other country in the world. And while he has stressed that diplomacy is always preferable, he has
defended his administration's strike-first policy against terrorists and other enemies. "The threat from Iran is, of course,
their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel," the president said last month in Cleveland.
"That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a threat, in essence, to a strong alliance. I
made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally.'' Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark
Ballesteros would not comment Sunday on reports of military planning for Iran. "The U.S. military never comments on
contingency planning," he said. Stephen Cimbala, a Pennsylvania State University professor who studies U.S. foreign policy,
said it would be no surprise that the Pentagon has contingency plans for a strike on Iran. But he suggested the hint of military
strikes is more of a public show to Iran and the public than a feasible option. "If you look at the military options, all of them
are unattractive," Cimbala said. "Either because they won't work or because they have side effects where the cure is worse
than the disease.''





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
278 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

278



**IMPACT CALCULUS**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
279 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

279

Impacts Exaggerated (1/2)

The threat of huge impacts is often exaggerated

Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the
Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management 1983
But while there is room for (perfectly legitimate) differences from person to person, it is clear that when these go too far
there also arises a significant prospect of impropriety and exaggeration. People frequently tend to inflate extreme
outcomes -- exaggerating the badness of the bad and the goodness of the good. The tendency to overestimate the
dramatic comes into play with outcome-evaluation. Our psychological capacity for imagination may run riot. We tend
to overrate the positivity of imagination-projected boons and negativity of imagination-projected hazards: anticipated
tragedies often do not prove to be all that awful. And such psychological tendencies as are involved with
familiarity, understanding, dread, etc. can all foster unrealism in appraising negativities.
The perceived value of an outcome may prove to be widely off the mark of any realistic estimate of its actual value. Our
perception of the magnitude of risks tends to be distorted by the structure of our anxieties. Hazards involving threats
that are particularly striking or dramatic -- leading to death, say, rather than mere debility, or likely to take more rather
then fewer lives -- tend to be overestimated, while risks of a commonplace, undramatic nature whose eventuations are
no less serious tend to be underestimated. ~



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
280 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

280

Impacts Exaggerated (2/2)

Low probability scenarios are often exaggerated as important high probability scenarios are
forgotten

Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the
Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management 1983

In risk assessment one is often inclined -- or even constrained to resort to subjective probabilities. These can sometimes
be checked against the objectively measurable facts, and when this is done, certain common fallacies come to light. 38 In
particular, people tend to overestimate systematically the relative probability of certain sorts of eventuations -- as for
example:
-- striking or dramatic or particularly dreaded outcomes (large gains or losses)
-- relatively rare events -- particularly those that have actually occurred in past experience in some memorable way
(the once bitten, twice shy syndrome'').
39

-- probabilistically multiplicative events (i.e., those whose eventuation involves the complex concatenation of many
circumstances)
-- chance events that have failed to occur for a long time (the MQnte Carlo Fallacy)
The first of these phenomena is particularly significant. Even in the best of circumstances, it is difficult to convince
oneself that a particularly feared disaster may be extremely unlikely. Then too there is the tendency to exaggerate the
likelihood of wished-for consummations, mocked by Adam Smith when he spoke of that majority activated by the absurd
presumption in their own good fortunes.''
4

The other side of the coin is that people tend to underestimate systematically the relative probability of
-- humdrum, undramatic (though often inherently important events)
-- relatively frequent or familiar events
-probabilistically additive events (i.e., those whose eventuation can be realized along various different routes)
The operation of such principles means, among other things, that people incline to underestimate the eventuation of high-
probability events, and to overestimate the eventuation of low-probability events.
4
'
Interesting misjudgments come to light through these data. For example, accidents were judged to cause as many deaths as
diseases, whereas diseases actually take about fifteen times as many lives. Homicides were incorrectly thought to be more
frequent than diabetes and stomach cancer. Homicides were also judged to be about as frequent as stroke, although the latter
actually claims about 11 times as many lives. The incidence of death from botulism, tornadoes, and pregnancy (including
childbirth and abortion) was also greatly over-estimated. Indeed a systematic bias emerges -- to overestimate the more
unusual and dramatic low-frequency causes of death and to underestimate the more commonplace. Any discussion or
consideration of possible disasters -- even reassuring statements by technical experts designed to establish their
improbability -- appears to have the effect of increasing their preceived likelihood by enchancing the apprehension of
their reality. This unrealism greatly hampers profitable discussion of low-probability hazards.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
281 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

281


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
282 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

282

Prob. Evaluated First (1/2)

Probability should be evaluated before magnitude

Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the
Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management 1983

A probability is a number between zero and one. Now numbers between zero and one can get to be very small indeed: As N gets bigger, 1/N will
grow very, very small. What, then, is one to do about extremely small probabilities in the rational management of risks? On this issue
there is a systemic disagreement between probabilists working in mathematics or natural science and decision theorists who work on issues
relating to human affairs. The former take the line that small numbers are small numbers and must be taken into account as such. The latter tend
to take the view that small probabilities represent extremely remote prospects and can be written off. (De minimis non
curat lex, as the old precept has it: there is no need to bother with trifles.) When something is about as probable as it is that a
thousand fair dice when tossed a thousand times will all come up sixes, then, so it is held, we can pretty well forget about it as worthy of concern.
The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in deliberations about risk in real-life
situations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is counterproductive whenever we proceed without recognizing
that, often as not, these worst possible outcomes are wildly improbable (and sometimes do not deserve to be viewed as
real possibilities at all). The crux in risk deliberations is not the issue of loss "if worst comes to worst" but the potential acceptability of this
prospect within the wider framework of the risk situation, where we may well be prepared "to take our chances," considering the possible
advantages that beckon along this route. The worst threat is certainly something to be borne in mind and taken into account, but it is
emphatically not a satisfactory index of the overall seriousness or gravity of a situation of hazard.

Any action could potentially have devastating impacts, but we dont evaluate them because of the low
probability

Stern, Fellow at CFR, 99
Jessica Stern, Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former National Security Council Member The
Ultimate Terrorists 1999 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/steult/excerpt.html

Poisons have always been seen as unacceptably cruel. Livy called poisonings of enemies "secret crimes." Cicero referred to
poisoning as "an atrocity." But why do poisons evoke such dread? This question has long puzzled political scientists and
historians. One answer is that people's perceptions of risk often do not match reality: that what we dread most is often not
what actually threatens us most. When you got up this morning, you were exposed to serious risks at nearly every stage of
your progression from bed to the office. Even lying in bed exposed you to serious hazards: 1 in 400 Americans is injured
each year while doing nothing but lying in bed or sitting in a chair--because the headboard collapses, the frame gives way, or
another such failure occurs. Your risk of suffering a lethal accident in your bathtub or shower was one in a million. Your
breakfast increased your risk of cancer, heart attack, obesity, or malnutrition, depending on what you ate. Although both
margarine and butter appear to contribute to heart disease, a new theory suggests that low-fat diets make you fat. If you
breakfasted on grains (even organic ones), you exposed yourself to dangerous toxins: plants produce their own natural
pesticides to fight off fungi and herbivores, and many of these are more harmful than synthetic pesticide residues. Your cereal
with milk may have been contaminated by mold toxins, including the deadly aflatoxin found in peanuts, corn, and milk. And
your eggs may have contained benzene, another known carcinogen. Your cup of coffee included twenty-six compounds
known to be mutagenic: if coffee were synthesized in the laboratory, the FDA would probably ban it as a cancer-causing
substance. Most people are more worried about the risks of nuclear power plants than the risks of driving to work, and more
alarmed by the prospect of terrorists with chemical weapons than by swimming in a pool. Experts tend to focus on
probabilities and outcomes, but public perception of risk seems to depend on other variables: there is little correlation
between objective risk and public dread. Examining possible reasons for this discrepancy will help us understand why the
thought of terrorists with access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons fills us with dread. People tend to exaggerate

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
283 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

283

the likelihood of events that are easy to imagine or recall. Disasters and catastrophes stay disproportionately rooted in the
public consciousness, and evoke disproportionate fear. A picture of a mushroom cloud probably stays long in viewers'
consciousness as an image of fear.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
284 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

284

Prob. Evaluated First (2/2)

Catering to minute risks based on higher magnitude creates policy paralysis, making their impacts
inevitable

Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction
to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management 1983

The stakes are high, the potential benefits enormous. (And so are the costs - for instance cancer research and, in
particular, the multi-million dollar gamble on interferon.) But there is no turning back the clock. The processes at
issue are irreversible. Only through the shrewd deployment of science and technology can we resolve the problems
that science and technology themselves have brought upon us. America seems to have backed off from its
traditional entrepreneurial spirit and become a risk-aversive, slow investing economy whose (real-resource) support
for technological and scientific innovation has been declining for some time. In our yearning for the risk-free society
we may well create a social system that makes risk-taking innovation next to impossible. The critical thing is to
have a policy that strikes a proper balance between malfunctions and missed opportunities - a balance whose
"propriety" must be geared to a realistic appraisal of the hazards and opportunities at issue. Man is a creature
condemned to live in a twilight zone of risk and opportunity. And so we are led back to Aaron Wildavski's thesis that
flight from risk is the greatest risk of all, "because a total avoidance of risks means that society will become
paralyzed, depleting its resources in preventive action, and denying future generations opportunities and
technologies needed for improving the quality of life. By all means let us calculate our risks with painstaking care,
and by all means let us manage them with prudent conservatism. But in life as in warfare there is truth in H. H.
Frost's maxim that "every mistake in war is excusable except inactivity and refusal to take risks" (though, obviously,
it is needful to discriminate between a good risk and a bad one). The price of absolute security is absolute
stultification.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
285 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

285

Prob Before Mag Ext

Probability of a scenario is evaluated before all else, regardless of the impact

Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk: A Philosophical Introduction to the
Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management 1983

The rational management of risk calls for adherence to three cardinal rules: (I) Maximize Expected Values! (II) Avoid
Catastrophes! (III) Dismiss Extremely Remote (''Unrealistic'') Possibilities! The first of these is a matter of using the
expected-value of the various alternative choices -- computed in the stardard way -- as index of their relative preferability. In
particular, that alternative whose expected value is maximal is thereby to be viewed as maxipreferable. Rule (II) is to be
applied subject to an insofar as possible condition. It can ordinarily be implemented by setting the value of a catastrophe
at -- in the context of expected-value calculation. This, of course, will fail to resolve the matter if it should happen
that every alternative leads to possible catastrophe, in which case-- that of a dilemma -- special precautions will be necessary.
(They are described on pp. 87-88.) Rule (III) calls on us to implement the idea of ''effectively zero probabilities by
setting the probability of ''extremely remote possibilities at zero. It calls on us to dismiss highly improbable
possibilities as ''unrealistic.'' Note that rules (II) and (III) enjoin us to view the choice-situation in a guise different from the actual facts. An element
of as if is involved in both cases. With (II) we are to identify a certain level of catastrophe and take the stance that a negativity whose magnitude exceeds
this level is to be seen as having value -- ~. Again, with (III) we are to identify a certain level of effective zerohood for probabilities, treating as zero
whatever probabilities fall short of this threshold value. Thus in assessing risks by way of expected-value appraisals, we are in each case not to view the
situation as it actually stands, but to replace the actual situation by its policy transform through a change of the form V--~-- orp~0. The application of all
three of these rules calls for essentially judgmental, subjective inputs. With (I) we are involved in negativity-eval~uation. With (II) we must fix on a
threshold of ''catastrophe.'' With (III) we must decide at what level of improbability effective zerohood sets in and
possibilities cease to be real. None of these evaluative resolutions at issue is dictated by the objective circumstances and imprinted in the nature of
things. They are instruments of human devising contrived for human purpose in the effective management of affairs. To begin with, note that rules (I) and
(II) can clash, as per Figure 1. Here the top alternative enjoys the greater expected value. Nevertheless, it is intuitively clear that the bottom alter native is far
preferable (and would continue to be so even if the 60C loss were increased to some other ordinary negativity.) The clear lesson is that rule (II) takes
priority over (I) in such cases where catastrophes loom. We are to ignore the ruling of a straightforward calculation of expected values and insist on valuing
catastrophes at --~, so as to avoid them at any (ordinary) cost. (Recall the discussion of the rationale of insurance on pp. 79-80 above.) Moreover rules (I)
and (III) can also clash. This is shown by those cases where an expected-value calculation rules in favor of an alternative whose probability is too small to
qualify it as a real possibility. (Recall the Vacationer's Dilemma of p. 40.) Unless we are prepared to dismiss extremely remote
possibilities as having a probability of effectively zero -- and thus not counting as real possibilities at all -- we shall
find our actions systematically stultified to a degree which we are unwilling to accept in ''real life situations. It is thus
clear that rule (III) takes priority over (I). Finally, it is clear that rules (II) and (III) can also conflict. For consider the situation
of Figure 2. Note that a refusal to see the situation in terms of a = 0 keeps the catastrophe in the picture, so As these
deliberations indicate, the three cardinal principles of risk management stand in a relation of preferential rank-order so
that: (Ill) takes precedence over (II), which in turn takes precedence over (I). We have here a sequential priority-ordering of
the several principles, which fixes an automatic process for one's overriding another in those cases where their rulings
conflict. This precedence ordering entails certain limitations to the reach of classical decision theory, which proceeds on the
basis of the unmodified and unadulterated use of expected-value appraisals. A deployment of the concepts of catastrophe-
avoidance and of effectively zero'' probabilities modifies this policy in two directions. First, catastrophe is seen to
represent an unacceptable risk, when ''the game's not worth the candle'' because the potential negative outcomes, unlikely
though their realization may be, are simply too massive for the stakes otherwise at issue. But, secondly, this principle itself
needs to be curtailed, when it becomes too conservative in its operation and leads to a stultification of action. Just this
rationale motivates the recourse to ''effectively zero'' probabilities.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
286 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

286

Systemic Impacts First

Err on the side of systemic impacts its the biggest consequence in the long term

Machan, Professor of Philosophy, 03
Tibor Machan, prof. emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University, 2003 Passion for Liberty

All in all, then, I support the principled or rights-based approach. In normal contexts, honesty is the best policy, even if at times it does not
achieve the desired good results; so is respect for every individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. All
in all, this is what will ensure the best consequencesin the long run and as a rule. Therefore, one need not be
very concerned about the most recent estimate of the consequences of banning or not banning guns,
breaking up or not breaking up Microsoft, or any other public policy, for that matter. It is enough
to know that violating the rights of individuals to bear arms is a bad idea, and that history and
analysis support our understanding of principle. To violate rights has always produced greater damage
than good, so let's not do it, even when we are terribly tempted to do so, Let's not do it precisely because to do
so would violate the fundamental requirements of human nature. It is those requirements that should be our guide, not some recent
empirical data that have no staying power (according to their very own theoretical terms). Finally, you will ask, isn't this being dogmatic? Haven't we learned not to bank too much on what we' ve
learned so far, when we also know that learning can always be improved, modified, even revised? Isn't progress in the sciences and technology proof that past knowledge always gets overthrown a
bit later? As in science and engineering, so in morality and politics: We must go with what we know but be open to change
provided that the change is warranted. Simply because some additional gun controls or regulations
might save lives (some lives, perhaps at the expense of other lives) and simply because breaking
up Microsoft might improve the satisfaction of consumers (some consumers, perhaps at the
expense of the satisfaction of other consumers) are no reasons to violate basic rights. Only if and when there are
solid, demonstrable reasons to do so should we throw out the old principles and bring on the new principles. Any such reasons would have to speak to the same
level of fundamentally and relevance as that incorporated by the theory of individual rights itself. Those defending
consequentialism, like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, have argued the opposite thesis: Unless one can prove, beyond a doubt, that violating rights in a particular instance is necessarily wrong in the
eyes of a "rational and fair man," the state may go ahead and "accept the natural outcome of dominant opinion" and violate those rights.1 Such is now the leading jurisprudence


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
287 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

287

Probability Evaluation Key

The probability of each element of an argument chain must be evaluated

Alemi, Professor of Risk Analysis, 06
Farrokh Alemi, Ph.D in Decision Analysis, Professor of Risk at George Mason University, Lecture on the
Probability of Rare Events, October 4, 2006
http://gunston.gmu.edu/healthscience/riskanalysis/ProbabilityRareEvent.asp
The concept of fault trees and reliability trees has a long history in space and nuclear industry. Several books (Krouwer,
2004) and papers describe this tool (Marx and Slonim, 2003). The first step in conducting fault trees is to identify the
sentinel adverse event that should be analyzed. Then all possible ways in which the sentinel event may occur is listed. It
is possible that several events must co-occur before the sentinel event may occur. For example, in assessing the
probability of an employee providing information to outsiders, several events must co-occur. First the employee must be
disgruntled. Second, information must be available to the employee. Third, outsiders must have contact with the
employee. Fourth, the employee must have a method of transferring the data. All of these events must co-occur before
hospital data is sold to an outside party. None of these events are sufficient to cause the sentinel event. In a fault tree,
when several events must co-occur, we use an "And" gate to show it. Each of these events can, in part, depend on other
factors. For example, there may be several ways to transfer the data: on paper, electronically by email, or electronically on
disk. Any one of these events can lead to transfer of data. In fault tree when any one of a series of events may be sufficient
by themselves to cause the next event to occur, we show this by an "Or" gate. Fault tree is a collection of events connected
to each other by "and" and "Or" gates. Each event depends on a series of other related events, providing for a complex
web of relationships. A fault tree suggests a robust work process when several events must co-occur before the
catastrophic failure occurs. The more "And" gates are in the tree structure, the more robust the work process modeled. In
contrast, it is also possible for several events by themselves to lead to catastrophic failure. The more "Or" gates in the path
to failure, the less robust the work process. The second step is to estimate probabilities for the fault tree. Since the
catastrophic failure is rare, it is difficult to asses this probability directly. Instead, the probability of various events
leading to this failure are assessed. For example, the probability of a finding a disgruntled employee can be assessed. The
probability of an employee having access to large data sets can be assessed by counting employees who have such access
during the course of their work. The probability of an employee being approached by someone to sell data can be assessed
by providing an expert data on frequency of reported crimes and asking him/her to estimate the additional unreported
rate. In short, through objective data or subjective opinions of experts various probabilities in the fault tree can be
assessed. The fault tree can then be used to assess the probability of the catastrophic and rare event using the following
formula:


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
288 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

288

AT: Rescher


Reschers theories are flawed- using predictions for data is key
Eggleston 02
Ben Eggleston January 12, 2002 Department of Philosophy University of Kansa
Practical Equilibrium: A New Approach to Moral Theory Selection
http://web.ku.edu/~utile/unpub/pe.pdf

The language of data to be accounted for recurs even more frequently in papers published in the wake of Rawlss book.
Singer writes that The reflective equilibrium conception of moral philosophy . . . lead[s] us to think of our particular moral
judgmentsas data against which moral theories are to be tested (1974, p. 517; cf. 1998, p. vi), and Nicholas Rescher writes
that our intuitions are the data . . . which the theoretician must weave into a smooth fabric and that The process is
closely analogous with the systematization of the data of various levels in natural science (1979, p. 155). Others
have offered similar characterizations.13 So the notion of accounting for the data is often regarded as providing support for
reflective equilibrium. I wish to argue, though, that the notion of accounting for the data can be seen to provide such
support only when clouded by a pair of misunderstandings, and that when these two misunderstandings are removed,
the notion of accounting for the data actually lends support to practical equilibrium. The two misunderstandings
concern what the data to be accounted for actually are, and how a moral theory accounts for whatever data it
accounts for.
First, consider what the data actually are. When it comes to our moral intuitions, we might think that our data are that acts of
certain kinds, such as acts of punishing the innocent, are never justified. But actually this overstates our data: in fact our
data are just our observations of our own intuitions, such as our observation that it seems to us that punishing the
innocent is never justified. It is a further claim, not among the data to be accounted for, that these intuitions that we are
aware of having are correct. The data do not include that certain acts are wrong; the data include only our regarding certain
acts as wrongfor this latter phenomenon, our own judgment of the matter, is all that we can really detect in any instance of
moral appraisal.14 So the first error in reflective equilibriums use of the notion of accounting for the data lies in its holding
theories responsible for accounting for things that are not actually among the data. It says that a moral theory must explain
the truth of the intuitions that we have, when actually the only data there are are that we have those intuitions.
Now at this point it may appear that I am arguing that what the notion of accounting for the data means in the case of a moral
theory is not that the theory explains the truth of the intuitions that we have, but that the theory explains the fact that we have
those intuitions. For this interpretation of accounting for the data would accommodate the interpretation of what the data
actually are that I have just been arguing for. But Imaintain that we need to make a second adjustment in order to arrive at a
sound interpretation of the notion of accounting for the data in the case of a moral theory.
Whereas the first adjustment had to do with what the data are, this one has to do with
what it means for a moral theory to account for data. What I have in mind is that we need
to say that what a moral theory is supposed to do, as far as its accounting for anything is concerned, is not to explain
our having certain intuitions, but to endorseour having those intuitions.
The reason for this adjustment is simple: moral theories differ from scientific ones in that they are not in the business
of predicting or explaining anything: they are in the
business of prescribing, or giving instructions. Normally, the instructions were interested in are those that concern
specific situations in which we might engage in some conduct or regard to the intuitions we should have

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
289 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

289

Predictions Bad - Policymaking

Ejecting low probability internal link chains is key to rational policymaking - accumulated experience proves
that appeals to the possibility of catastrophic causal chains should not influence decision-making
Hansson, Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology, 05
Sven Ove Hansson ["The Epistemology of Technological Risk," Techne: research in philosophy and Technology,
Volume 9, Number 2, Winter 2005 http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ ejournals/SPT/v9n2/hansson. html]
However, it would not be feasible to take such possibilities into account in all decisions that we make. In a sense, any
decision may have catastrophic unforeseen consequences. If far-reaching indirect effects are taken into
account, then given the unpredictable nature of actual causation almost any decision may lead to a disaster.
In order to be able to decide and act, we therefore have to disregard many of the more remote possibilities.
Cases can also easily be found in which it was an advantage that far-fetched dangers were not taken seriously. One case in
point is the false alarm on so-called polywater, an alleged polymeric form of water. In 1969, the prestigious scientific journal
Nature printed a letter that warned against producing polywater. The substance might "grow at the expense of normal water
under any conditions found in the environment," thus replacing all natural water on earth and destroying all life on this
planet. (Donahoe 1969 ) Soon afterwards, it was shown that polywater is a non-existent entity. If the warning had been
heeded, then no attempts would had been made to replicate the polywater experiments, and we might still not have known
that polywater does not exist. In cases like this, appeals to the possibility of unknown dangers may stop investigations and
thus prevent scientific and technological progress.We therefore need criteria to determine when the possibility of
unknown dangers should be taken seriously and when it can be neglected. This problem cannot be
solved with probability calculus or other exact mathematical methods. The best that we can hope for is a
set of informal criteria that can be used to support intuitive judgement. The following list of four criteria has
been proposed for this purpose. (Hansson 1996) Asymmetry of uncertainty: Possibly, a decision to build a second bridge
between Sweden and Denmark will lead through some unforeseeable causal chain to a nuclear war. Possibly, it is the other
way around so that a decision not to build such a bridge will lead to a nuclear war. We have no reason why one or the other
of these two causal chains should be more probable, or otherwise more worthy of our attention, than the other. On the other
hand, the introduction of a new species of earthworm is connected with much more uncertainty than the option not to
introduce the new species. Such asymmetry is a necessary but insufficient condition for taking the issue of unknown dangers
into serious consideration. 2. Novelty: Unknown dangers come mainly from new and untested phenomena. The emission of a
new substance into the stratosphere constitutes a qualitative novelty, whereas the construction of a new bridge does not. An
interesting example of the novelty factor can be found in particle physics. Before new and more powerful particle
accelerators have been built, physicists have sometimes feared that the new levels of energy might generate a new phase of
matter that accretes every atom of the earth. The decision to regard these and similar fears as groundless has been based on
observations showing that the earth is already under constant bombardment from outer space of particles with the same or
higher energies. (Ruthen 1993) 3. Spatial and temporal limitations: If the effects of a proposed measure are known to be
limited in space or time, then these limitations reduce the urgency of the possible unknown effects associated with the
measure. The absence of such limitations contributes to the severity of many ecological problems, such as global emissions
and the spread of chemically stable pesticides. 4. Interference with complex systems in balance: Complex systems such as
ecosystems and the atmospheric system are known to have reached some type of balance, which may be impossible to restore
after a major disturbance. Due to this irreversibility, uncontrolled interference with such systems is connected with a high
degree of uncertainty. (Arguably, the same can be said of uncontrolled interference with economic systems; this is an
argument for piecemeal rather than drastic economic reforms.) It might be argued that we do not know that these systems can
resist even minor perturbations. If causation is chaotic, then for all that we know, a minor modification of the
liturgy of the Church of England may trigger a major ecological disaster in Africa. If we assume that all
cause-effect relationships are chaotic, then the very idea of planning and taking precautions seems to
lose its meaning. However, such a world-view would leave us entirely without guidance, even in
situations when we consider ourselves well-informed. Fortunately, experience does not bear out this
pessimistic worldview. Accumulated experience and theoretical reflection strongly indicate that certain
types of influences on ecological systems can be withstood, whereas others cannot. The same applies to

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
290 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

290

technological, economic, social, and political systems, although our knowledge about their resilience
towards various disturbances has not been sufficiently systematized.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
291 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

291

Predictions Bad Background Beliefs

Risk assessment irrationally exaggerates low probability impacts. Objective risk analysis is impossible because
our decisions are always tainted by our background beliefs- vote affirmative in the face of the undeniable
impact of detention
Teuber, Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University, 1990,
Andreas Teuber"JUSTIFYING RISK," Daedalus, Volume 119 Number 4, Fall, 1990
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/paperrisk.html

Even if the practical difficulties of obtaining people's consent could be overcome, it is widely reported
that people are notoriously poor judges of risks. People's perceptions frequently fail to match up with the
actual dangers risks pose and few people have a "feel" for what a chance of dying, say a chance of one in a
million, really means. Research by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman has shown that we are regularly led
astray in our assessments of probabilities by rules of thumb. Faced with a judgment that requires even a minimal
familiarity with statistics, we frequently avoid the statistical information and rely instead on a
description or heuristic which feels less strange. 8 We tend to overemphasize low probabilities and underestimate
large ones. We have to struggle to resist the gambler's fallacy: the belief that after a series of losses the odds must favor a
win. We are also poor judges of outcomes. We appear to be more concerned to avoid a loss than to receive an
equivalent gain, and this asymmetry can be exploited in the way choices are presented.9 Retailers, for
example, know enough about our suceptibility to the way options are framed to represent a surcharge for credit card
customers as a discount to those who are willing to pay cash.10 The influence of framing on judgments about risk is
systematic and pervasive, and shows up at all levels of education. Health care professionals are no less susceptible to the
effects of framing than their patients who have less experience and lack their expertise. The following hypothetical case was
put to a group of physicians: Imagine that you have operable lung cancer and must choose between two treatments: surgery
and radiation therapy. Of 100 people having surgery, 10 die during the operation, 32 are dead after one year, and 66 after fi ve
years. Of 100 people having radiation therapy, none die during treatment, 23 are deadafter one year, and 78 after five years.
Which treatment do you prefer?11 Given these options, fifty percent of the physicians said they preferred radiation treatment.
However when the same options were presented in terms of survival rates rather than mortality rates, 84% said they would
prefer surgery. It is perhaps not completely surprising to learn that people are poor judges of probabilities, but "we want to
give [people] credit for at least knowing their own minds," as one report puts it, "when it comes to assigning values to the
outcomes of their choices."12 Apparently, very little credit is due, as experiment after experiment reveals: Imagine that the
United States is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual flu epidemic which is expected to kill 600 people, unless action is
taken. Two alternative programs to combat the disease are proposed If program A is adopted, 200 people will be saved. If
program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 will be saved and a 2/3 probability that no one will be saved When
the alternatives were posed in these terms in a test survey, 72 percent of the respondents opted for program A, only 28
percent for program B. A second group was given the same options, but re-described (re-framed) in this way: If program A is
adopted, 400 people will die; if program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability
that 600 people will die This time only 22 percent opted for the first program, while 78 percent opted for the second.13 It is
generally believed that consistency in judgments is a minimal condition of rationality. Since our
judgments about risk are apparently inconsistent, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that our attitudes
towards risk are also irrational. These findings have disturbing implications for public policy, especially
in a society like our own which relies on a democratic process. If we are irrational in our judgments
about risk, the policies we enact will reflect a similar bias. Given our untrustworthy attitudes, a consent-
based approach to legitimating risk-imposing activities can only lead to irrational public policies.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
292 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

292

Predictions Bad Irresponsibility

The production of risk enacts a system of organized irresponsibility that relies on obsolete political
ideologies. The aff challenges the current epistemology of risk- its not sufficient to respond to risk
as a purely material event.
Elliott, Foundation Director of the Centre for Critical Theory at the University of the West of England,
2002
Anthony Elliot Becks sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment, Sociology, Sociology, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2002

It is the autonomous, compulsive dynamic of advanced or reexive modernization that, according to
Beck, propels modern men and women into self-confrontation with the consequences of risk that
cannot adequately be addressed, measured, controlled or overcome, at least according to the standards of
industrial society. Modernitys blindness to the risks and dangers produced by modernization all of which happens
automatically and unreectingly, according to
Beck leads to societal self-confrontation: that is, the questioning of division between centres of political activity and the
decision-making capacity of society itself. Society, in effect, seeks to reclaim the political from its modernist relegation to
the institutional sphere, and this, says Beck, is achieved primarily through sub-political means that is, locating the politics
of risk at the heart of forms of social and cultural life. Within the horizon of the opposition between old routine and new
awareness of consequences and dangers, writes Beck, society becomes self-critical (1999b: 81). The prospects for
arresting the dark sides of industrial progress and advanced modernization through reexivity are
routinely short-circuited, according to Beck, by the insidious inuence of organized irresponsibility.
Irresponsibility, as Beck uses the term, refers to a political contradiction of the self-jeopardization and
self-endangerment of risk society. This is a contradiction between an emerging public awareness of risks produced by
and within the
social-institutional system on the one hand, and the lack of attribution of systemic risks to this system on the other. There is,
in Becks reckoning, a constant denial of the suicidal tendency of risk society the system of organized
irresponsibility which manifests itself in, say, technically orientated legal procedures designed to
satisfy rigorous causal proof of individual liability and guilt.
This self-created dead end, in which culpability is passed off on to individuals and thus collectively
denied, is maintained through political ideologies of industrial fatalism: faith in progress, dependence on
rationality and the rule of expert
opinion.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
293 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

293


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
294 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

294

Predictions Bad - Monkeys

Expert predictions are less accurate than dart throwing monkeys

Menand, Harvard Professor, 05
Louis Menand 2005 PhD Colombia and Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and
Language at Harvard University., The New Yorker, 12-05-
2005, http://www.newyorker.com/critics/con...205crbo_books1

It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlocks new book, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How
Can We Know? (Princeton; $35), that people who make prediction their businesspeople who appear as experts
on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry
roundtablesare no better than the rest of us. When theyre wrong, theyre rarely held accountable, and they
rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost
right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are
no more inclined than anyone else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just
because they made a mistake. No one is paying you for your gratuitous opinions about other people, but the
experts are being paid, and Tetlock claims that the better known and more frequently quoted they are, the less
reliable their guesses about the future are likely to be. The accuracy of an experts predictions actually has an
inverse relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of knowledge. People
who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines regularly can guess what is likely to happen
about as accurately as the specialists whom the papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it
rewards bad judgments over good ones.
Expert Political Judgment is not a work of media criticism. Tetlock is a psychologisthe teaches at Berkeleyand
his conclusions are based on a long-term study that he began twenty years ago. He picked two hundred and eighty-
four people who made their living commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends, and he started
asking them to assess the probability that various things would or would not come to pass, both in the areas of the
world in which they specialized and in areas about which they were not expert. Would there be a nonviolent end to
apartheid in South Africa? Would Gorbachev be ousted in a coup? Would the United States go to war in the Persian
Gulf? Would Canada disintegrate? (Many experts believed that it would, on the ground that Quebec would succeed
in seceding.) And so on. By the end of the study, in 2003, the experts had made 82,361 forecasts. Tetlock also asked
questions designed to determine how they reached their judgments, how they reacted when their predictions
proved to be wrong, how they evaluated new information that did not support their views, and how they assessed
the probability that rival theories and predictions were accurate.
Tetlock got a statistical handle on his task by putting most of the forecasting questions into a three possible
futures form. The respondents were asked to rate the probability of three alternative outcomes: the persistence of
the status quo, more of something (political freedom, economic growth), or less of something (repression,
recession). And he measured his experts on two dimensions: how good they were at guessing probabilities (did all
the things they said had an x per cent chance of happening happen x per cent of the time?), and how accurate they
were at predicting specific outcomes. The results were unimpressive. On the first scale, the experts performed
worse than they would have if they had simply assigned an equal probability to all three outcomesif they had
given each possible future a thirty-three-per-cent chance of occurring. Human beings who spend their lives
studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would
have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
295 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

295

Predictions Bad Decisionmaking Spillover

Refusing their method is critical to move away from this bad form of risk - rejection within the
laboratory of debate spills over to policy making
Herbeck, Prof at Boston College, 92
Dale A. Herbeck, Professor of Communication and Director of the Fulton Debating Society at Boston College, and
John P. Katsulas, Debate Coach at Boston College, "The Use and Abuse of Risk Analysis in Polcy Debate," Paper
Presented at the 78th Annual meeting of the Speech Communication Association (Chicago, IL), October 29th-
November 1st 1992, Available Online via ERIC Number ED354559, p. 10-12

It is sometimes argued that debate is a laboratory for testing argumentation. Critics of the laboratory metaphor have argued
that we have failed as scientists, for we have produced little of consequence in our lab. Perhaps our experience with
risk analysis in debate can inform our understanding of the crisis rhetoric which we confront on an
almost daily basis. The best check on such preposterous claims, it seems to us, is an appreciation of
nature of risk analysis and how it functions in argumentation. If we understand this tool, we will be well-
armed in our battle with the bogeyman of our age

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
296 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

296

AT: Monkeys

Menand bases his claims off flawed principals in Expert Political Judgement

Davies, staff for STMI Consulting, 07
Adrian Davies, 15 July 2007. St Andrews Management Institute, Book Review: Expert Politial
Judgement. http://www.samiconsulting.co.uk/4bookrev26.html

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy. This was Hamlets admission that
he was confused by complexity and had difficulty in coming to judgment. Hamlets solution was inexpert and created a new
set of political problems.
Expert Political Judgment is an attempt to identify the characteristics of individuals who have the
ability to analyse situations in depth and with accurate foresight so that their decisions are informed by
expert political judgment. The author is a psychologist but has worked for many years with a range of specialists in
different disciplines in order to distil the quintessence of expert political judgment, not only for the immediate need but
sustainable into the longer term. The main focus of the book is on forecasting outcomes of particular situations and on
identifying the specific techniques and mental attitudes which do so most successfully. Luck is recognised as a factor but is
set aside as exogenous. The quest is for the mindset and toolkit which will optimise forecasting by quantifying the
unquantifiable. For the mindset contrasts are drawn between radical sceptics, who expect nothing and meliorists who
are open to seeking improved outcomes. Another facet of mindset is Isiah Berlins contrast between hedgehogs who know
one big thing and foxes who know many little things. In the context of the book hedgehogs emerge as having fixed
views, seeing issues as black or white and supremely self-confident. By contrast foxes are open-minded, flexible and
self-critical. One key finding of the book is that foxes emerge as winners of most of the tests, yet hedgehogs are more
focussed and willing to make tough decisions. In times of increasing uncertainty it would seem that fox-like characteristics
are at a premium over those of hedgehogs in evaluation, though hedgehog confidence is needed to take action.
The book draws to a conclusion with a challenge: Are we open-minded enough to acknowledge the limits of open-
mindedness? This chapter is a critique of scenario planning which the author sees as advising only that
anything is possible. Too often those involved are over absorbed in inward looking details to build
their stories, while an outside view is needed to provide a reality check. Tetlock fails to realise that
scenario planning should be used as a means of guiding action not engendering endless debate.
Judgment seems to involve a metacognitive trade off between theory driven and imagination driven
modes of thinking. Theory offers certainty and imagination helps to cope with uncertainty. The author
sees the best long term predictor of good judgment to be a Socratic commitment by protagonists to
thinking about how they think.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
297 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

297

Predictions Good (1/3)

We should make predictions even if they arent perfect
Fuyuki Kurasawa, Associate Professor of Sociology at York University, 4 (Constellations, Vol. 11, No. 4)

When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some intellectual circles is a deep-seated
skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless,
perhaps even harmful, to strive for farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If,
contra teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if, contra scientistic futurism,
prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be
unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore, rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that
abandons itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While this argument has the
merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted
assertions about the latters total opacity and indeterminacy. Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute
certainty does not imply abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for crises
already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the work of prevention means that
we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for responses that provoke unintended or unexpected
consequences (a point to which I will return in the final section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical
contingency and of the self-limiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present generations.
The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes,
instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources
of harm to our successors.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
298 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

298

Predictions Good (2/3)

Their Menand evidence doesnt apply it doesnt say that all predictions are bad, just that predictions
without evidence are bad

Menand, Harvard Professor, 05
Louis Menand 2005 PhD Colombia and Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and American Literature and
Language at Harvard University The New Yorker, 10/5/2005, lexis

It was no news to Tetlock, therefore, that experts got beaten by formulas. But he does believe that he discovered something about why some people
make better forecasters than other people. It has to do not with what the experts believe but with the way they think. Tetlock uses Isaiah Berlin's
metaphor from Archilochus, from his essay on Tolstoy, "The Hedgehog and the Fox," to illustrate the difference. He says: Low scorers look like
hedgehogs: thinkers who "know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly
impatience with those who "do not get it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term.
High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation
and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible "ad hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are
rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess. A hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately determined by a single bottom-
line force: balance-of-power considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and the spread of free markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person
who holds a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the
"actor-dispensability thesis," according to which Soviet Communism was doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea alone, dictates
the probable outcome of events. For the hedgehog, therefore, predictions that fail are only "off on timing," or are "almost right," derailed by an unforeseeable
accident. There are always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them out. Foxes, on the other hand, don't see a single determining
explanation in history. They tend, Tetlock says, "to see the world as a shifting mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies: self-fulfilling ones in
which success breeds success, and failure, failure but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick in as people recognize that things have gone
too far." Tetlock did not find, in his sample, any significant correlation between how experts think and what their politics are. His hedgehogs were liberal as
well as conservative, and the same with his foxes. (Hedgehogs were, of course, more likely to be extreme politically, whether rightist or leftist.) He also did
not find that his foxes scored higher because they were more cautious-that their appreciation of complexity made them less likely to offer firm predictions.
Unlike hedgehogs, who actually performed worse in areas in which they specialized, foxes enjoyed a modest benefit from expertise. Hedgehogs
routinely over-predicted: twenty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs claimed were impossible or nearly impossible came to pass, versus ten per cent for
the foxes. More than thirty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs thought were sure or near-sure did not, against twenty per cent for foxes. The upside of
being a hedgehog, though, is that when you're right you can be really and spectacularly right. Great scientists, for example, are often hedgehogs. They value
parsimony, the simpler solution over the more complex. In world affairs, parsimony may be a liability-but, even there, there can be traps in the kind of
highly integrative thinking that is characteristic of foxes. Elsewhere, Tetlock has published an analysis of the political reasoning of Winston Churchill.
Churchill was not a man who let contradictory information interfere with his idees fixes. This led him to make the wrong prediction about Indian
independence, which he opposed. But it led him to be right about Hitler. He was never distracted by the contingencies that might combine to make the
elimination of Hitler unnecessary. Tetlock also has an unscientific point to make, which is that "we as a society would be better off
if participants in policy debates stated their beliefs in testable forms"-that is, as probabilities-"monitored their forecasting
performance, and honored their reputational bets." He thinks that we're suffering from our primitive attraction to deterministic, overconfident hedgehogs.
It's true that the only thing the electronic media like better than a hedgehog is two hedgehogs who don't agree. Tetlock notes, sadly, a point that Richard
Posner has made about these kinds of public intellectuals, which is that most of them are dealing in "solidarity" goods, not "credence"
goods. Their analyses and predictions are tailored to make their ideological brethren feel good-more white swans for the white-swan
camp. A prediction, in this context, is just an exclamation point added to an analysis. Liberals want to hear that whatever conservatives are up to is bound to
go badly; when the argument gets more nuanced, they change the channel. On radio and television and the editorial page, the line between expertise and
advocacy is very blurry, and pundits behave exactly the way Tetlock says they will. Bush Administration loyalists say that their predictions about postwar
Iraq were correct, just a little off on timing; pro-invasion liberals who are now trying to dissociate themselves from an adventure gone bad insist that though
they may have sounded a false alarm, they erred "in the right direction"-not really a mistake at all.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
299 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

299

Predictions Good (3/3)
The study Menand cites is out of context it just says that we need to examine the evidence behind
predictions.

Tetlock, psychologist, 05
Philip Tetlock (psychologist) 2005 Expert Political Judgement,
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7959.html)

Chapters 2 and 3 explore correspondence indicators. Drawing on the literature on judgmental accuracy, I divide the guiding hypotheses into two categories:
those rooted in radical skepticism, which equates good political judgment with good luck, and those rooted in meliorism, which maintains that the quest for
predictors of good judgment, and ways to improve ourselves, is not quixotic and there are better and worse ways of thinking that translate into better and
worse judgments. Chapter 2 introduces us to the radical skeptics and their varied reasons for embracing their counterintuitive creed. Their guiding precept
is that, although we often talk ourselves into believing we live in a predictable world, we delude ourselves: history is ultimately one damned thing after
another, a random walk with upward and downward blips but devoid of thematic continuity. Politics is no more predictable than other games of chance. On
any given spin of the roulette wheel of history, crackpots will claim vindication for superstitious schemes that posit patterns in randomness. But these
schemes will fail in cross-validation. What works today will disappoint tomorrow.34 Here is a doctrine that runs against the grain of human nature, our
shared need to believe that we live in a comprehensible world that we can master if we apply ourselves.35 Undiluted radical skepticism requires us
to believe, really believe, that when the time comes to choose among controversial policy options--to support Chinese entry
into the World Trade Organization or to bomb Baghdad or Belgrade or to build a ballistic missile defense--we could do as
well by tossing coins as by consulting experts.36 Chapter 2 presents evidence from regional forecasting exercises consistent with this debunking
perspective. It tracks the accuracy of hundreds of experts for dozens of countries on topics as disparate as transitions to democracy and capitalism, economic
growth, interstate violence, and nuclear proliferation. When we pit experts against minimalist performance benchmarks--dilettantes, dart-throwing chimps,
and assorted extrapolation algorithms--we find few signs that expertise translates into greater ability to make either "well-calibrated" or "discriminating"
forecasts. Radical skeptics welcomed these results, but they start squirming when we start finding patterns of consistency in
who got what right. Radical skepticism tells us to expect nothing (with the caveat that if we toss enough coins, expect some streakiness). But the data
revealed more consistency in forecasters' track records than could be ascribed to chance. Meliorists seize on these findings to argue that crude human-
versus-chimp comparisons mask systematic individual differences in good judgment. Although meliorists agree that skeptics go too far
in portraying good judgment as illusory, they agree on little else. Cognitive-content meliorists identify good judgment with a particular outlook but squabble
over which points of view represent movement toward or away from the truth. Cognitive-style meliorists identify good judgment not with what one thinks,
but with how one thinks. But they squabble over which styles of reasoning--quick and decisive versus balanced and thoughtful--enhance or degrade
judgment. Chapter 3 tests a multitude of meliorist hypotheses--most of which bite the dust. Who experts were--professional background, status, and so on--
made scarcely an iota of difference to accuracy. Nor did what experts thought--whether they were liberals or conservatives, realists or institutionalists,
optimists or pessimists. But the search bore fruit. How experts thought--their style of reasoning--did matter. Chapter 3 demonstrates
the usefulness of classifying experts along a rough cognitive-style continuum anchored at one end by Isaiah Berlin's
prototypical hedgehog and at the other by his prototypical fox.37 The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big
thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to "cover" new cases; the
more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Treating the
regional forecasting studies as a decathlon between rival strategies of making sense of the world, the foxes consistently edge out the hedgehogs
but enjoy their most decisive victories in long-term exercises inside their domains of expertise. Analysis of explanations for their
predictions sheds light on how foxes pulled off this cognitive-stylistic coup. The foxes' self-critical, point-counterpoint style of thinking
prevented them from building up the sorts of excessive enthusiasm for their predictions that hedgehogs, especially well-informed
ones, displayed for theirs. Foxes were more sensitive to how contradictory forces can yield stable equilibria and, as a result, "overpredicted" fewer
departures, good or bad, from the status quo. But foxes did not mindlessly predict the past. They recognized the precariousness of many equilibria and
hedged their bets by rarely ruling out anything as "impossible." These results favor meliorism over skepticism--and they favor the pro-complexity branch of
meliorism, which proclaims the adaptive superiority of the tentative, balanced modes of thinking favored by foxes,38 over the pro-simplicity branch, which
proclaims the superiority of the confident, decisive modes of thinking favored by hedgehogs.39 These results also domesticate radical skepticism, with its
wild-eyed implication that experts have nothing useful to tell us about the future beyond what we could have learned from tossing coins or inspecting goat
entrails. This tamer brand of skepticism--skeptical meliorism--still warns of the dangers of hubris, but it allows for how a self-
critical, dialectical style of reasoning can spare experts the big mistakes that hammer down the accuracy of their more
intellectually exuberant colleagues.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
300 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

300

Mag. Evaluated First

(1/3)

Nuclear war and extinction outweighs all impacts a fraction of infinity is still infinity

Schell, Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, 82
Jonathan Schell, Fate of the Earth, pp. 93-96 1982

On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may
be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people
everywhere in the world realized that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would
sooner or later face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements
preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for
mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass of "the basic power of the universe" and of a means by which man could
release that energy altered the relationship between man and the source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power,
the earth became small and the life of the human species doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has
been on the political agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the
world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At just what point the species crossed,
or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the
arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty
thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into
the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that
is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than that of any other risk and as we make our decisions we
have to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the framework of life;
extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human
purpose would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the
same footing as risk that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history.
To employ a mathematician's analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be fractional, the stake is,
humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might
lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else
will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between
the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we
have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put
an end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in
tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to
wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence
and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now post to the world and to ourselves.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
301 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

301

Mag. Evaluated First

(2/3)

National leaders dont have the Luxury of ignoring large impacts
Zeihan, IR expert for Stratfor, 08
Peter Zeihan, expert on international relations and Asian Politics, Vice President of global analysis for Stratfor
April 23, 2008
Fear is a powerful motivator, even getting results when the threat is exceedingly remote. It makes us cross at crosswalks
even when traffic is thin, pay more over time for fire insurance than our homes are worth, and shy away from snakes even
when signs clearly inform us they are not poisonous. Humans instinctively take steps to prevent negative outcomes,
oftentimes regardless of how likely or more to the point, unlikely those unpleasant outcomes are.
As with individuals, the same is true for countries. Anyone can blithely say Cuba or Serbia would not dare
ignore the will of their more powerful neighbors,or that Brazils or Egypts nuclear programs
are so inconsequential as not to impact the international balance of power. But such opinions even if they truly are
near-certainties cannot form the foundation of state power. National leaders do not have the
luxury of ignoring the plethora of coulds, mights and maybes that pepper their radar screens every day. An analyst can
dismiss a dark possibility as dubious, but a national leader cannot gamble with the lives of his
countrymen and the existence of his state. They must evaluate even improbable threats against the potential damage
to their respective national interests.
Many of the standing policies we take for granted have grown from such evaluations. While the likelihood of Israel
bombing the Aswan High Dam is rather remote, Egypt cannot afford to risk the possibility, which contributed to Cairos
burying-of-the-hatchet with Israel. Worrying about continental European countries sublimating their national differences,
uniting into a federated super state and invading the United Kingdom may seem to flirt with lunacy, but
within that lingering concern lies the root of the Anglo-American alliance. Similarly, worrying about China
using the archipelagos of Southeast Asia as a staging point for an invasion of Australia may seem ludicrous, but that fear
dominates military planning in Canberra.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
302 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

302

Mag. Evaluated First

(3/3)

Some impacts warrant extra attention.

Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher (Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh) 1983 Risk: A Philosophical Introduction
to the theory of risk evaluation, p. 67

In such situations we are dealing with hazards that are just not in the same league. Certain hazards are simply unacceptable because they
involve a relatively unacceptable threatthings may go wrong so badly that, relative to the alternatives, its just not worthwhile to
run the risk, even in the face of a favorable balance of probabilities. The rational man is not willing to trade off against one another by
juggling probabilities such outcomes as the loss of one hair and the loss of his health or his freedom. The imbalance or disparity between risks is just too
great to be restored by probablistic readjustments. They are (probablistically) incommersuable: confronted with such incomparable hazards,
we do not bother to weigh this balance of probabilities at all, but simply dismiss one alternative as involving risks that are,
in the circumstances, unacceptable.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
303 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

303

Role of Ballot = Magnitude

The ballot should prefer the advocacy that avoids the fastest and most probable internal link to extinction

Bostrom Prof at Oxford, 02
Nick Bostrom, PhD and Professor at Oxford University, March, 2002 [Journal of Evolution and Technology, vol
9] http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html

Previous sections have argued that the combined probability of the existential risks is very substantial.
Although there is still a fairly broad range of differing estimates that responsible thinkers could make, it is nonetheless
arguable that because the negative utility of an existential disaster is so enormous, the objective of
reducing existential risks should be a dominant consideration when acting out of concern for humankind
as a whole. It may be useful to adopt the following rule of thumb for moral action; we can call it Maxipok: Maximize the
probability of an okay outcome, where an okay outcome is any outcome that avoids existential disaster. At best, this is a
rule of thumb, a prima facie suggestion, rather than a principle of absolute validity, since there clearly are other moral
objectives than preventing terminal global disaster. Its usefulness consists in helping us to get our priorities
straight. Moral action is always at risk to diffuse its efficacy on feel-good projects[24] rather on serious
work that has the best chance of fixing the worst ills. The cleft between the feel-good projects and what
really has the greatest potential for good is likely to be especially great in regard to existential risk. Since
the goal is somewhat abstract and since existential risks dont currently cause suffering in any living creature[25], there is less
of a feel-good dividend to be derived from efforts that seek to reduce them. This suggests an offshoot moral project,
namely to reshape the popular moral perception so as to give more credit and social approbation to those
who devote their time and resources to benefiting humankind via global safety compared to other
philanthropies. Maxipok, a kind of satisficing rule, is different from Maximin (Choose the action that has the best worst-
case outcome.)[26]. Since we cannot completely eliminate existential risks (at any moment we could be sent into the dustbin
of cosmic history by the advancing front of a vacuum phase transition triggered in a remote galaxy a billion years ago) using
maximin in the present context has the consequence that we should choose the act that has the greatest benefits under the
assumption of impending extinction. In other words, maximin implies that we should all start partying as if there were no
tomorrow. While that option is indisputably attractive, it seems best to acknowledge that there just might be a tomorrow,
especially if we play our cards right.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
304 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

304


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
305 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

305

Extinction Evaluated First

Even a regional nuclear war would destroy all life on Earth ozone loss and UV rays prove

Gache, Science News Editor, 08
Gabriel Gache, Science News Editor for Softpedia, an online science and technology news resource 8th of April 2008
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Regional-Nuclear-War-Would-Destroy-the-World-82760.shtml

Global or not, a nuclear war would kill us all. And if nuclear weapons didn't do the job, then the Sun would. According to
recent studies, a regional global war would cause the ozone layer of the Earth to be destroyed in as little as a decade, all
living beings being at the mercy of the Sun's ultraviolet rays. Ultraviolet light has the ability to alter the human DNA, but
other organisms may be at risk as well. 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would be enough to determine substantial changes in
Earth's atmosphere. Take India and Pakistan for example; both have a nuclear arsenal of about 50 nuclear warheads bearing 15
kilotons of explosive material. In case the disagreements between the two countries reach very high levels as to make use of their entire
nuclear arsenal, global disaster is soon to follow.
"The figure of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs compares pretty accurately to the approximately 110 warheads that both states reportedly
possess between them," says professor of non-proliferation and international security in the War Studies Group at King's College, Wyn
Bowen.
Michael Mills of the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and colleagues used computer models to study how 100 Hiroshima-sized
bombs would affect the atmosphere. Michael Mills from the University of Colorado reckons that such a nuclear war in South
Asia would decay about 40 percent of the ozone layer in the middle latitudes and 70 percent in the high latitudes of the
northern hemisphere.
"The models show this magnitude of ozone loss would persist for five years, and we would see substantial losses continuing
for at least another five years," says Mills.
Mills extracted his results from computer models. Previous models were created during the 1980s, however those investigations revealed
that impact of the nuclear detonations would be much more moderate. This might be because the old models do not take into
consideration the columns of soot rising at altitudes of 80 kilometers into Earth's atmosphere, as Mills considers.
Once the soot is released into the upper atmosphere, it would block and absorb most of the solar energy, thus determining a heating of
the surrounding atmosphere, process that facilitates the reaction between nitrogen oxides and ozone. Ultraviolet rays influx, caused
by the decay of the ozone layer, would increase by 213 percent, causing DNA damage, skin cancers and cataract in most - if
not all - living beings. Alternatively, plants would suffer damage twice, as the current due to ultraviolet light.
"By adopting the Montreal Protocol in 1987, society demonstrated it was unwilling to tolerate a small percentage of ozone
loss because of serious health risks. But ozone loss from a limited nuclear exchange would be more than an order of
magnitude larger than ozone loss from the release of gases like CFCs," says co-author of the study Brian Toon. "This study is
very conservative in its estimates. It should ring alarm bells to remind us all that nuclear war can destroy our world far
faster than carbon dioxide emissions," says Dan Plesch, of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at
theSchool of Oriental and African Studies, UK, although he notes that no one knows how likely a nuclear exchange is.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
306 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

306





**PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
307 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

307

Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Avoidance

Precautionary Principle essential to avoid unquantifiable risks

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html
But serious, evident effects such as these can seldom be linked decisively to a single cause. Scientific standards of
certainty (or "proof") about cause and effect are high. These standards may never be satisfied when many different factors
are working together, producing many different results. Sometimes the period of time between particular causes and
particular results is so long, with so many intervening factors, that it is impossible to make a definitive link. Sometimes
the timing of exposure is crucial -- a trace of the wrong chemical at the wrong time in pregnancy, for example, may trigger
problems in the child's brain or endocrine system, but the child's mother might never know she was exposed.
In the real world, there is no way of knowing for sure how much healthier people might be if they did not live in the
modern chemical stew, because the chemicals are everywhere -- in babies' first bowel movement, in the blood of U.S.
teenagers and in the breastmilk of Inuit mothers. No unexposed "control" population exists. But clearly, significant
numbers of birth defects, cancers and learning disabilities are preventable.
Scientific uncertainty is a fact of life even when it comes to the most obvious environmental problems, such as the
disappearance of species, and the most potentially devastating trends, such as climate change. Scientists seldom know for
sure what will happen until it happens, and seldom have all the answers about causes until well after the fact, if ever.
Nevertheless, scientific knowledge, as incomplete as it may be, provides important clues to all of these conditions and what
to do about them.
The essence of the Precautionary Principle is that when lives and the future of the planet are at stake, people must act on
these clues and prevent as much harm as possible, despite imperfect knowledge and even ignorance.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
308 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

308

Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Fails
Risk Assessment paradigms fail

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html
Ironically, one tool that has proved highly effective in the battle against environmental regulations was one that was
meant to strengthen the enforcement of such laws: quantitative risk assessment. Risk assessment was developed in the
1970s and 1980s as a systematic way to evaluate the degree and likelihood of harmful side effects from products and
technologies. With precise, quantitative risk assessments in hand, regulators could more convincingly demonstrate the
need for action. Risk assessments would stand up in court. Risk assessments could "prove" that a product was dangerous,
would cause a certain number of deaths per million, and should be taken off the market.
Or not. Quantitative risk assessment, which became standard practice in the United States in the mid-1980s and was
institutionalized in the global trade agreements of the 1990s, turned out to be most useful in "proving" that a product or
technology was not inordinately dangerous. More precisely, risk assessments presented sets of numbers that purported to
state definitively how much harm might occur. The next question for policymakers then became: How much harm is
acceptable? Quantitative risk assessment not only provided the answers; it dictated the questions.
As quantitative risk assessment became the norm, commercial and industrial interests were increasingly able to insist
that harm must be proven "scientifically" -- in the form of a quantitative risk assessment demonstrating harm in excess of
acceptable limits -- before action was taken to stop a process or product. These exercises were often linked with cost-
benefit assessments that heavily weighted the immediate monetary costs of regulations and gave little, if any, weight to
costs to the environment or future generations.
Although risk assessments tried to account for uncertainties, those projections were necessarily subject to assumptions
and simplifications. Quantitative risk assessments usually addressed a limited number of potential harms, often missing
social, cultural or broader environmental factors. These risk assessments have consumed enormous resources in strapped
regulatory agencies and have slowed the regulatory process. They have diverted attention from questions that could be
answered: Do better alternatives exist? Can harm be prevented?


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
309 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

309

Precautionary Principle Good Risk Fails

Precautionary Principle preferable to Risk assessment

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html
Risk assessment is the prevalent tool used to justify decisions about technologies and products. Its proponents argue that
because conservative assumptions are built into these assessments, they are sufficiently precautionary.
Too often, however, risk assessment has been used to delay precautionary action: decision-makers wait to get enough
information and then attempt to "manage" rather than prevent risks. Risk assessment is not necessarily inconsistent
with the Precautionary Principle, but because it omits certain basic requirements of the decision-making process, the
current type of risk assessment is only helpful at a narrow stage of the process, when the product, technology or activity
and alternatives have been well developed and tested and a great deal of information has already been gathered about them.
Standard risk assessment, in other words, is only useful in conditions of relatively high certainty, and generally only to
help evaluate alternatives to damaging technologies.
Under the Precautionary Principle, uncertainty is also given due weight. The Precautionary Principle calls for the
examination of a wider range of harms -- including social and economic ones -- than traditional risk analysis provides. It
points to the need to examine not only single, linear risks but also complex interactions among multiple factors, and the
broadest possible range of harmful effects.
This broad, probing consideration of harm -- including the identification of uncertainty -- should begin as early as possible in
the conception of a technology and should continue through its release and use. That is, a precautionary approach should
begin before the regulatory phase of decision-making and should be built into the research agenda.
What is not consistent with the Precautionary Principle is the misleading certainty often implied by quantitative risk
assessments -- that precise numbers can be assigned to the possibility of harm or level of safety, that these numbers are
usually a sufficient basis for deciding whether the substance or technology is "safe," and that lack of numbers means there is
no reason to take action. The assumptions behind risk assessments -- what "risks" are evaluated and how comparisons are
made -- are easily manipulated by those with a stake in their outcome.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
310 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

310

Precautionary Principle Good- AT Innovation Stultification

The Precautionary Principle improves innovation

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html

Precautionary action usually means adopting safer alternatives. A broad precautionary approach will encourage the
development of better technologies. Using this approach, society will say "yes" to some technologies while it says "no" to
others. Making uncertainty explicit, considering alternatives, and increasing transparency and the responsibility of proponents
and manufacturers to demonstrate safety should lead to cleaner products and production methods. It can also mean imposing
a moratorium while further research is conducted, calling for monitoring of technologies and products already in use, and so
forth




The Precautionary Principle encourages better technologies

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html
This is not true. Precaution suggests two approaches to new technology:
Greater vigilance about possible harmful side effects of all innovations. Alternatives to harmful technologies
(such as genetic modification to reduce pesticide use) must be scrutinized as carefully as the technologies they
replace. It does not make sense to replace one set of harms with another. Brand-new technologies must receive
much greater scrutiny than they have in the past.
Redirection of research and ingenuity toward inherently safer, more harmonious, more sustainable
technologies, products, and processes.







Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
311 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

311

Precautionary Principle Good- AT Zero Risk

Precautionary Principle doesnt demand zero risk, just an attempt to reduce harm

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html
Any debate over the possibility of "zero risk" is pointless. Our real goal must be to impose far less risk and harm on the
environment and on human health than we have in the past. We must harness human ingenuity to reduce the harmful
effects of our activities.
The real question is who or what gets the benefit of the doubt. The Precautionary Principle is based on the assumption
that people have the right to know as much as possible about risks they are taking on, in exchange for what benefits, and
to make choices accordingly. With food and other products, such choices are often played out in the marketplace.
Increasingly, manufacturers are choosing to reduce risk themselves by substituting safer alternatives in response to
consumer uneasiness, the threat of liability and market pressures.
A key to making those choices is transparency -- about what products contain, and about the testing and monitoring of
those ingredients. Another is support, by government and industry, for the exploration of -- and rigorous research on --
alternatives.
Market and voluntary action is not enough, especially on issues that go beyond individual and corporate choice. It is the
responsibility of communities, governments, and international bodies to make far-reaching decisions that greatly reduce
the risks we now impose on the earth and all its inhabitants.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
312 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

312

Precautionary Principle Good- AT Cost
A2 very expensive

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html

If a cost-benefit analysis indicates that a precautionary approach is too expensive, that analysis is probably incomplete. Does
it consider long-term costs? The costs to society? The costs of harmful side effects -- monetary and nonmonetary? The costs
spread over a product's entire lifecycle -- including disposal? The pricetags of most products and developments do not reflect
their real costs. Like precautionary science, precautionary economics operates in the real world, in which connections, costs
and benefits are complex and surrounded by uncertainty -- but they cannot be ignored. Tallying the "cost" of precaution
requires making true value judgments, which can only partially be expressed by money. But in the 21st Century, precaution is
essential to a healthy, sustainable economy.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
313 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

313


Precautionary Principle Good- AT Bad Science
The Precautionary Principle encourages scientific evaluation in addition to societal action

Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. multinational
monitor September 2004, http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html

On the contrary, the Precautionary Principle calls for more and better science, especially investigations of complex
interactions over longer periods of time and development of more harmonious technologies. It calls for scientific
monitoring after the approval of products. The assertion that the principle is "anti-science" is based on any or all of the
following faulty assumptions:
1) Those who advocate precaution urge action on the basis of vague fears, regardless of whether there is scientific evidence
to support their fears.
Most statements of the Precautionary Principle say it applies when there is reason to believe serious or irreversible harm
may occur. Those reasons are based on scientific evidence of various kinds: studies, observations, precedents, experience,
professional judgment. They are based on what we know about how processes work and might be affected by a technology.
However, precautionary decisions also take into account what we know we do not know. The more we know,
scientifically, the greater will be our ability to prevent disasters based on ignorance. But we must be much more cautious
than we have been in the past about moving forward in ignorance.
2) Taking action in advance of scientific certainty undermines science.
Scientific standards of certainty are high in experimental science or for accepting or refuting a hypothesis, and well they
should be. Waiting to take action before a substance or technology is proven harmful, or even until plausible cause-and-
effect relationships can be established, may mean allowing irreversible harm to occur -- deaths, extinctions, poisoning,
and the like. Humans and the environment become the unwitting testing grounds for these technologies. This is no longer
acceptable. Moreover, science should serve society, not vice versa. Any decision to take action -- before or after scientific
proof -- is a decision of society, not science.
3) Quantitative risk assessment is more scientific than other kinds of evaluation.
Risk assessment is only one evaluation method and provides only partial answers. It does not take into account many
unknowns and seldom accounts for complex interactions -- nor does it raise our sights to better alternatives.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
314 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

314



**AT PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
315 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

315

Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (1/3)

The precautionary principle is paralyzing and destroys the possibility for any action

Sunstein professor at the University of Chicago Law School 2005,
Cass R Sunstein. prominent law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Laws of Fear: Beyond the
Precautionary Principle p3-4 2005
My larger point, the central claim of this chapter, is conceptual. The real problem with the Precautionary Principle in its
strongest forms is that it is incoherent; it purports to give guidance, but it fails to do so, because it condemns the very
steps that it requires. The regulation that the principle requires always gives rise to risks of its own and hence the
principle bans what it simultaneously mandates. I therefore aim to challenge the Precautionary Principle not because it
leads in bad directions, but because read for all its worth, it leads in no direction at all. The principle threatens to be
paralyzing, forbidding regulation, inaction, and every step in between. It provides help only if we blind ourselves to many
aspects of risk-related situations and focus on a narrow subset of what is at stake. That kind of self-blinding is what makes
the principle seem to give guidance; and I shall have a fair bit to say about why people and societies are selective in their
fears.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
316 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

316

Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (2/3)
The precautionary principle is flawed it totalizes risk assessment to the point of nihilism and
stifles calculated risk-taking that solves extinction
Scruton professor of philosophy 2004,
Roger Scruton former professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College in London, founder of the Claridge Press and
author of more than 20 published books on philosophy and theory, Summer 2004[National Interest]
The Precautionary Principle clearly presents an obstacle to innovation and experiment. But there are deeper reasons for
being troubled by it, reasons that bear on the very essence of human life and on our ability to solve practical problems.
First, there is the tendency of the principle to disaggregate risks in ways that defeat the possibility of
reasonable solutions. Risks are never single, nor do they come to us only from one direction or from one point in
time. By not taking the risk of angering my child, I take the risk of dealing, at some later stage, with a spoiled and self-
centered adolescent. All practical reasoning involves weighing risks against one another, calculating probabilities, ring-
fencing uncertainties, taking account of relative benefits and costs. This mode of reasoning is instinctive to us and has
ensured our extraordinary success as a species. There is a branch of mathematics-decision theory-devoted to formalizing
it, and there is nothing in decision theory that looks like the Precautionary Principle. For the effect of this principle is to
isolate each risk as though it were entirely independent of every other. Risks, according to the principle, come single-
wrapped, and each demands the same response-namely-Don't! If, in obeying this command, you find yourself taking
another risk, then the answer again is "Don't!" The principle is therefore logically on a par with the command given by
an American president to his senior civil servant: "Don't just do something, stand there!" But, as the president realized,
standing there is not something that civil servants are very good at. Bureaucrats have an inveterate need to be seen to be
doing something. The effect of the principle therefore is to forbid the one identified risk, while removing all others from
the equation. What this means can be vividly seen from a recent instance. A European directive, responding to the slight
risk that diseased animals might enter the human food chain, insists that all slaughter should now take place in the
presence of a qualified vet, who must inspect each animal as it arrives at the abattoir. There is no evidence that
veterinary examination in these circumstances is either necessary or (in the rare cases when infected animals come to the
abattoir) effective. Nevertheless, the Precautionary Principle delivered its usual result, and the edict was
imposed. Small abattoirs all over Britain were forced to close down, since their profit margins are as narrow as those
of the farmers whom they serve, and qualified vets require fees that reflect their qualifications. The effect of this on
husbandry,on the social and economic life of farming communities, and on the viability of small pasture farms has been
devastating, the effect on animal welfare equally so. Instead of travelling a quarter of an hour to the local abattoir, our herds must now
travel three or four hours to one of the great processing plants that enjoy the presence of a permanent vet. Farmers who have taken pride in their
animals and cared for them through two or more winters are distressed to part with them on such terms, and the animals themselves suffer
greatly. This damage done to the relation be-tween farmer and herd has further adverse effects on the landscape. Unable
to take full responsibility for the life and the death of his animals, a farmer ceases to see the pointof his unprofitable trade.
The small pasture farms that created the landscape of England are now rapidly disappearing, to be replaced by faceless
agro-businesses or equestrian leisure centers. This damages our landscape, and in doing so damages our sense of
nationhood, of which the landscape has been the most potent symbol. As if those long-term costs were not bad enough, we have also had to
endure the short-term cost of hoof-and-mouth disease, which in the past would usually be contained in the locality where it broke out. In its
latest occurrence, the disease was immediately carried all over the country by animals on their way to some distant abattoir. The result was
the temporary, but total, ruination of our livestock farming. Now, a responsible politician would have taken into account, not only
the small risk addressed by the directive, but also the huge risks posed to the farming community by the destruction of
local abattoirs, the risks posed to animals by long journeys, the benefits of localized food production and local markets for
meat, and so on. And he would have a motive for considering all those things, namely, his desire to be re-elected, when
the consequences of his decision had been felt. As a rational being, he [or she] would recognize that risks do not come in
atomic particles, but are parts of complex organisms, shaped by the flow of events. And he would know in his heart that there is
no more risky practice than that of disaggregating risks, so as one by one to forbid them. Even bureaucrats, in their own private lives, will take the same
line. They too are rational beings and know that risks must constantly be taken and constantly weighed against each other. However, when a bureaucrat
legislates for others and suffers no cost should he get things wrong, he will inevitably look for a single and specific problem and seize on a single and
absolute principle in order to solve it. The result is the Precautionary Principle and all the follies that are now issuing from the unconscionable use of
it. This suggests another and deeper irrationality in the principle. It is right that legislators should take risks into account,
but not that they should automatically forbid them, even when they can make a show of isolating them from all other
relevant factors. For there is an even greater risk attached to the habit of avoiding risks-namely, that we will produce a

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
317 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

317

society that has no ability to survive a real emergency when risk-taking is the only recourse. It is not absurd to think
that this is a real danger. How many a soporific Empire, secure in its long-standing abundance, has been swept away
by barbarian hordes, simply because the basileus or caliph had spent his life in risk-free palaces? History is replete with
warnings against the habit of heeding every warning. Yet this is the habit that the Precautionary Principle furthers. By
laying an absolute edict against risk, it is courting the greatest risk of all, namely, that we shall face our next collective
emergency without the only thing that would enable us to survive it.
Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (3/3)

The Precautionary principle causes complete stultification, everything has some risk of an impact

Hathcock, Council for Responsible Nutrition, 00
J.N. Hathcock, (2000). The precautionary principleAn Impossible burden of proof for new
products. AgBioForum, 3(4), 255-258
The zero-risk impetus of the precautionary principle fails to recognize that although science can provide a high level
of confidence, it can never provide certainty. Absolute proof of safety is not achievable because it would require the
proof of a negative, a proof that something (risk) does not exist. The precautionary principle always tells us not to
proceed because there is some threat of harm that cannot be conclusively ruled out. Thus, "the precautionary
principle will block the development of any technology if there is the slightest theoretical possibility of harm." (Holm
& Harris, 1999, p. 398). With a separate precautionary principle as a component of risk management, such an assertion by
regulatory decision-makers could completely negate the role of science in food safety decisions.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
318 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

318

Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (1/3)
The precautionary principle stifles innovation and essential technologies

Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 01
Dr. Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy at
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, June,2001 http://www.policyreview.org/jun01/miller print.html
In both the United States and Europe, public health and environmental regulations usually require a risk assessment to
determine the extent of potential hazards and of exposure to them, followed by judgments about how to regulate. The
precautionary principle can distort this process by introducing a systematic bias into decision making. Regulators face an
asymmetrical incentive structure in which they are compelled to address the potential harms from new products, but are
free to discount the hidden risk-reducing properties of unused or underused ones. The result is a lopsided process that is
inherently biased against change and therefore against innovation. To see why, one must understand that there are two
basic kinds of mistaken decisions that a regulator can make: First, a harmful product can be approved for marketing
called a Type I error in the parlance of risk analysis. Second, a useful product can be rejected or delayed, can fail to achieve
approval at all, or can be inappropriately withdrawn from the market a Type II error. In other words, a regulator
commits a Type I error by permitting something harmful to happen and a Type II error by preventing something
beneficial from becoming available. Both situations have negative consequences for the public, but the outcomes for the
regulator are very different. Examples of this Type I-Type II error dichotomy in both the U.S. and Europe abound, but it is
perhaps illustrated most clearly in the FDAs approval process for new drugs. A classic example is the FDAs approval in 1976
of the swine flu vaccine generally perceived as a Type I error because while the vaccine was effective at preventing
influenza, it had a major side effect that was unknown at the time of approval: A small number of patients suffered
temporary paralysis from Guillain-Barr Syndrome. This kind of mistake is highly visible and has immediate consequences:
The media pounce and the public and Congress are roused, and Congress takes up the matter. Both the developers of the
product and the regulators who allowed it to be marketed are excoriated and punished in such modern-day pillories as
congressional hearings, television newsmagazines, and newspaper editorials. Because a regulatory officials career might
be damaged irreparably by his [or her] good-faith but mistaken approval of a high-profile product, decisions are often
made defensively in other words, above all to avoid Type I errors. Former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt aptly
summarized the regulators dilemma: In all our FDA history, we are unable to find a single instance where a Congressional
committee investigated the failure of FDA to approve a new drug. But, the times when hearings have been held to criticize
our approval of a new drug have been so frequent that we have not been able to count them. The message to FDA staff
could not be clearer. Whenever a controversy over a new drug is resolved by approval of the drug, the agency and the
individuals involved likely will be investigated. Whenever such a drug is disapproved, no inquiry will be
made. The Congressional pressure for negative action is, therefore, intense. And it seems to be ever increasing. Type II
errors in the form of excessive governmental requirements and unreasonable decisions can cause a new product to be
disapproved, in Schmidts phrase, or to have its approval delayed. Unnecessary or capricious delays are anathema to
innovators, and they lessen competition and inflate the ultimate price of the product. Consider the FDAs precipitate response to
the 1999 death of a patient in a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy trial for a genetic disease. The cause of the incident had not been identified and
the product class (a preparation of the needed gene, encased in an enfeebled adenovirus that would then be administered to the patient) had been used
in a large number of patients, with no fatalities and serious side effects in only a small percentage of patients. But given the high profile of the incident,
regulators acted disproportionately. They not only stopped the trial in which the fatality occurred and all the other gene-therapy studies at the same
university, but also halted similar studies at other universities, as well as experiments using adenovirus being conducted by the drug company Schering-
Plough one for the treatment of liver cancer, the other for colorectal cancer that had metastasized to the liver. By these actions, and by publicly
excoriating and humiliating the researchers involved (and halting experiments of theirs that did not even involve adenovirus), the FDA cast a pall over the
entire field of gene therapy, setting it back perhaps as much as a decade. Although they can dramatically compromise public
health, Type II errors caused by a regulators bad judgment, timidity, or anxiety seldom gain public attention. It may be only
the employees of the company that makes the product and a few stock market analysts and investors who are knowledgeable about unnecessary delays.
And if the regulators mistake precipitates a corporate decision to abandon the product, cause and effect are seldom connected in the public mind.
Naturally, the companies themselves are loath to complain publicly about a mistaken FDA judgment, because the agency has so much discretionary
control over their ability to test and market products. As a consequence, there may be no direct evidence of, or publicity about, the lost societal benefits,
to say nothing of the culpability of regulatory officials. Exceptions exist, of course. A few activists, such as the AIDS advocacy groups that closely monitor
the FDA, scrutinize agency review of certain products and aggressively publicize Type II errors. In addition, congressional oversight should provide a check
on regulators performance, but as noted above by former FDA Commissioner Schmidt, only rarely does oversight focus on their Type II errors. Type I
errors make for more dramatic hearings, after all, including injured patients and their family members. And even when such mistakes are exposed,
regulators frequently defend Type II errors as erring on the side of caution in effect, invoking the precautionary principle as they did in the wake of

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
319 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

319

the University of Pennsylvania gene therapy case. Too often this euphemism is accepted uncritically by legislators, the media, and the public, and our
system of pharmaceutical oversight becomes progressively less responsive to the public interest. The FDA is not unique in this regard, of course. All
regulatory agencies are subject to the same sorts of social and political pressures that cause them to be castigated when dangerous products accidentally
make it to market (even if, as is often the case, those products produce net benefits) but to escape blame when they keep beneficial products out of the
hands of consumers.Adding the precautionary principles bias against new products into the public policy mix further
encourages regulators to commit Type II errors in their frenzy to avoid Type I errors. This is hardly conducive to
enhancing overall public safety.
Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (2/3)
Innovation key to life saving medical tech
Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 01
Dr. Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy at
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, June,2001 http://www.policyreview.org/jun01/miller print.html
Activists have since extended their antichlorine campaign to so-called endocrine disrupters, or modulators, asserting
that certain primarily man-made chemicals mimic or interfere with human hormones (especially estrogens) in the body and
thereby cause a range of abnormalities and diseases related to the endocrine system. The American Council on Science and
Health has explored the endocrine disrupter hypothesis and found that while high doses of certain environmental
contaminants produce toxic effects in laboratory test animals in some cases involving the endocrine system humans
actual exposure to these suspected endocrine modulators is many orders of magnitude lower. It is well documented that
while a chemical administered at high doses may cause cancer in certain laboratory animals, it does not necessarily cause
cancer in humans both because of different susceptibilities and because humans are subjected to far lower exposures to
synthetic environmental chemicals. No consistent, convincing association has been demonstrated between real-world
exposures to synthetic chemicals in the environment and increased cancer in hormonally sensitive human tissues.
Moreover, humans are routinely exposed through their diet to many estrogenic substances (substances having an effect
similar to that of the human hormone estrogen) found in many plants. Dietary exposures to these plant estrogens, or
phytoestrogens, are far greater than exposures to supposed synthetic endocrine modulators, and no adverse health effects
have been associated with the overwhelming majority of these dietary exposures. Furthermore, there is currently a trend
toward lower concentrations of many contaminants in air, water, and soil including several that are suspected of being
endocrine disrupters. Some of the key research findings that stimulated the endocrine disrupter hypothesis originally have
been retracted or are not reproducible. The available human epidemiological data do not show anyconsistent, convincing
evidence of negative health effects related to industrial chemicals that are suspected of disrupting the endocrine system. In
spite of that, activists and many government regulators continue to invoke the need for precautionary (over-)
regulation of various products, and even outright bans. Antichlorine campaigners more recently have turned their attacks
to phthalates, liquid organic compounds added to certain plastics to make them softer. These soft plastics are used for
important medical devices, particularly fluid containers, blood bags, tubing, and gloves; childrens toyssuch as teething
rings and rattles; and household and industrial items such as wire coating and flooring. Waving the banner of the
precautionary principle, activists claim that phthalates might have numerous adverse health effects even in the face of
significant scientific evidence to the contrary. Governments have taken these unsupported claims seriously, and several
formal and informal bans have been implemented around the world. As a result, consumers have been denied product
choices, and doctors and their patients deprived of life-saving tools.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
320 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

320

Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (3/3)

The Precautionary Principle forces society away from technological advancement

Hathcock, Council for Responsible Nutrition, 00
J.N. Hathcock, (2000). The precautionary principleAn Impossible burden of proof for new
products. AgBioForum, 3(4), 255-258

The problem with the precautionary principle is two-fold, one logical and the other perceptual. First, the logical fault
the precautionary principle was originally developed to provide risk managers with a tool for decision-making on
environmental threats from processes or substances that had not undergone safety evaluation or regulatory approval. The
precautionary principle was not defined or developed for application to the intentional components of foods that require or
depend on a conclusion of safety. Application of this principle could create an impossible burden of proof for new food
products or ingredients. Second, the perceptual faultthe term "precautionary principle" is seductively attractive
because it sounds like something that everyone should want and no one could oppose.
Upon initial consideration, it might seem that the only alternative to precaution is recklessness but, in fact, excessive
precaution leads to paralysis of actions resulting from unjustified fear. In many cases, the slight but non-zero risk
associated with a product or process is far safer than the alternative of doing nothing. Excellent examples include the
outbreak of cholera resulting from fear of chlorinated water (Anderson, 1991) and the reluctance to permit food
fortification with folic acid to reduce the incidence of specific birth defects for fear of masking vitamin B-12 deficiency
(United States Food and Drug Administration [US FDA], 1996).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
321 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

321

Precautionary Principle Bad- Pandemic
The Precautionary principle enables mass pandemics
Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 01
Dr. Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director of Food Safety Policy at
the Competitive Enterprise Institute, June, 2001 http://www.policyreview.org/jun01/miller print.html
The danger in the precautionary principle is that it distracts consumers and policymakers from known, significant threats
to human health and diverts limited public health resources from those genuine and far greater risks. Consider, for
example, the environmental movements campaign to rid society of chlorinated compounds. By the late 1980s,
environmental activists were attempting to convince water authorities around the world of the possibility that
carcinogenic byproducts from chlorination of drinking water posed a potential cancer risk. Peruvian officials, caught in a
budget crisis,used this supposed threat to public health as a justification to stop chlorinating much of the countrys
drinking water. That decision contributed to the acceleration and spread of Latin Americas 1991-96 cholera epidemic,
which afflicted more than 1.3 million people and killed at least 11,000.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
322 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

322

Precautionary Principle Bad- Militarism

The precautionary principle is used to legitimize military interventionism

Sunstein professor at the University of Chicago Law School 2005,
Cass R Sunstein. prominent law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Laws of Fear: Beyond the
Precautionary Principle p3-4 2005
My point of departure is the Precautionary Principle, which is a focal point for thinking about health, safety, and the
environment throughout Europe. In fact the Precautionary Principle is receiving increasing worldwide attention, having
become the basis for countless international debates about how to think about risk, health, and the environment. The
principle has even entered into debates about how to handle terrorism, about preemptive war, and about the
relationship between liberty and security. In defending the 2003 war in Iraq, President George W Bush invoked a kind
of Precautionary Principle, arguing that action was justified in the face of uncertainty. If we wait for threats to fully
materialize, we will have waited too long. He also said, I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal with
those threats before they become imminent. Its too late if they become imminent. What is especially noteworthy is that this
way of thinking is essentially the same as that of environmentalists concerned about global warming, genetic modification of
food, and pesticides. For these problems, it is commonly argued that regulation, rather than inaction, is the appropriate course
in the face of doubt.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
323 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

323


**UTIL**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
324 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

324

Util O/W Rights

Utilitarianism precludes any claim of moral rights rights not quantifiable.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pgs 121-122.

In spite of this, Bentham's clear apprehension of utilitarianism's commitment to rejecting the view that there are certain basic
natural human moral rights that hold of human beings as human beings, very many utilitarians today seek to reconcile their
utilitarianism with theories of human moral rights, with theories of natural moral rights of persons of the kinds set out in the
UN Declarations, according to which we are claimed to possess various basic, fundamental moral rights simply by virtue of
being human beings, or human persons, and not by virtue of the utility of a belief in and action on the basis of respect for
such rights. Utilitarianism denies, and is committed to denying, that there are natural moral rights that hold of persons as
persons, of human beings qua human beings. If its ethic is to be expressed in the language of moral rights, it might be said to
hold that it is the greatest good or the greatest /pleasure that has a moral right to exist, that individual persons and animals
have no moral right to a specific share in or of the greatest good, I their roles being those of being instruments for achieving
or vehicles for bringing into being and sustaining the greatest good, they having a moral right to contribute to the common
good as vehicles or instruments thereof. Of course, strictly speaking, an abstraction such as the greatest good cannot in any
literal sense of 'moral right,' possess moral rights, whilst the rights individuals may possess as vehicles or instruments of the
greatest good would be a mixed bunch, including such rights as the rights to live or to be killed, to be free or to be
constrained, to be helped or to be harmed or used-the rights varying from person to person, situation to situation, from time to
lime. Thus, if the greatest good could be realized by promoting the pleasure of only one or other of two distinct groups of one
hundred persons, then, in terms of utilitarianism, it would morally be indifferent which group was chosen, and no member
of either group would have a moral right to the pleasure. Similarly, if, in a war, the greatest good could be achieved only be
sending a particular platoon on a suicide mission, the officer in charge would have the moral right to order the platoon to go
on the mission, and the members of the platoon would have the moral right to be killed for the sake of the greatest good. This
is a very different way of thinking about moral rights from that in terms of there being certain basic human moral rights.


No legitimate reason to include rights discussion under util f/w
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pg 124.

A utilitarian might seek to accommodate talk about human moral rights within the utilitarian framework by arguing that there
are good utilitarian reasons for attributing human rights to persons who do not possess moral rights, just as there may be good
utilitarian reasons for ascribing responsibility to persons who are not morally responsible for their actions. This might be
urged in terms of act-utilitarianism as a tactical move for maximizing good. Alternatively, it could be developed as an
element of a rule-utilitarianism. Clearly it would be difficult to find plausible act-utilitarian reasons for propagating
such a falsehood. On the other hand, whilst a rule-utilitarianism that incorporated such a human moral rights component
would normatively be more attractive than many versions of rule-utilitarianism, it would remain exposed to the basic
criticisms of rule-utilitarianism set out by JJ. C. Smart, myself, and others.'

Utilitarianism is the only calculus that takes into account human response
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.735, professor of law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law
Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)

Because evolutionary utilitarianism is concerned with human survival and depends on human response, its
goal is necessarily fulfillment of human needs and wants. Utilitarian choices are made by existing
humans. The decisions of every human are derived from the experience, and reflect the desires, of that
human. Humans may be concerned with the needs and wants of animals or of future generations, but that
concern is inescapably a product of existing human needs and wants.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
325 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

325

Util Good K2 Policymaking

Utilitarianism key to policy making
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.731-2, professor of law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law
Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)

Evolutionary progression toward majoritarian decision-making follows from the utilitarian function of social organization to
enhance human need/want fulli1lment. Because the need/want preference of community members are best
known to them, resource allocations and behavior constraints that significantly reflect their in- put best
implement those preferences. The need/want fulfillment of such members expands with their approval of
community decision-making institutions. Such approval lowers the costs of dissenter disruption while
increasing psychological security and productive efficiency. The utilitarian enhanced-fulfillment goal is
most effectively implemented by communities that optimize (not maximize) individual participation in
policy formulation. Optimal participation involves the selection of capable officials who make independent community
fulfillment decisions but remain subject to effective community supervision. Self-constrained majoritarianism thus appears to
be the evolving political counterpart of utilitarianism, a continuity suggested by the progression of western nations from
autocracy toward representative democracy, the enhanced need/want fulfillment that has accompanied the progression, and
the inability of totalitarian governments to match that fulfillment.


Policymakers should adapt utilitarian calculus applicable throughout society.

Goodin90 [RobertE. Goodin The Utilitarian Response. Ed p. 140-1
http://books.google.com/books?id=l3ZBwjK_1_QC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=%22That,+I+submit,+is+a+fallacy%22+go
odin&source=bl&ots=9hUQGnLTzV&sig=URHUw3uamFPyVmKwTyG1onBQvZI&hl=en&ei=zKxmSsfVMpCEtgfLvP3y
Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1]

The distinction I shall here propose works along a dimension orthogonal to that one. Instead of differentiating utilitarianisms
on the basis of what they are used to choose, I suggest doing so on the basis of who is supposed to use the utilirarian calculus
to make choices, Implicitly, contemporary discussions of varieties of utilitatianism are all standardly addresses, first and
foremost, to individuals acting in their personal capacities and making choices which, while they may affect others as well,
principally affect the choosers own lives, Implicitly, public officials choices of general social policy. A different menu of
options in some respects greater, in others, less, but in any case different- is available to public and private users. That, I
submit, is a fallacy. It does not matter who is using the utilitarian calculus, in what circumstances and for what purposes.
Using the felicific calculus for micro-level purposes of guiding individuals choices of personal conduct is altogether different
from using it for macro-level purposes of guiding public officials shoices of general social policy. A different menu of
options in some respects greater, in others, less, but in any case different is available to public and private choosers.
Those differences are such as to neutralize in the public sphere, most of the objections standardly lodged against
utilitarianism in the private sphere. True through such complaints may be as applied to utilitarianism as a standard of personal
conduct, they are irrelevant (or anyway much less problematic) as applied to utilitarianism as a standard of public policy. Or
so I shall argue.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
326 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

326

Util Good - K2 Determine Rights

Utilitarian calculus is the only way to determine rights relative importance.
Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg 199.

Before turning to possible " deeper" difficulties, let me make just one point favorable to the utilitarian view, that it tells us, in
principle, how to find out what are a person's rights, and how stringent they are, relative to each other, which is much more
than can be said of most other theories, unless reliance on intuitions is supposed to be a definite way of telling what a person's
rights are. How does one do this, on the utilitarian theory? The idea, of course, is that we have to determine whether it would
maximize long-range expectable utility to include recognition of certain rights in the moral code of a society, or to include a
certain right with a certain degree of stringency as compared with other rights. (For instance, it might be optimistic to include
a right to life with more stringency than a right to liberty and this with more stringency than the right to pursue happiness.)
Suppose, for instance, one wants to know what should be the scope of the " right to life." Then it would be proper to inquire
whether the utility-maximizing moral system would require people to retrain from taking the life of other adults, more
positively to support life by providing adequate medical care, to abstain from life-termination for seriously defective infants
or to refrain from abortion, to require abstaining from assisting a person with terminal illness in ending his own life if he
requests it, to refrain from assisting in the discharge of a sentence of capital punishment, or to refrain from killing combatants
in war time and so on. If one wants to know whether the right to life is stronger than the right of free speech on political
subjects, it is proper to inquire whether the utility maximizing moral code would prefer free speech to the cost of lives (and in
what circumstances).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
327 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

327

Util Good Best Interest

Utilitarianism necessitates public policy that requires that leaders take the action which is in the
best interest of people
Shaw Philosophy Professor 1999 (William H. Shaw, 1999, Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy at SJSU,
contemporary ethics: taking account of utilitarianism p 171-2)
Utilitarianism ties right and wrong to the promotion of well-being, but it is not only n personal ethic or a guide to individual
conduct. lt is also a "public philosophy" - that is, a normative basis for public policy and the structuring of our social, legal,
and political institutions. Indeed, it was just this aspect of utilitarianism that primarily engaged Bentham, john Stuart Mill, his
father James, and their friends and votaries. For them utilitarianism was, first and foremost, a social and political philosophy
and only secondarily a private or personal moral code. In particular, they saw utilitarianism as providing the yardstick by
which to measure, assess, and, where necessary, reform government social and economic policy and the judicial institutions
of their day. In the public realm, utilitarianism is especially compelling. Because of its consequentialist
character, a utilitarian approach to public policy requires officials to base their actions, procedures, and
programs on the most accurate and detailed understanding they can obtain of the circum- stances in
which they are operating and the likely results of the alternatives open to them. Realism and empiricism are
the hallmarks of a utilitarian orientation, not customary practice, unverified abstractions, or wishful Promotion of the well
being of all seems to be the appropriate, indeed the only sensible, touchstone for assessing public policies and institutions,
and the standard objections to utilitarianism as a personal morality carry little or no weight against it when
viewed as a public philosophy. Consider, for instance, the criticisms that utilitarianism is too impersonal and ignores
one's individual attachments and personal commitments, that it is coldly calculating and concerned only with maximizing,
that it demands too much of moral agents and that it permits one to violate certain basic moral restraints on the treatment of
others. The previous two chapters addressed sorne of these criticisms; others will be dealt with in Chapter 8. The point here,
though, is that far from undermining utilitarianism as a public philosophy, these criticisms highlight its
strengths. We want public officials to be neutral, impersonal. and detached and to proceed with their
eyes firmly on the effects of the policies they pursue and the institutions that their decisions shape.
Policy making requires public officials to address general issues, typical conditions. and common
circum- stances. Inevitably, they must do this through general rules, not on a case by case basis. As explained later in this
chapter, this fact precludes public officials from violating the rights of individuals as a matter of policy.
Moreover, by organizing the efforts of countless individuals and compelling each of us to play our part in collective
endeavors to enhance welfare, public officials can make it less likely that utilitarianism will demand too much of any one
individual because others are doing too little. Utilitarians will seek to direct and coordinate people's actions
through effective public policy and to reshape, in utility-enhancing ways, the institutions that structure
the choices people face. By doing so, utilitarians can usually accomplish more good than they can
through isolated individual action, however dedicated and well intentioned. For this reason, they will strive to
Easter institutions that false over from individuals much of the task of promoting the general welfare of society. General
welfare is a broad goal, of course, and sensible policies and institutions will typically focus on more
specific desiderata - such as promoting productivity, increasing individual freedom and opportunity,
improving peoples physical health, guaranteeing their personal security, and so on that contribute
significantly to people's well-being. Implementing even there goals can prove difficult. Furthermore, many of the
problems facing society have no simple answers because they are tangled up with contested issues of fact and controversial
questions of psychology, sociology, and economics. To the extent that utilitarians disagree among themselves over these
matters, their policy recommendations will diverge. Nevertheless, by clarifying what is at stake and continually orienting
discussion toward the promotion of well-being, a. utilitarian approach provides the necessary framework for addressing
questions of institutional design and for fashioning effective public policy. The present chapter explicates the utilitarian
approach to three matters that have long engaged social and political philosophers and that concern.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
328 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

328

Util Good Concrete Decisionmaking

Only Utilitarianism makes justifications based on the end result rather then ambiguous language
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.758-9, professor of law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law
Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)

Disregarding the significance of evolutionary survival, nonutilitarian intuitionists deny that utilitarianism provides a "moral"
basis for choice between competing need/want fulfillments. They seek instead to identify the intuitive "preexisting rights
that must, they insist, underlie such choice.' But they disclose no nonrnystical. source of the rights,*' which are, in fact,
derived from the search for increased per capita need/want fulfillment. Although frequently accorded a transcendental
immutability, rights identify the resource and behavior allocations that are perceived by the community as enhancing such
fulfillment. Indeed, revelation of various a priori rights or moral standards is often accompanied by
disparagement of other such rights or standards as crypto-nti1itarian. A priori rights divorced from
need/want fulfillment depend on the magic power of language. When not determined by social
consequences, the morality of behavior tends to be resolved by definition of the words used to
characterize the behavior. Necessarily ambiguous generalizations, evolved to describe and correlate
heterogeneous events, acquire a controlling normative role. Definition, of course, reflects human experience. But
the equivocal significance of that experience may be replaced with the illusory security of fixed meaning. Ethical
connotations are then drawn not from the underlying empirical lessons that provide a context for meaning, but from inflexible
linguistic "principles and their emotional overtones. Derivation of meaning from the social purposes that engender the
terminology leads to a utilitarian appraisal of need] want fulfillment. The preexisting rights of nonutilitarian
morality are usually identified as components of "liberty," "equality, and autonomy,"' labels that
suggest a concern with individual need/want fulfillment and its social constraints. Liberty is perceived as
freedom for behavior that improves the quality of existence, such as speech, religion, and other "civil
rights activity; equality as rejection of disparate individual worth and "discriminatory" treatment;
autonomy as the individual choice implied by liberty and equality.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
329 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

329

Util Good Prevents Nuke War

Utilitarianism prevents nuclear war
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.758, professor of law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law
Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)

Without effective reciprocity, self-defense is the only survival remedy. Passive resistance to a Hitler has survival costs that
are acceptable to few communities. Rejection of those costs is perhaps being accommodated with the intolerable survival
costs of nuclear warfare by payment of more immediate nuclear-deterrence costs. Negotiations to reduce the nuclear-
deterrence costs confront the participants with a predicament like the "prisone1s dilemma"' if nuclear weapons can escape
detection: although both participants would benefit from a reduction, each is impelled to increase its nuclear weapons as
protection against an undetected increase by the other. But each may also be impelled to refrain from their use. If that
accommodation fails, so may the evolutionary process. While the accommodation holds, nonnuclear self defense
re- mains the survival remedy pending a reciprocity solution. The survival costs of nonnuclear warfare
of course continue to be high, but when the survival costs of capitulation are perceived as exceeding
them, compensation for combatants commensurate with risk would provide a kind of market
accommodation for those induced thereby to volunteer and would reduce the disproportionate wartime-
con -scription assessment.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
330 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

330

Util Inevitable

Utilitarianism inevitable
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.727, professor of law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law
Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)

utilitarianism reconciles autonomy and reciprocity, surmounts the strident intuitionist attack, and exposes the utilitarian
underpinning of a priori rights." In the context of the information provided by biology, anthropology, economics, and other
disciplines, a functional description of evolutionary utilitarianism identities enhanced per capita need/want
fulfillment as the long-term utilitarian-majoritarian goal, illuminates the critical relationship of self interest to that
goal, and discloses the trial-and-error process of accommodation and priority assignment that implements it. The
description confirms that process as arbiter of the tension between individual welfare and group welfare
(i.e., between autonomy and reciprocity)* and suggests a utilitarian imperative: that utilitarianism is
unavoidable, that morality rests ultimately on utilitarian self interest, that in the final analysis all of us
are personal utilitarians and most of us are social utilitarians.


Utilitarianism is inevitable - people are inherently utilitarians

Gino et al 2008 [Francesca Gino Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Don
Moore Tepper Business School, Carnegie Mellon University, Max H. Bozman Harvard Business School, Harvard
University No harm, no foul: The outcome bias in ethical judgments http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-080.pdf]

A home seller neglects to inform the buyer about the homes occasional problems with
flooding in the basement: The seller intentionally omits it from the houses legally required
disclosure document, and fails to reveal it in the negotiation. A few months after the closing, the
basement is flooded and destroyed, and the buyer spends $20,000 in repairs. Most people would
agree that the sellers unethical behavior deserves to be punished. Now consider the same
behavior on the part of a second seller, except that it is followed by a long drought, so the buyer
never faces a flooded basement. Both sellers were similarly unethical, yet their behavior
produced different results. In this paper, we seek to answer the question: Do people judge the
ethicality of the two sellers differently, despite the fact that their behavior was the same? And if
so, under what conditions are peoples judgments of ethicality influenced by outcome
information? Past research has shown some of the ways that people tend to take outcome information into
account in a manner that is not logically justified (Baron & Hershey, 1988; Allison, Mackie,
& Messick, 1996). Baron and Hershey (1988) labeled this tendency as the outcome bias.
Extending prior work on the effect of outcome severity on judgments (Berg-Cross, 1975;
Lipshitz, 1989; Mitchell & Kalb, 1981; Stokes & Leary, 1984), their research found that people
judge the wisdom and competence of decision makers based on the nature of the outcomes they
obtain. For instance, in one study participants were presented with a hypothetical scenario of a
surgeon deciding whether or not to perform a risky operation (Baron & Hershey, 1988). The
surgeon knew the probability of success. After reading about identical decision processes,
participants learned either that the patient lived or died, and were asked to rate the quality of the
No Foul 4 surgeons decision to operate. When the patient died, participants decided it was a mistake to
have operated in the first place.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
331 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

331





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
332 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

332

Survival Instinct Good Extinction

Multiple Inevitable Scenarios for extinction make it necessary to act on our survival instinct
Mathney, Consultant to the Center for Biosecurity, 07
Jason G. Mathney, 07 (MBA is a Consultant to the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC. Sommer Scholar s at Johns Hopkins' )
http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/se/util/display_mod.cfm?MODULE=/se-server/mod/modules/semod
_printpage/mod_default.cfm&PageURL=/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/2007-10-15-
reducingrisk.html&VersionObject=A09EDA45D011A282BA7021E754D0B39C&Template=79799&PageStyleSheet=81604

We already invest in some extinction countermeasures. NASA spends $4 million per year monitoring near-Earth
asteroids and comets (Leary, 2007) and there has been some research on how to deflect these objects using existing
technologies (Gritzner & Kahle, 2004; NASA, 2007). $1.7 billion is spent researching climate change and there are many
strategies to reduce carbon emissions (Posner, 2004, p. 181). There are policies to reduce nuclear threats, such as the
Non- Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as well as efforts to secure expertise by employing
former nuclear scientists. Of current extinction risks, the most severe may be bioterrorism. The knowledge needed to
engineer a virus is modest compared to that needed to build a nuclear weapon; the necessary equipment and materials
are increasingly accessible and because biological agents are self-replicating, a weapon can have an exponential effect
on a population (Warrick, 2006; Williams, 2006).
5
Current U.S. biodefense efforts are funded at $5 billion per year to
develop and stockpile new drugs and vaccines, monitor biological agents and emerging diseases, and strengthen the
capacities of local health systems to respond to pandemics (Lam, Franco, & Shuler, 2006).
There is currently no independent body assessing the risks of high-energy physics experiments. Posner (2004) has
recommended withdrawing federal support for such experiments because the benefits do not seem to be worth the risks.
As for astronomical risks, to escape our suns death, humanity will eventually need to relocate. If we survive the next
century, we are likely to build self-sufficient colonies in space. We would be motivated by self-interest to do so, as asteroids,
moons, and planets have valuable resources to mine, and the technological requirements for colonization are not beyond
imagination (Kargel, 1994; Lewis, 1996).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
333 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

333

Consequentialism Good

Consequentialism is best, short term impacts are key even when the longterm impacts are uncertain.

Cowen 2004 [Tyler Cowen, Department of Economics George Mason University The epistemic Problem does not
refute consequentialismNovember2,2004
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&q=cache:JYKgDUM8xOcJ:www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/Epistemic2.pdf+%22nuclear+
attack+on+Manhattan%22+cowen&hl=en&gl=us]

Let us start with a simple example, namely a suicide bomber who seeks to detonate a nuclear device in midtown Manhattan.
Obviously we would seek to stop the bomber, or If we stop the bomber, we know that in the short run we will save millions
of lives, avoid a massive tragedy, and protect the long-term strength, prosperity, and freedom of the United States.
Reasonable moral people, regardless of the details of their meta-ethical stances, should not argue against stopping the
bomber. No matter how hard we try to stop the bomber, we are not, a priori, committed to a very definite view of how
effective prevention will turn out in the long run. After all, stopping the bomber will reshuffle future genetic identities, and
may imply the birth of a future Hitler. Even trying to stop the bomber, with no guarantee of success, will remix the future in
similar fashion.Still, we can see a significant net welfare improvement in the short run, while facing radical generic
uncertainty about the future in any case. Furthermore, if we can stop the bomber, our long-run welfare estimates will likely
show some improvement. The bomb going off could lead to subsequent attacks on other major cities, the emboldening of
terrorists, or perhaps broader panics. There would be a new and very real doorway toward general collapse of the world.
While the more distant future is remixed radically, we should not rationally believe that some new positive option has been
created to counterbalance the current destruction and the new possible negatives. To put it simply, it is difficult to see the
violent destruction of Manhattan as on net, in ex ante terms, favoring either the short-term or long-term prospects of the
world. We can of course imagine possible scenarios where such destruction works out for the better ex post; perhaps, for
instance, the explosion leads to a subsequent disarmament or anti-proliferation advances. But we would not breathe a sigh of
relief on hearing the news of the destruction for the first time. Even if the long-run expected value is impossible to estimate,
we need only some probability that the relevant time horizon is indeed short (perhaps a destructive asteroid will strike the
earth). This will tip the consequentialist balance against a nuclear attack on Manhattan.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
334 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

334

Consequentialism Fails

Consequentialism, by very nature, will fail in public policy to improve the well-being of others
Scheffler, prof philosophy, Princeton, 94
(Samuel Scheffler, prof philosophy, Princeton, 11/24/94, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 14-16,
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=M95w6e9pzZsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA14&dq=reject+consequentialism&ots=hbQ
FBohbTL&sig=VgDh7pP6sAhJ1IKGaBA3BW7hi1Y)
I will maintain shortly that a hybrid theory which departed from consequentialism only to the extent of incorporating an
agent-centred prerogative could accommodate the objection dealing with personal integrity. But first it is necessary to give
fuller characterization of a plausible prerogative of this kind. To avoid confusion, it is important to make a sharp distinction
at the outset between an agent-centred prerogative and a consequentialist dispensation to devote more attention to
ones own happiness and well-being than to the happiness and well-being of others. Consequentialists
often argue that a differential attention to ones own concerns will in most actual circumstances have the
best overall results, and that such differential treatment of oneself is therefore required on consequentialist
grounds. Two sorts of considerations are typically appealed to in support of this view. First, it is said that one is in a better
position to promote ones own welfare and the welfare of those one is closest to than to promote the welfare of other people.
So an agent produces maximum good per unit of activity by focusing his efforts on those he is closest to,
including himself. Second, it is said that human nature being what it is, people cannot function effectively at all unless
they devote somewhat more energy to promoting their own well-being than to promoting the well-being of other people.
Here the appeal is no longer to the immediate consequantialist advantages of promoting ones own well-being, but rather to
the long-term advantages of having psychologically healthy agents who are efficient producers of the good. We find an
example of the first type of argument in Sidgwicks remark that each man is better able to provide for his own happiness
than for that of other persons, from his more intimate knowledge of his own desires and needs, and his greater opportunities
of gratifying them. Mill, in the same vein, writes that the occasions on which any person (except one in a thousand) has it
in his powerto be a public benefactor are but exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public
utility; in every other case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to. Sidgwick
suggests an argument of the second type when he says that because it is under the stimulus of self-interest that the active
energies of most men are most easily and thoroughly drawn out, it would not under actual circumstances promote the
universal happiness if each man were to concern himself with the happiness of others as much as with his own.


Consequentialism is based on the greater good, not on self-interests
Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, 84
(Philosophy and Public Affairs, Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1984), pp. 239-254
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2265413.pdf)
Consequentialism claims that an act is morally permissible if and only if it has better consequences than
those of any available alternative act. This means that agents are morally required to make their largest possible
contribution to the overall good-no matter what the sacrifice to them- selves might involve (remembering only that their
own well-being counts too). There is no limit to the sacrifices that morality can require; and agents are never
permitted to favor their own interests at the expense of the greater good.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
335 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

335

Consequentialism Fails

There is a limit to what morality can require for us, which consequentialism fails to incorporate
Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, 84
(Philosophy and Public Affairs, Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1984), pp. 239-254
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2265413.pdf)
Our ordinary moral intuitions rebel at this picture. We want to claim that there is a limit to what morality can require
of us. Some sacrifices for the sake of others are meritorious, but not required; they are super- erogatory.
Common morality grants the agent some room to pursue his own projects, even though other actions might have better
consequences: we are permitted to promote the good, but we are not required to do so. The objection that consequentialism
demands too much is accepted uncritically by almost all of us; most moral philosophers introduce per- mission to perform
nonoptimal acts without even a word in its defense. But the mere fact that our intuitions support some moral feature hardly
constitutes in itself adequate philosophical justification. If we are to go beyond mere intuition mongering, we
must search for deeper foundations. We must display the reasons for limiting the requirement to pursue
the good.



Consequentialism can result in sacrifices on some for the sake of others
Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, 84
(Philosophy and Public Affairs, Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer, 1984), pp. 239-254
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2265413.pdf)
Furthermore, discussions of the claim that consequentialism demands too much are often undermined by failure to
distinguish this claim from the widely discussed objection that consequentialism permits too much- improperly
permitting sacrifices to be imposed on some for the sake of others. Some theories include deontological
restrictions, forbidding certain kinds of acts even when the consequences would be good. I will not consider
here the merits of such restrictions. It is important to note, however, that even a theory which included such restrictions might
still lack more general permission to act nonoptimally-requiring agents to promote the good within the pennissible means. It
is only the grounds for rejecting such a general requirement to promote the overall good that we will examine here.







Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
336 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

336


**AT UTIL**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
337 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

337


Util Bad No Equality/Justice

Utilitarianism cant address the issues of equity and distributive justice
Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of Pennsylvania, writes 2000
[Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods and practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])

However, its strengths are also its weaknesses. Its quantifications techniques are far from being simple,
straightforward, and objective. Indeed, they are often too complicated to be practical. They are also to flexible and
subject to manipulation. They are impersonal and lack compassion. More importantly, they fail to deal the issue of
equity and distributive justice. Seemingly, you cannot get fairer than this. In calculating benefits and costs, each person
is counted as one and only one. IN other words, people are treated equally. For Mill, justice arises from the principle of
utility. Utilitarianism in concerted only the aggregate effect, no matter how the aggregate is distributed.
For almost all policies, there is an uneven distribution of benefits and costs. Some people win, while
others lose. The Pareto optimality would is almost nonexistent. A policys outcome is Pareto optimal if nobody loses and at
least one person gains.


Utilitarianism policies result in inequality
Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of Pennsylvania, writes 2000
[Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods and practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])

Besides these ridiculous policy implications in the United States and in the world, the logic underlying Summers proposal
represents cultural imperialism, the capitalist mode of production and consumption, and a particular kind of political-
economic power and its discriminatory practices (Harvey 1996:368). Except for its beautiful guise of economic logic, the
proposal is nothing new to those familiar with the history. The capitalistic powerhouses in Europe practiced material and
cultural imperialism against countries in Africa, America, and Asia for years. They did it by raising the banner of trade and
welfare enhancement. They did it through guns and powder. Of course, they had their logic for exporting opium to Canton
(Guangzhou) in China through force. Now, we see a new logic. This time, it is economic logic and globalization. This time,
the end is the same, but the means is not through guns and powder. Instead, it is political-economic power. This example
illustrates clearly the danger of using the utilitarian perspective as the only means for policy analysis. Fundamentally, the
utilitarian disregards the distributive justice issue altogether and espouses the current mode of
production and consumption and the political-economic structure, without any attention to the inequity
and inequality in the current system. Even worse and more subtly, it delivers the philosophy of it exists,
therefore its good. However, just because it sells, doesnt mean we have to worship it (Peirce 1991).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
338 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

338

Util Bad Mass Murder

Utilitarian thinking results in mass murder
Cleveland Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002 (Cleveland 2002 Paul A., Professor of
Business Administration and Economics at Birmingham-Southern College, The Failure of Utilitarian Ethics in Political
Economy, The Journal of Private Enterprise, http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1602)

A final problem with utilitarianism that ought to be mentioned is that it is subject to being criticized because of a potential
fallacy of composition. The common good is not necessarily the sum of the interests of individuals. In their book, A History
of Economic Theory and Method, Ekelund and Hebert provide a well-conceived example to demonstrate this problem. They
write: It is presumably in the general interest of American society to have every automobile in the United States equipped
with all possible safety devices. However, a majority of individual car buyers may not be willing to pay the cost of such
equipment in the form of higher auto prices. In this case, the collective interest does not coincide with the sum
of the individual interests. The result is a legislative and economic dilemma. Indeed, individuals prone to
political action, and held under the sway of utilitarian ethics, will likely be willing to decide in favor of
the supposed collective interest over and against that of the individual. But then, what happens to
individual human rights? Are they not sacrificed and set aside as unimportant? In fact, this is precisely
what has happened. In democratic countries the destruction of human liberty that has taken place in the past hundred
years has occurred primarily for this reason. In addition, such thinking largely served as the justification for the
mass murders of millions of innocent people in communist countries where the leaders sought to
establish the workers paradise. To put the matter simply, utilitarianism offers no cohesive way to
discern between the various factions competing against one another in political debates and thus fails to
provide an adequate guide for ethical human action. The failure of utilitarianism at this point is extremely
important for a whole host of policy issues. Among them, the issue of the governments provision of public goods is worth
our consideration.

Utilitarianism is used to justify mass murder by governments
Cleveland, Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002 (Cleveland 2002 Paul A., Professor of
Business Administration and Economics at Birmingham-Southern College, The Failure of Utilitarian Ethics in Political
Economy, The Journal of Private Enterprise, http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1602)

Indeed, the widespread confusion over this point is one of the primary reasons why western market economies have continued to drift towards the ready
acceptance of socialist policies. Edmund Opitz has rightly observed that utilitarianism with its greatest happiness principle completely neglects the
spiritual dimension of human life. Rather, it simply asserts that men are bound together in societies solely on the basis of a rational calculation of the private
advantage to be gained by social cooperation under the division of labor.
[2]
But, as Opitz shows, this perspective gives rise to a serious problem. Since theft
is the first labor saving device, the utilitarian principle will tend to lead to the collective use of government power
so as to redistribute income in order to gain the greatest happiness in society. Regrettably, the rent
seeking behavior that is spawned as a result of this mind set will prove detrimental to the economy.
Nevertheless, this kind of action will be justified as that which is most socially expedient in order to reach the assumed
ethical end. Utilitarianism, in short, has no logical stopping place short of collectivism.[3] If morality is
ultimately had by making the individuals happiness subservient to the organic whole of society, which is
what Benthams utilitarianism asserts, then the human rights of the individual may be violated. That means
property rights may be violated if it is assumed to promote the utilitarian end. However, property rights are essential in
securing a free market order. As a result, utilitarianism can then be used to justify some heinous government
actions. For instance, the murder of millions of human beings can be justified in the minds of reformers
if it is thought to move us closer to paradise on earth. This is precisely the view that was taken by
communist revolutionaries as they implemented their grand schemes of remaking society. All of this is not
to say that matters of utility are unimportant in policy decisions, but merely to assert that utilitarian ethics will have the
tendency of promoting collectivist policies.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
339 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

339

Util Bad Annihilation

Medical utilitarian calculus ensures human dehumanization and annihilation.
Smith 2002 (Michael G Smith 2002, Leadership University, The Public Policy of Casey V. Planned Parenthood
http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/casey/ch3.html)

Furthermore, abandoning the principle of human equality could lead to eugenics because eugenics is founded
on the same philosophy that some people are of lesser value than others. Eugenics is founded on the utilitarian
philosophy of German philosopher Hegel. Utilitarianism, also known as pragmatism, holds that "the end justifies
the means." If a means provides a solution to a practical problem, it is morally justifiable.{86} The
Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany saw a problem in the existence of Jews, Gypsies, and mentally and
physically handicapped people, was founded on Hegels pragmatic philosophy.{87} C.G. Campbell,{88}
President of the American Eugenics Society Inc. in 1931{89} has written: "Adolf Hitler ... guided by the nation's
anthropologists, eugenicists and social philosophers, has been able to construct a comprehensive racial policy of population
development and improvement ... it sets a pattern ... these ideas have met stout opposition in the Rousseauian social
philosophy ... which bases ... its whole social and political theory upon the patent fallacy of human equality ... racial
consanguinity occurs only through endogamous mating or interbreeding within racial stock ... conditions under which racial
groups of distinctly superior hereditary qualities ... have emerged." (Emphasis added).{90} Mr. Campbell, a leader in the
eugenics movement,{91} has clearly rejected the idea of human equality. This rejection helped pave the
way toward intellectual acceptance of Nazi Germanys "Final Solution." and has helped pave the way toward
Americas final solution to problem pregnancy. "Nazi Germany used the findings of eugenicists as the basis for the killing of
people of inferior genetic stock."{92} Another leader in the eugenics movement, Madison Grant,{93} connected the
purported inequality of the unborn to the goals of the eugenics movement. "...Indiscriminate efforts to preserve babies among
the lower classes often results in serious injury to the race ... Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and
sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of
such adults as are themselves of no value to the community" (Emphasis added).{94} As recently as six years ago, two
medical ethicists, Kuhse and Singer, have argued that no human being has any right to life.{95} Using a utilitarian
approach, they have concluded that "mentally defective" people, unborn people, and even children
before their first birthday, have no right to life because these people are not in full possession of their
faculties.{96} These utilitarian authors are fully consistent with other utilitarians in that they first reject
the principle that are humans have equal moral status, then, using subjective criteria that appeals to
themselves personally, they identify certain humans they find expendable. While Kuhse and Singer may be
personally comfortable with their conclusions, this approach leaves all of us less than secure from being dehumanized. If
newborn infants can be found to lack equal moral status, then surely there are other innocent and vulnerable member of
society who can be similarly found to lack equal moral status. The Nazis left few people in Germany safe from the gas
chambers, and any other society that uses utilitarianism in medical ethics also leaves great portions of society at risk of death
at the convenience of society at large. Clearly, the equal moral status of all humans must be recognized by the law.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
340 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

340

Util Bad VTL

Utilitarianism takes away all value to live
Cleveland Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002 (Cleveland 2002 Paul A., Professor of
Business Administration and Economics at Birmingham-Southern College, The Failure of Utilitarian Ethics in Political
Economy, The Journal of Private Enterprise, http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1602)

Another problem with utilitarianism is that it has a very narrow conception of what it means to be a human
being. Within Benthams view, human beings are essentially understood to be passive creatures who respond
to the environment in a purely mechanical fashion. As such, there are no bad motives, only bad calculations. In
these terms, no person is responsible for his or her own behavior. In effect, the idea being promoted is that
human action is essentially the same as that of a machine in operation. This notion reduces a human thought to
nothing more than a series of bio-chemical reactions. Yet, if this is true, then there is no meaning to human
thought or human action and all human reason is reduced to the point of being meaningless.
[6]





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
341 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

341

Util Excludes Rights

Rights incompatible with utilitarianism.
Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg 196.

The first thing to notice is that utilitarianism is a general normative theory either about what is desirable, or about what
conduct is morally right, but in the first instance not a theory of rights at all, except by implication. A philosopher can be a
utilitarian without offering any definition of "a right" and indeed without having thought about the matter. It is true that some
definitions of "a right" are so manifestly incompatible with the normative theses of utilitarianism that it is clear that a
utilitarian could not admit that there are rights in that sense. For instance, if someone says that to have a right (life, liberty) is
for some sort of thing to be secured to one absolutely, though the heavens fall, and that this is a self-evident truth, then it is
pretty clear that a utilitarian will have no place for rights in his sense. Again, if one follows Hobbes and says, "Neither by the
word right is anything else signified, than that liberty which every man hath to make use of his natural faculties according to
right reason," one is not going to be able to accept a utilitarian normative theory , for a utilitarian is not going to underwrite a
man's absolute liberty to pursue his own good according to his own judgment.


Util ignores fundamental rights and creates a slippery slope until rights lose all significance

Bentley 2k [ Kristina A. Bentley graduate of the Department of government at the University of Manchester.
Suggesting A Separate Approach To Utility and Rights: Deontological Specification and Teleogical Enforcement
of Human Rights, September. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf]

Utilitarian theories usually present the view that they are capable of accommodating the idea of legal rights, as well as
providing a normative theory about such rights, which Lyons calls the legal rights inclusion thesis (Lyons, 1994: 150). On
the other hand however, utilitarian theorists are sceptical of the idea of moral rights unsupported by legal institutions, as such
rights would then in certain circumstances preclude the pursuit of the most utile course of action owing to their moral force,
or normative force (Lyons, 1994: 150). Conversely, legal rights are seen as being compatible with utilitarian goals as they
are normatively neutral, being morally defensible (which entails the idea of a moral presumption in favour of respecting
them) only in so a far as they contribute to overall utility (Lyons, 1994: 150). The problem then, as conceived by Lyons, is
whether or not utilitarians can account for the moral force of legal rights (which people are commonly regarded as having by
rights theorists and utilitarians alike), as: although there are often utilitarian reasons for respecting justified legal rights, these
reasons are not equivalent to the moral force of such rights, because they do not exclude direct utilitarian arguments against
exercising such rights or for interfering with them (Lyons, 1994: 150). This being the case, the utilitarian finds herself in the
uncomfortable position of having to explain why rights ought to be bothered with at all, as if they may be violated on an ad
hoc basis to satisfy the demands of maximal utility, then they seem as confusing on this scheme as natural or moral rights are
claimed to be. This then raises the question as to whether or not utilitarianism can accommodate any rights at all, even legal
rights as its exponents claim it is able to do, in its rule formulation at least. However, leaving this debate aside as it exceeds
the scope of this paper, an alternative approach, that of government house utilitarianism (see Goodin, 1995: 27) is worth
considering as a possible means to a solution.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
342 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

342

Survival Instinct Bad Destroys Humanity

The quest for survival destroys humanity
Callahan, director of The Hastings Institute, 73
Daniel Callahan, Co-founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in philosophy from
Harvard University,
The Tyranny of Survival 1973, p 91-93

There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on another for the sake of survival, no
rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress. It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is
falsely and manipulatively invoked. Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the
fatherland, to save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is directed even at a
legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach an intensity which would ignore, suppress, or
destroy other fundamental human rights and values. The potential tyranny of survival as a value is that it is capable, if
not treated sanely, of wiping out all other values, Survival can become an obsession and a disease, provoking a
destructive singlemindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the fundamental moral dilemma. If, both
biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all
human achievements, and if no other rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life- then how will it be
possible to honor and act upon the need for survival, without in the process, destroying everything in human beings which
makes them worthy of survival? To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human degradation, then there is no
moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic
victories Yet it would be the defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need to survive,
they succeeded in not doing so.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
343 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

343



**RIGHTS/DEONTOLOGY**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
344 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

344

Must Evaluate Human Rights (1/2)

Violations of freedom and justice must be evaluated before every other impact

Petro Professor of Law 74.
Sylvester Petro, Prof of Law @ Wake Forest U, University of Toledo Law Review, pg. 4801)

However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And it is always well to bear
in mind David Hume's observation: " It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." Thus, it is unacceptable to say
that the invasion of one aspect of freedom is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects.
That road leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration . Ask Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas.
In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value and the Proper ordering; principle for any society aiming to maximize
spiritual and material welfare, then every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying
spirit.



Dehumanization outweighs every other impact

Montagu and Matson, scientist and professor 83
Ashley Montagu, Esteemed Scientist and Writer; and Floyd Matson, Professor of American Studies at University of Hawaii
The dehumanization of man, http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:hnDfqSFkJJwJ:www.cross-x.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-
939595.html+montagu+matson+dehumanization&hl=en

The contagion is unknown to science and unrecognized by medicine (psychiatry aside); yet its wasting symptoms are plain for
all to see and its lethal effects are everywhere on display. It neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the
extent of its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natual calamity on record -- and its
potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that reason, this
sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Hourseman of the Apocalypse. Its more conventional name, of course, is
dehumanization.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
345 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

345

Must Evaluate Human Rights (2/2)
Human rights abuses must be evaluated

Copelon, Professor of Law, 98
Rhonda Copelon, Professor of Law and Director of the International Women's Human Rights Law Clinic at the City
University of New York School of Law, New York City Law Review, 1998/99, 3 N.Y. City L. Rev. 59

The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the
international arena. The framework is there to shatter the myth of the superiority of the U.S. version of rights, to
rebuild popular expectations, and to help develop a culture and jurisprudence of indivisible human rights. Indeed, in
the face of systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by official and private actors, globalization of the
market economy, and military and environmental depredation, the human rights framework is gaining new force
and new dimensions. It is being broadened today by the movements of people in different parts of the world,
particularly in the Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection of human
rights as a matter of individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also emerging is a notion of third-
generation rights, encompassing collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state basis and that call for
new mechanisms of accountability, particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights include human-
centered sustainable development, environmental protection, peace, and security. Given the poverty and
inequality in the United States as well as our role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human rights
framework to bear on both domestic and foreign policy.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
346 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

346

Deontology O/W Util

Deontology precludes util- the values of deontology come first

Mcnaughton and Rawling 98 [David McNaughton and Piers Rawling are professors of philosophy at Keele
University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ratio, On Defending Deontology, issue 11, p. 48-49 Ebsco]

Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules can only be defended by
showing that their adoption brings about some good that could not otherwise be realized, and then seeks
to show that deontology is such a system. The claim is not, of course, that agent-relative reasons rest directly on
considerations of value in a manner obviously susceptible to the CVC; rather, the grounding is indirect the notion is that
worlds in which there are agent-relative reasons are better than worlds in which there are not. Nagel argues that an agent
relative morality, qua moral system, is intrinsically valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker (1994), then, pace
Howard-Snyder (1993), that rule consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights (the obverse of constraints)
have value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of moral theory. A right is an agent-relative, not an
agent-neutral, value, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is precisely because it is supposed to resist the CVC (one is
forbidden to violate a right even to minimize the total number of such violations). So Nagel faces the
Scheffler problem: How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater harm to others? How
are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human inviolability, which makes this consequence
morally intelligible? (p.89, our emphasis note the presumption inherent in the question). The answer focuses on the
status conferred on all human beings by the design of a morality which includes agent-relative
constraints (p.89). That status is one of being inviolable (which is not, of course, to say that one will not be
violated, but that one may not be violated even to minimize the total number of such violations). A
system of morality that includes inviolability encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture. For, not
only is it an evil for a person to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm the
person in those ways is an additional and independent evil (p.91). So there is a sense in which we are better off if
there are rights (they are a kind of generally disseminated intrinsic good (p.93)). Hence there are rights. In short, we are
inviolable because



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
347 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

347

Deontology O/W Util

Deontology comes first, the means must justify themselves utilitarianism justifies the Holocaust.

Anderson, 2004 (Kerby Anderson is the National Director of Probe Ministries International, , Probe Ministries
Utilitarianism:
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number http://www.probe.org/theology-and-philosophy/worldview--
philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatest-number.html)

One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means" mentality. If any
worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical foundation is lost. But we all know that the
end does not justify the means. If that were so, then Hitler could justify the Holocaust because the end was to
purify the human race. Stalin could justify his slaughter of millions because he was trying to achieve a
communist utopia. The end never justifies the means. The means must justify themselves. A particular act
cannot be judged as good simply because it may lead to a good consequence. The means must be judged by some
objective and consistent standard of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities
if the goal is the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century could justify
slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for a majority of Americans. Certainly the majority
benefited from cheap slave labor even though the lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism
is predicting the consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have omniscience in
order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at best we can only guess at the future,
and often these educated guesses are wrong. A fourth problem with utilitarianism is that consequences
themselves must be judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad results.
Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge results because results are the
mechanism used to judge the action itself.inviolability is intrinsically valuable.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
348 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

348

Deontology O/W Util

Deontology precludes util- the values of deontology come first

Mcnaughton and Rawling 98 [David McNaughton and Piers Rawling are professors of philosophy at Keele
University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ratio, On Defending Deontology, issue 11, p. 48-49 Ebsco]

Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules can only be defended by
showing that their adoption brings about some good that could not otherwise be realized, and then seeks
to show that deontology is such a system. The claim is not, of course, that agent-relative reasons rest directly on
considerations of value in a manner obviously susceptible to the CVC; rather, the grounding is indirect the notion is that
worlds in which there are agent-relative reasons are better than worlds in which there are not. Nagel argues that an agent
relative morality, qua moral system, is intrinsically valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker (1994), then, pace
Howard-Snyder (1993), that rule consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights (the obverse of constraints)
have value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of moral theory. A right is an agent-relative, not an
agent-neutral, value, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is precisely because it is supposed to resist the CVC (one is
forbidden to violate a right even to minimize the total number of such violations). So Nagel faces the
Scheffler problem: How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater harm to others? How
are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human inviolability, which makes this consequence
morally intelligible? (p.89, our emphasis note the presumption inherent in the question). The answer focuses on the
status conferred on all human beings by the design of a morality which includes agent-relative
constraints (p.89). That status is one of being inviolable (which is not, of course, to say that one will not be
violated, but that one may not be violated even to minimize the total number of such violations). A
system of morality that includes inviolability encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture. For, not
only is it an evil for a person to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm the
person in those ways is an additional and independent evil (p.91). So there is a sense in which we are better off if
there are rights (they are a kind of generally disseminated intrinsic good (p.93)). Hence there are rights. In short, we are
inviolable because

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
349 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

349

Deontology O/W Util

Deontology comes before util- utilitarianism can be a last resort to preserve fundamental rights

Kateb 1992 [George Kateb
is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus, at Princeton University
The Inner Ocean
http://books.google.com/books?id=MtGJdmzqLZoC&dq=kateb+%22what+does+a+theory%22&source=gbs
_navlinks_s]

What does a theory of rights leave undecided? Many issues of public policy do not affect individual rights, despite frequent
ingeniuous efforts to claim that they do. Such issues pertain to the promotion of a better life, whether for the disadvantaged or
for everyone, or involve the clash of interests. So long as rights are not in play, advocates of rights can rightly allow a loose
utilitarianism as the proper guide to public policy, though they should always be eager to keep the states energy under
suspicion. One can even think, against utilitarianism, that any substantive outcome acheived by morally
proper procedure is morally right and hence acceptable (so long as rights are not in play). The main point,
however, is that utilitarianism has a necessary place in any democratic countrys normal political
deliberations. But its advocates must know its place, which ordinarily is only to help to decide what
theory of rights leave alone. When may rights be overridden by the government? I have two sorts of cases in mind:
overriding a particular right of some persons for the sake of preserving the same right of others, and overriding the same right
of everyone for the sake of what I will clumsily call civilization values. An advocate of rights could countenance, perhaps
must countenance, the states overriding of rights for these two reasons. The subject is painful and liable to dispute every step
of the way. For the state to override-that is, sacrifice- a right of some so theat others may keep it, the
situations must be desperate. I havein mind, say, circumstances in which the choice is between sacrificing a
right of some and letting a right of all be lost. The state (or some other agent) may kill some or allow
them to be killed), if the only alternative is letting everyone die. It is the right to life which most prominently
figures in thinking about desperate situations. I cannot see any resolution but to heed the precept that numbers count. Just as
one may prefer saving ones own life to saving that of another when both cannot be saved, so a third party-let us say, the
state- can (perhaps must) choose to save the greater number of lives and at the cost of the lesser number, when there is
otherwise no hope for either group. That choice does not mean that those to be sacrificed are immoral if they resist being
sacrificed. It follows, of course, that if a third party is right to risk or sacrifice the lives of the lesser for the
lives of the greater number when the lesser would otherwise live, the lesser are also not wrong if they
resist being sacrificed. To accept utilitarianism (in some loose sense) as a necessary supplement. It thus
should function innocently, or when all hope of innocence is gone. I emphasize, above all, however, that every
care must be taken to ensure that the precept that numbers of lives count does not become a license for
vaguely conjectural decisions about inflicting death and saving life and that desperation be as strictly
and narrowly understood as possible. (But total numbers killed do not count if members of one group
have to kill members of another group to save themselves from threatened massacre of enslavement or
utter degradation or misery; they may kill their attackers in an attempt to end the threat.)

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
350 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

350

Deontology O/W Util

Deontology preserves fundamental rights and still accesses the ultimate good, accessing the same things as
util

Bentley No Date [ Kristina A. Bentley graduate of the Department of government at the University of
Manchester. Suggesting A Separate Approach To Utility and Rights: Deontological Specification and Teleogical
Enforcement of Human Rights http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf]

The second area of departure between utilitarianism and rights-based theories is that utilitarians advocate a
simple maximising strategy as the aim is to maximise social utility and a society is justified in doing whatever
enhances its aggregate utility (Jones, 1994: 52). Conversely, the opponents of this view hold that rights
constitute an area which is beyond the reach of such calculations, as it would be pointless if rights could be set
aside in a mere calculus of competing preferences (Jones, 1994: 53). This is because rights are regarded as
being considerations which are special in the sense that they protect individuals from the potential excesses of
such calculations. Consequently, to refer back to Gewirths example, according to the rights-based account, it
would always be morally wrong to torture an innocent person, even if this would result in a large increase in
aggregate utility in such a society, while a utilitarian approach would weigh up the evidence, such that if
thousands of lives would be saved by the torture, then it ought to be done. This roughly reflects Dworkins
notion of Rights as Trumps which override, or supersede ordinary notions of well-being. The difference
however is that Dworkins theory occupies some middle ground, as it does not rule out rights being overridden
by such considerations when other fundamental rights are threatened (Jones, 1994: 53). So while Dworkin
would probably argue that to torture someone to give others in society pleasure at the sight would be trumped
by the right not to be tortured, he would perhaps concede that to torture an individual to prevent the
detonation of a nuclear bomb, as is the case in Gewirths example, may be justified, as the right to life of all
others in society may, in this instance, trump the right of an individual not to be tortured. Dworkins formulation
again places the domain of rights beyond the reach of ordinary considerations of utility, but he does make
provision for rights to be balanced against one another (to trump one another) in cases of extreme gravity for
rights themselves. Consequently, theories of rights quite simply consider respect for rights to be the primary
consideration in the course of social deliberation, while utilitarians consider the ultimate good or utility on
the balance to be the correct goal to pursue, even if this potentially infringes on individual rights. However,
assertions that these conceptions of justice are incompatible are not always acknowledged by exponents of
consequentialism. As Richard B. Brandt states: There is a fundamental incompatibility between utilitarianism
and human rights. Most utilitarians of course have not thought there is such an incompatibility (Brandt, 1992:
196).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
351 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

351

Deontology Good K2 Policy

Evaluating the deontological aspects of a policy is critical to policy making

Pinstrup-Andersen, 2005. [Ethics and economic policy for the food system. General Sessions, 01-
DEC-05, American Journal of Agricultural Economics Ebsco Host.]

Economists seldom address ethical questions as they infringe on economic theory or economic
behavior. They (and I) find this subject complex and elusive in comparison with the relative precision and
objectivity of economic analysis. However, if ethics is influencing our analyses but ignored, is the precision and objectivity
just an illusion? Are we in fact being normative when we claim to be positive or are we, as suggested by Gilbert
(p. xvi), ignoring social ethics and, as a consequence, contributing to a situation in which we know "the
price of everything and the value of nothing?" The economists' focus on efficiency and the Pareto
Principle has made us less relevant to policy makers, whose main concerns are who gains, who
loses, by how much, and can or should the losers be compensated. By focusing on the
distribution of gains and losses and replacing the Pareto Principle with estimates of whether a big
enough economic surplus could be generated so that gainers could compensate losers, the socalled
new welfare economics (which is no longer new) was a step toward more relevancy for policy
makers (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz). Another major step toward relevancy was made by the more recent
emphasis on political economy and institutional economics. But are we trading off scientific validity for
relevancy? Robbins (p. 9) seems to think so, when he states that "claims of welfare economics to be
scientific are highly dubious." But if Aristotle saw economics as a branch of ethics and Adam Smith was a moral philosopher,
when did we, as implied by Stigler, replace ethics with precision and objectivity? Or, when did we as economists move away
from philosophy toward statistics and engineering and are we on our way back to a more
comprehensive political economy approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative variables are taken
into account? I believe we are. Does that make us less scientific, as argued by Robbins?
I am not questioning whether the quantification of economic relationships is important. It is. In the case
of food policy analysis, it is critically important that the causal relationship between policy options and
expected impact on the population groups of interest is quantitatively estimated. But not at the expense of
reality, context, and ethical considerations, much of which can be described only in qualitative terms.
Economic analyses that ignore everything that cannot be quantified and included in our models are not
likely to advance our understanding of economic and policy relationships. Neither
will they be relevant for solving real world problems. The predictive ability is likely to be low and,
if the results are used by policy makers, the outcome may be different from what was expecte.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
352 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

352

Deontology Good K2 VTL

Deontology key to giving human life value.

Kamm 92 [ FM Kamm is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Kennedy School Non-
consequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the significance of status., Philosophy and Public Affairs, p. 390
JSTOR]

If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable ones; such a
higher status is itself a benefit to us. Indeed, we are creatures whose interests as recipients of such
ordinary benefits as welfare are more worth serving. The world is, in a sense, a better place, as it has
more important creatures in it.3' In this sense the inviolable status (against being harmed in a
certain way) of any potential victim can be taken to be an agent-neutral value. This is a nonconsequential
value. It does not follow (causally or noncausally) upon any act, but is already present in
the status that persons have. Ensuring it provides the background against which we may then seek
their welfare or pursue other values. It is not our duty to bring about the agent-neutral value, but only
to respect the constraints that express its presence. Kagan claims that the only sense in which we can
show disrespect for people is by using them in an unjustified way. Hence, if it is justified to kill one
to save five, we will not be showing disrespect for the one if we so use him. But there is another
sense of disrespect tied to the fact that we owe people more respect than animals, even though we
also should not treat animals in an unjustified way. And this other sense of disrespect is, I believe,
tied to the failure to heed the greater inviolability of persons.


Deontology does not dismiss consequences, categorical imperative means deont still maximizes
happiness

Donaldson 95 (Thomas Donaldson is Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International
Affairs,International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154)

When discussing nuclear deterrence or intervention it is common to exaggerate the nonconsequential nature
of Kantianism. It is a false but all-too common myth that Kant believed that consequences were
irrelevant to the evaluation of moral action. In his practical writings Kant explicitly states that each of us
has a duty to maximize the happiness of other individuals, a statement that echoes Mills famous principle of
utility. But Kants duty to promote beneficial consequences is understood to be derived from an even
higher order principle, namely, the categorical imperative that requires all of us to act in a way that
respects the intrinsic value of other rational beings. Kant does not dismiss
consequences. He simply wants them in their proper place.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
353 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

353

Callahan (1/2)

Callahan embraces reason and says it must be used in combination with a moral obligation to
make decisions
Callahan, fmr. Director of the Hastings Institute, 75
DANIEL CALLAHAN, Fmr. Director of the Hastings Institute, author of The Tyranny of Survival & Senior Fellow
at Yale, February 1975,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3560956

A RECENT correspondent, after praising the position I took in opposition to Garrett Hardin's "Life-boat Ethic" ("Doing Good
by Doing Well," Dec. 1974), ended her letter with a complaint. I had, she implied, fallen into a fatal trap by trying to argue
with Hardins thesis on "rationalistic rounds. The issue at stake is "humanitarianism" and the future of altruism, neither of
which will be saved if they must be defended on the narrow base of reason and logic. Indeed, she seemed to be saying, there
is an inherent conflict between humanitarianism and rationalism. As an unreconstructed rationalist, I balk at admitting
such a dualism, just as I rebel at the general black-balling of reason and logic which seems to many to offer the only
antidote to the generally insane, depressing state of the world. One can well understand how rationality has come to have a
bad name. We have in the twentieth century been subjected to endless wars, ills and disasters carried out in the name of
somebody or other's impeccable logic and assertedly rational deliberations. One can also understand the sense of distaste any
feel in the face of articulate proponents of "triage" in our dealings with poor countries and a "lifeboat ethic" in deter-mining
our own moral responsibilities toward the starving, particularly when such positions are advanced in the name of no-nonsense
rational calculation. For all that, I am far more fearful of a deliberate abandonment of reason than of the evils which
can be done in its name. The fault with the latter form of attacking "reason" is that it takes those arguing in its name
too much at their own word. Poke around a bit under the facade of carefully-honed rationality and precise logical
moves and what does one usually discover? Pure mush. Those vast, intricate edifices rest on a bowl of porridge, made
up of irrational self-interest, the worst forms of sentimentality (or pure cruelty), utterly unanalyzed assumptions
about politics, or ethics, or human nature, tribalism, and god knows what else. None of that has much if anything to do
with reason. A recent article by Robert L. Heilbroner, author of the much-acclaimed book, An Inquiry Into the Human
Prospect, is indicative of the muddle created when one calls for an abandonment of rationality in favor of something
more Illuminating. In "What has Posterity Ever Done for Me?" (New York Times Magazine, January 19, 1975), Prof.
Heilbroner tries to make the case that contemporary human beings will never learn to take responsibility for the future of
mankind until they give up trying to find a compelling reason why they should. Only some fundamental revelatory
experience-to wit, famine, war and the like-will bring people back to what is an essentially "religious" insight, that of "the
transcendent importance of posterity for them." It is intriguing to see the way Heilbroner develops his case. "Why," he asks,
"should I lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for me 75 years after my death than those that happened
75 years before I was born? There is no rational answer to that terrible question. No argument based on reason will lead me to
care for posterity or to lift a finger in its behalf. Indeed, by every rational consideration, precisely the opposite answer is
thrust upon us with irresistible force." Going on, Heilbroner quotes an anonymous "Distinguished Younger Economist" who
has concluded that he really doesn't "care" whether mankind survives or not. "Is this," Heilbroner queries, "an outrageous
position? I must confess it outrages me. But this is not because the economist's arguments are 'wrong'-indeed, within their
rational framework they are indisputably right. It is because their position reveals the limitations-worse, the suicidal dangers-
of what we call 'rational argument' when we con-front questions that can only be decided by an appeal to an entirely different
faculty from that of cool reason." I find Heilbroner's despair at finding a rational basis to care about posterity, or the
distant past, simply startling. Surely, to begin with the past, he can hardly believe (to stick to his own field of economics)
that Adam Smith and the other "worldly philosophers" have no significance whatever any more, despite the fact that they had
a critical place in shaping the world in which we live today. And surely, as an American, he must find some slight trace of
present and personal meaning in the historical fact that some distant people once upon a time signed a "declaration of
independence." My beginning with the past is no accident. If a case is to be made for caring about the fate of posterity, it will
arise out of the highly rational recognition that (for better or worse) we are where we are because it seemed to our ancestors
only sensible to worry about the fate of their descendants, just as (also for better or worse) still earlier generations had
worried about their descendants. More deeply, unless one has decided that human life is, regardless of its condition,
meaningless and terrible-in which case, what the hell-one will also recognize the moral interdependence of generations as one
of the conditions for extracting whatever possibilities there are for human happiness. To love and believe in life at all is not
just to love one's own life; it is to love both the fact and idea of life itself, including the life of those yet to be born. My point
here, however, is not to make the rational case for obligations

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
354 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

354

Callahan (2/2)

toward posterity. It is only to indicate there are rational ways of going about it (and if you don't like the reasons I've given, I
can think of still others), just as there are rational ways of establishing a variety of other moral duties. The truly
hazardous part of despairing of reason, and longing for a return to something more primitive, can readily be seen in
the texture of some of Heilbroner's other arguments. He is looking for what he calls the "survivalist" principle, by which he
seems to mean some deep sense of obligation toward the future, powerful enough to give us the courage and the toughness to
take those immediate steps necessary to discharge our obligation. "Of course," he writes, "there are moral dilemmas to be
faced even if one takes one's stand on the 'survivalist' principle.... [But] this essential commitment to life's continuance gives
us the moral authority to take measures, per-haps very harsh measures, whose justification cannot be found in the precepts of
rationality, but must be sought in the unbearable anguish we feel if we imagine ourselves as the executioner of mankind." Of
course we may have to act harshly. But, to bring the circle full turn, how are we to act harshly, to whom and under what
circumstances? Are we also meant to abandon reason in trying to answer that question? Are we supposed to solve the
evident "moral dilemmas" to which Heilbroner refers by a dependence, not on reason, but on a sense of "unbearable
anguish"?I see no reason to hope that even a fully shared sense of anguish would tell us how to resolve moral dilemmas.
Moreover, Heilbroner himself cites at least one person who does not share his feelings, and unless we are to suppose that
person to represent a class of one, the pillar to the center of the earth Heilbroner offers us begins to look like a piece of balsa
wood. The amusing side of all this is that the two principal "survivalists" of our day, Garrett Hardin and Robert Heilbroner,
seem to come out at opposite poles in the place they give to reason. Hardin appears the very paradigm of that cool rationality
which Heilbroner believes to be our greatest threat to survival. And Heilbroner's quest for some deeper affective, "religious"
motivation for survival seems the very model of that soft-hearted and woolly-headed humanitarianism which Hardin
identifies as the villain. Neither is likely to carry the day, and for very healthy reasons. Heilbroner is correct when he
discerns that the appeal to reason has its limitations. It takes more than mere logic to move people deeply, especially
to move them to act. More than that, the frequently indignant reaction which greeted Hardin's "lifeboat ethic" indicates that
many are not about to adopt a policy of calculating callousness, "logical" though that may seem. Hardin is correct when he
says that we must think very hard about the question of survival, however much such thought may end by posing hard, even
revolting, choices. But he seems not to have realized that, unless the drive for survival has a moral basis and a saving
reference to some-thing deeper than rational calculation, some and perhaps many people will decide that survival at any price
is not a moral good. Nothing I have said here solves the vexing problem of the right relationship between reason and
feeling in the moral life. But it seems to me at least clear that the worst possible solution is to choose one at the expense
of the other, or to think that we can make a flat choice between them. There is enough evidence from recent
psychological research to indicate that our feelings and emotions are vigorously tutored by our perceptions and
cognition; reason has its say even in the way we feel. A no less important insight is that there is all the difference in the world
between being "rational and being "logical."Almost anyone can work through a simple syllogism, presuming he is spared
the ordeal of worrying about whether the premises are correct. It is a far more difficult matter to be rational, particularly
where ethics is concerned

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
355 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

355

Callahan Ext

We replace survival as the sole aspect of decision making
Moore, Cambridge University Press, 75
Harold Moore, The Review of Politics, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul., 1975), Cambridge University Press,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1406214

If the solution does not lie in the development of more efficient technology, then contemporary society needs a new basis
for analyzing the moral problems precipitated by recent technological developments. Callahan claims that two extremes
are to be avoided in forging a responsible perspective: the "tyranny of survival" on the one hand and the "tyranny of
individualism" on the other. He very effectively points out that there is almost nothing people won't do once they are
convinced that survival (of a group, life or kind of life) is at stake. The moral difficulty is obvious: the social concern
with survival as the only or as the decisive variable in making decisions on technological utilization is decision-making at
a level well below any acceptable moral minimum. If survival is the only value, then indeed just about anything is
permitted. The "survival only" thesis fails by overemphasizing one value. The thesis of "individualism" errs in another
way: in making the satisfaction of individual needs and desires the locus of morality it offers no real hope of coping with
either man's communal life or the moral problems that ineluctably follow from man's social nature. Given the failure of the
extreme positions, Callahan argues for the development of a public morality, one that is capable of integrating values
other than mere survival.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
356 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

356


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
357 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

357

Moral Justice First

Moral justice vital sets us apart from animalistic tendencies.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 12. Project MUSE.

Reasonableness, or the capacity for a sense of justice, is the ability to limit the pursuit of ones conception of the good out of
a respect for the rights and interests of other people and out of a desire to cooperate with them on fair terms. A person who
acts reasonably acts according to a principle of reciprocity: he seeks to give justice to those who can give justice in return
(p. 447). The tight connection between reasonableness and autonomy is explained by Rawls in sec. 86 of Theory: the sense
of justice . . . reveals what the person is, and to compromise it is not to achieve for the self free reign but to give way to the
contingencies and accidents of the world (p. 503). When we act reasonably, says Rawls, we demonstrate an ability to
subordinate the pursuit of our own good, which may be unduly influenced by the contingencies and accidents of the world,
to those principles we would choose as members of the intelligible realmour reasonableness, in other words, is emblematic
of our autonomy, our independence from natural and social contingencies. This explains our sense of shame when we fail to
act reasonably: we behave then as if we were members of a lower order of animal, whose actions are determined by
the laws of nature rather than the moral law (p. 225).


Moral law outweighs other considerations integral to human nature.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 13. Project MUSE.

The Priority of Right over the Good and the Priority of Justice over Welfare and Efficiency are both expressions of our nature
as reasonable beings, i.e., beings able to act in conformity with, and out of respect for, the moral law. In Kants terms, to
sacrifice justice for the sake of welfare or excellence of character would be to sacrifice what is of absolute value (the good
will) for what is of merely relative value (its complements). Rawls himself makes the same strong connection between
reasonableness and these two kinds of priority: But the desire to express our nature as a free and equal rational being can be
fulfilled only by acting on the principles of right and justice as having first priority. . . . Therefore in order to realize our
nature we have no alternative but to plan to preserve our sense of justice as governing our other aims. This sentiment cannot
be fulfilled if it is compromised and balanced against other ends as but one desire among the rest (TJ, p. 503, emphasis
added). Just as reasonableness is a key facet of our autonomy, so the priorities of right and justice are expressions of our
reasonableness: we best indicate our commitment to guide our actions by the principles of justice by refusing to compromise
those principles for the sake of our other ends.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
358 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

358

Moral Rationality First

Moral rationality key to sustainable decisionmaking avoids animalistic tendencies.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 14. Project MUSE.

Rationality is our capacity for a conception of the good, which we pursue through a plan of life. We schedule, prioritize,
temper, and prune our desires in accordance with this plan; rather than living from impulse to impulse, as other animals do,
we arrange the pursuit of our interests and ends according to a coherent scheme (secs. 6364). Now, given what was said in
the previous subsection, one may find it difficult to see the connection between rationality, so defined, and autonomy: if our
desires are largely the product of natural and social contingencies, then how can acting in accordance with a plan to advance
them be an aspect of our autonomy? In other words, if rationality is merely the slave of the passions, 11 and these passions
are the result of such contingencies, then how can rationality possibly express our nature as free and equal beings? According
to Rawls, however, rationality is much more than a slave of the passions. The exercise of rationality involves a clear
distancing from ones immediate desires, as Rawls indicates in the following passage: The aim of deliberation is to find that
plan which best organizes our activities and influences the formation of our subsequent wants so that our aims and interests
can be fruitfully combined into one scheme of conduct. Desires that tend to interfere with other ends, or which
undermine the capacity for other activities, are weeded out; whereas those that are enjoyable in themselves and support
other aims as well are encouraged.12 The image of rationality here is active, not passive. Rather than being haplessly driven on
by the dominant desires, rationality exercises authority over them: rationality elevates some desires and lays low others; it
integrates retained desires into one scheme of conduct; and it even shapes the development of future desires. Far from
being a slave of desire, rationality is its master. This conception of rationality is consistent with at least one reading of Kants
idea of practical reason as applied to the pursuit of happiness: H. J. Paton notes that prudential reasoning in Kants moral
theory involves a choice of ends as well as means and a subsequent maximum integration of ends.13

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
359 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

359

Rights Absolute

Rights absolute cant infringe on one persons rights to increase well-being of others.
Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U Chicago. 1994.
Alan. Are There Any Absolute Rights? Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Joram Graf Haber. Pgs 137-138

Ought Abrams to torture his mother to death in order to prevent the threatened nuclear catastrophe? Might he not merely
pretend to torture his mother, so that she could then be safely hidden while the hunt for the gang members continued?
Entirely apart from the fact that the gang could easily pierce this deception, the main objection to the very raising of such
question s is the moral one that they seem to hold open the possibility of acquiescing and participating in an unspeakably evil
project. To inflict such extreme harm on one' s mother would be an ultimate act of betrayal; in performing or even
contemplating the performance of such an action the son would lose all self-respect and would regard his life as no longer
worth living.' A mother' s right not to be tortured to death by her own son is beyond any compromise. It is absolute . This
absoluteness may be analyzed in several different interrelated dimensions. all stemming from the supreme principle of
morality. The principle requires respect for the rights of all persons to the necessary conditions of human action, and this
includes respect for the persons themselves as having the rational capacity to reflect on their purposes and to control their
behaviour in the light of such reflection. The principle hence prohibits using any person merely as a means to the well-being
of other persons. For a son to torture his mother to death even 10 protect the lives of others would be an extreme violation of
this principle and hence of these rights, as would any attempt by others to force such an action . For this reason , the concept
appropriate to it is not merely 'wrong' but such others as 'despicable', 'dishonorable", 'base', 'monstrous'. In the scale of moral
modalities , such concepts function as the contrary extremes of concepts like the supererogatory , What is supererogatory is
not merely good or right but goes beyond these in various ways; it includes saintly and heroic actions whose moral merit
surpasses what is strictly required of agents, In parallel fashion, what is base, dishonourabte. or despicable is not merely bad
or wrong but goes beyond these in moral demerit since it subverts even the minimal worth or dignity both of its agent and of
its recipient and hence, the basic presupposition s of morality itself, Just as the supererogatory is superlatively good, so the
despicable is superlatively evil and diabolic, and its moral wrongness is so rotten that a morally decent person will not even
consider doing it. This is but another way of saying that the rights it would violate must remain absolute.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
360 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

360


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
361 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

361

Rights/Liberty K2 Rationality

Rights and basic liberties are a prerequisite of rational decisionmaking.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 16. Project MUSE.

In order to advance the reconstruction of the Hierarchy Argument, we must now answer the following question: How does
this highest-order interest in rationality and its preconditions justify the lexical priority of the basic liberties over other
primary goods, as called for by the Priority of Liberty? In short, it justifies such priority because the basic liberties are
necessary conditions for the exercise of rationality, which is why parties in the Original Position give first priority to
preserving their liberty in these matters (pp. 13132). If the parties were to sacrifice the basic liberties for the sake of other
primary goods (the means that enable them to advance their other desires and ends [p. 476]), they would be sacrificing their
highest-order interest in rationality and its preconditions, and thereby failing to express their nature as autonomous beings (p.
493). A brief examination of the basic liberties enumerated by Rawls will indicate why they are necessary conditions for the
exercise of rationality (p. 53). The freedoms of speech and assembly, liberty of conscience, and freedom of thought are
essential to the creation and revision of plans of life: without secure rights to explore ideas and beliefs with others (whether in
person or through various media) and consider these at our leisure, we would be unable to make informed decisions about our
conception of the good. Freedom of the person (including psychological and bodily integrity), as well as the right to personal
property and immunity from arbitrary arrest and seizure, are necessary to create a stable and safe personal space for purposes
of reflection and communication, without which rationality would be compromised if not crippled. Even small restrictions
on these basic liberties would threaten our highest order interest, however slightly, and such a threat is disallowed given
the absolute priority of this interest over other concerns. Note also that lexical priority can be justified here for all of the basic
liberties, not merely a subset of them (as was the case with the strains-of-commitment interpretation of the Equal Liberty of
Conscience Argument).14


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
362 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

362

Moral Resolution O/W Util

Utilitarianism fails to take into account prima facie rights moral resolution of conflicts necessary.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy. 1986.
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. Pg 133.

The theory of prima facie human rights that is outlined here is one in terms of prima facie rights, many of which are rights
of recipience, in which the rights create obligations and claims that collide with one another and with the moral demands
created by other values. Many of these conflicts are to be resolved without reference, or with only negative reference, to
consequences. When the consequences do enter seriously into the resolution of the conflicts, the solution arrived at is often
very different from that which would be dictated by utilitarian considerations. The points made in the preceding section may
be illustrated by reference to conflicts of prima facie human rights such as the right to life, viewed as a right of recipience,
the right to moral autonomy and integrity- and values such as pleasure and happiness, and the absence of pain and suffering.
A consideration of the morally rightful resolution of such conflicts brings out the inadequacy of the utilitarian calculus as a
basis for determining the morally right response to such situations and conflicts.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
363 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

363

Morals Compatible With Util

Concept of morals not mutually exclusive with utilitarianism.
Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg 204-205.

There is, however, another line of thinking that connects desirability with moral obligation for the utilitarian, and in fact
shows why a utilitarian requires a concept of moral obligation and what the concept will be. This line of reasoning goes
as follows. We begin with the assumption that the utilitarian wants to maximize happiness in society. Now, he knows that
one important means to his goal, indeed the only one within our control, is human actions with that effect. So he will want
acts that produce welfare, ideally ones that will maximize it as compared with other options. Let us say, then, that he will want
expedient acts as a means to happiness. But the thoughtful utilitarian will further ask himself how he can bring it about that people perform acts which, taken
together, will maximize happiness. One way, and surely a good way up to a point, is to employ moral education to make people more sympathetic or
altruistic; if they become so, they will tend to act more frequently to produce happiness in others. It looks, however, ;as if such educational encouragement of
sympathy is not enough, mainly because people are ill-informed about the probable consequences of what they do, and in any case because the intent to do
as much good as one can may lead to action at cross-purposes rather than to more beneficial cooperative behavior. So the utilitarian, who wants
maximal happiness, will do something more than just try to motivate people to aim directly at it. It will occur to him that a
legal system, with its sanctions and implicit directives, will both guide people what to do, and at the same time provide
motivation to conform to the legal standards. He will want, with Bentham, a legal system which as a whole will maximize
happiness by producing pro-social conduct at the least cost. Moreover, the one thing should be clear: If the moral system has
been carefully devised, there will not be gross disparity between what it requires and conduct that promises to maximize
benefit. To avoid such disparity, an optimal rule-utilitarian moral code will contain " escape clauses." For instance, it will
permit a driver to obstruct a driveway illegally when there is an emergency situation. But suppose there is a minor disparity
between the requirements of the moral code and what will do most good: suppose Mary will have to walk to work tomorrow,
but the gain in convenience to the person who obstructs her driveway will be: greater than the loss to her. Will the consistent
utilitarian then advise the driver to park illegally? Let us suppose the utilitarian has decided that a utility maximizing moral
code will not direct a person to do what he thinks will maximize expectable utility in a particular situation, but to follow
certain rules - roughly, to follow his conscientious principles, as amended where long-range utility requires. If he has decided
this, then it is inconsistent of him to turn around and advise individuals just to follow their discretion about what will
maximize utility in a particular case. Of course, the utilitarian will want everyone to be sensitive to the utility of giving aid to
others and avoiding injury; requirements or encouragement to do so are pan of our actual moral cede, and it is optimal for the
code to be $0. But once it is decided that the optimal code is not that of act-utilitarianism, the utilitarian will say it is desirable
for a person to follow the optimal moral code, that is, follow conscience except where utility demands amendment of the
principles of the code, So it seems the consistent utilitarian will conclude that there is a moral obligation not to obstruct Mary'
s driveway illegally, in accordance with the optimal code.

Successful integration of morality into utilitarian calculus possible.
Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg 212.

My conclusion is that if we are to be utilitarians in the sense that we think morality should maximize long-range utility, and
at the same time think that a utilitarian morality should have room for recognition of rights that cannot be overridden by
marginal gains in utility, there are two positions we must espouse. First, we must hold that a person does the right act, or the
obligatory act, not by just following his actual moral principles wherever they may lead, but by following the moral
principles the acceptance of which in society would maximize expectable utility. Of course, this means that people who want
to do what is right may have to do some thinking about their moral principles in particular situations. Second, we must
emphasize that the right act is the one permitted by or required by the moral code the acceptance of which promises to
maximize utility, and not compromise, except in extreme circumstances, in order to do what in a particular situation will
maximize utility , where so doing conflicts with the utility-maximizing code. Only if we do this will we have room for a
concept of " a right" which cannot be overridden by a marginal addition to the general welfare. It is clear that acting morally
in this sense will never be very costly in utility, and where it is costly at all, that is the price that has to be paid for a policy, a
morality of principle. If my exegesis of J. S. Mill is correct, these recommendations are ones in which he would join.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
364 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

364

No Rights = Violent Backlash

Failure to satisfy moral obligations leads to violent backlash.
Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pgs 188-189.

How can we absorb this idea into the conceptual scheme developed so far? Morality, as I have described it, is a feature of
agents - their motives, dispositions to fed guilt - and of the attitudes of the generality of other persons toward agents -
approval or disapproval of them. In my account nothing has been said about the patients, the targets of the behavior of agents.
I now suggest that we should extend our description of moral codes, to include something about patients. First. patients may
have a disposition to resent infringements of the rules we have been talking about when these impinge on them, when they
are the parties injured. or deprived. or threatened. Of course, people tend to resent any deliberate injury . so this reaction is
not specific to rules of rights.10 Second, persons who resent it when they are injured or deprived in one of these ways or even
when they are threatened because of the nonexistence of institutions able to protect them, may also be inclined not to feel
ashamed or embarrassed to protest on their own behalf. This feature need not occur, and in societies in which individuals
have felt it is their place to be downtrodden, ill-treated, and so on, it was not the case. Of course there are several levels of
this. The first is expression of resentment to the injuring party. A second level is public protest, or joining in a public protest,
calling attention to the situation and inviting sympathy and support, particularly for the institution of legal devices for
prevention of what has occurred or redress or punishment when it already has occurred. A third level is that of passive
disobedience, lack of cooperation, perhaps nonviolent economic pressure that causes inconvenience or discomfort on behalf
of a cause. Finally there is violent action, willingness to cause personal or property damage, in order to bring about a
change in those who are infringing moral obligations or to bring about legal institutions to prevent or punish such
infringements. Presumably the level of protest will normally correlate with the strength of the obligation being infringed and
the seriousness of the damage or threat. The practice of company stores might elicit one level of protest, the practice of lynch
law on members of a racial minority quite another.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
365 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

365

Right To Health O/W

Right to health outweighs violation of right to life.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pgs 127-128.

The right to health, like the right to bodily integrity, is related to but not whol1y based on the right to life. Ill health and
mutilation of the body need not threaten life. Deliberately to harm the health of persons is to violate their personhood,
impairing capacities, causing needless suffering, overriding wills. So too with violation of bodily integrity, as with
compulsory sterilization, barbarous forms of punishment such as chopping off hands, blinding, removing the tongue. In a real
sense, although not in the sense suggested in Locke's labor argument for private property nor in the sense claimed by many
feminists in their defense of abortion from a woman's right to control (and mutilate?) her body, our body is ours to care for
and maintain as the vehicle of our personhood. Although it is true that we can lose an organ, a leg, an eye, and still be the
same person, our body appertains to us as persons. The negative aspect of the case for the rights to health and bodily integrity
is evidently strong. How can another have the right to injure, infect, disease a person? So to act is to violate a right. A very
powerful moral justification would be necessary for such an act not to constitute a grave end illegitimate violation of a right.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
366 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

366

Poverty Moral Obligation

Humanity has a moral obligation to alleviate poverty.

UN General Assembly Press Release. December 2006.
United NationsWORLD HAS MORAL OBLIGATION TO FIGHT POVERTY, PROTECT HUMAN
RIGHTS OF MOST VULNERABLE, SAYS GENERAL ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT IN HUMAN
RIGHTS DAY MESSAGE 2006 www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm

Following is the message by Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly, on the
occasion of Human Rights Day, observed 10 December: This year, we commemorate Human Rights Day with the
theme Fighting Poverty: a matter of obligation not charity. When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so
intense, the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight poverty and to address the human rights concerns
of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to experience human rights violations, discrimination or
other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it harder to find a job and get access to basic services, such as
health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power and no voice. History is littered
with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to eradicate poverty and promote human rights, we need to
take action to empower the poor and address the root causes of poverty, such as discriminateon and social
exclusion. It is because human rights, poverty reduction and the empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that
we all have a moral duty to take action.


We have a moral obligation to solve poverty

Al Khalifa, President of the General Assembly, 06
Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly 8 December 2006
http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm

When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense, the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight
poverty and to address the human rights concerns of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to
experience human rights violations, discrimination or other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it harder to
find a job and get access to basic services, such as health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all about
having no power and no voice. History is littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to eradicate
poverty and promote human rights, we need to take action to empower the poor and address the root causes of
poverty, such as discrimination and social exclusion. It is because human rights, poverty reduction and the
empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to take action.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
367 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

367

Action Key End Result Irrelevant

People are not a means to a result, the results of an action are never as important as the action
itself.

Schapiro 2001 [Tamar Schapiro is professor of philosophy at Stanford. Three Conceptions of Action in Moral
Theory Ous, Mar 2001, Vol. 35 Issue 1, p93, 25p Ebsco]

Kamms view of action, though less explicit and developed, shares this propositional orientation. An action in accordance
with moral constraints, Kamm claims, states that another person has or lacks value as a matter of fact. And since there is such
a fact of the matter, actions can succeed or fail to express the truth.18 And yet on both Wollastons and Kamms accounts, the
world to which action relates us descriptively is not the utilitarians world of natural causes and effects.
The claim that youre really something is a not a claim about a persons empirical or psychological
state; rather it is a claim about his status.19 Similarly, the examples Wollaston invokes to illustrate his theory of
action all involve claims about the status of an agent in relation to others. Thus Wollastons view, echoed by Kamm, seems to
be that action tracks certain practical factsfacts about where we stand in relation to one another as
members of a social world. Wollastons conception of action seems to presuppose a moral psychology which is
different from Cumberlands. While Wollaston would not deny that every action involves an exercise of
efficient causality, his view suggests that our ultimate practical concern is not for the effects we
can produce. Indeed his conception implies that in addition to a causal element, action contains a reflexive
element. The exercise of human agency, according to Wollaston, involves a reflective awareness of ourselves in
relation to others.20 Action expresses a conception of where we stand in relation to the other constituents
of the world, conceived as a realm of status relations. Moreover, this awareness determines an ultimate
end of action which is not an effect to be brought about. That end is the faithful representation of the
interpersonal order of which we are members.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
368 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

368


**AT DEONTOLOGY/RIGHTS**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
369 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

369

Rights Violation Inev

Hatred between groups of people make human rights violations inevitable
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

The trouble with this response is pointed out by Richard Rorty, who offers the rejoinder, made by an agent who wants to
infringe upon the rights of another, that philosophers like Gewirth "seem ,oblivious to blatantly obvious moral
distinctions, distinctions any decent person would draw. ''8~ For Rorty, the problem cannot be solved by
sitting down with a chalkboard and diagramming how the agent and his potential victim are both PPAs.
It is, he argues, a problem that will not be solved by demonstrating that the agent violates his victim on
pain of self-contradiction because, for this agent, the victim is not properly a PPA, despite looking and acting very much
like one. The old adage about looking, swimming, and quacking like a duck comes to mind here; no
amount of quacking will convince the agent that his victim is, in fact, a duck. As Rorty points out,
This rejoinder is not just a rhetorical device, nor is it in any way irrational. It is heartfelt. The identity of these people, the
people whom we should like to convince to join our Eurocentric human rights culture, is bound up with their sense of who
they are not . . . . What is crucial for their sense of who they are is that they are not an infidel, not a queer, not a woman, not
an untouchable .... Since the days when the term "human being" was synonymous with "member of our tribe," we have
always thought of human beings in terms of paradigm members of the species. We have contrasted us, the real humans, with
rudimentary or perverted or deformed examples of humanity. 82
There are, I believe, two problems for Gewirth's theory here. The first is that an agent can quite clearly
sidestep rational inconsistency by believing that his victim is somehow less of an agent (and, in the case presented by
Rorty, less of a human being) than he is himself. The agent, here, might recognize that his victim is a PPA, but
other factors (being an infidel, a queer, a woman, or an untouchable) have far greater resonance and preclude her
having the same rights as the agent. He might also recognize his victim as a potential PPA, but not one in the fullest
sense of that term or one who has actually achieved that status; as Gewirth himself notes, "there are degrees of approach to
being prospective purposive agents. ''83 It seems to me that the Nazis knew quite well that their Jewish victims
could be PPAs in some sense; the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 confirm their awareness that Jews could plan and execute
the same sorts of actions they could (voting and working, for example). The rights of the Jews could be restricted, however,
because Jews were quite different from Germans; rather than PPAs in the fullest sense, they were, in the eyes of the Nazis,
what Rorty calls "pseudohumans. ''~4 On this point, Rorty's point is both clear and compelling: "Resentful young Nazi
toughs were quite aware that many Jews were clever and learned, but this only added to the pleasure
they took in beating such Jews. Nor does it do much good to get such people to read Kant and agree that one should not
treat rational agents simply as means. For everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the
only relevant sense--the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership in our moral community. ''s5 The
second problem for the PGC pointed out by Rorty is that it is overly academic and insufficiently pragmatic. In
other words, its fifteen steps might be logically compelling to those in a philosophy department, but not to
those who are actually making these decisions on inclusion and exclusion. "This is not," Rorty tells us,
"because they are insufficiently rational. It is, typically, because they live in a world in which it would be just too risky--
indeed, would often be insanely dangerous--to let one's sense of moral community stretch beyond one's family, clan, or tribe.
''86 This second point leads to the final critique of Gewirth's argument for the PGC.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
370 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

370

AT: Rights First

Rights dont come first conflicting values and ideologies.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pg 129.

Problems of a different kind are encountered by the claim that certain negative rights, for example, the right to life interpreted
as a right not to be killed, are always absolute, namely, that such a claim leads to morally unacceptable conclusions. Different
rights, for example, the rights to life and to moral autonomy and integrity, may conflict with one another, such that we have
morally to determine which to respect and in what way; the one right, such as the right to life, may give rise to conflicts, such
that we can protect, save one life, only by sacrificing or not saving another life. And rights may conflict with other values,
such as pleasure or pain, in ways that morally oblige us to qualify our respect for the right, as in curtailing acts directed at a
persons' self-development to prevent gross cruelty to animals. Thomists have offered partial, but only partial, replies to
criticisms based on these difficulties in terms of theories such as the Doctrine of Double Effect, the theory of the Unjust
Aggressor (who may be neither unjust nor morally responsible for what he does). However these replies themselves
encounter difficulties of many kinds, including those of involving their exponents in morally abhorrent conclusions not
unlike those to which they object when such I conclusions are shown to follow from rival theories.



Rights not absolute doesnt take into account intended good.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pg 129.

Thus the Doctrine of Double Effect permits the knowing, unintentional killing of thousands of innocent children for the sake
of a proportional good; yet it commits its exponents to losing a just war if success can be achieved, and millions of innocent
lives be saved, only by the intentional killing of one innocent person. Similarly objectionable conclusions follow about the
permissibility of killing morally innocent 'unjust aggressors' to save one's life. At the same time, acceptance of these
supporting theories amounts to an admission that human rights such as the right to life are not always absolute. How can it be
so if we are said to have the moral right intentionally to kill the morally innocent unjust aggressor, and knowingly, albeit
unintentionally, to kill innocent persons, when and if the intended good is proportionately good, and cannot be achieved
without bringing about the unintended, foreseen good?


No appropriate duty to satisfy rights of conscience.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pg 123..

The view that rights and duties are correlative would, if true, lend support to the reducibility-of-rights-to-duties thesis.'
However, whilst duties and rights may be correlative-as when by a voluntary act a person enters into a promise, contract,
becomes a parent - commonly / rights, and more evidently, basic human moral rights, and duties are not correlative. This is
so with the examples cited above. There may be no correlative duty to a right of conscience. With rights of recipience,
rights to aids and facilities, the duties that arise from the right are not the determinate, fixed, finite duties, correlative duties
are thought of as being. Equally, we may have important duties in respect of other persons, without those persons necessarily
having rights against us. This is often so in respect of duties of benevolence towards determinate persons. The duty to
maximize good, which dictates that we visit our lonely, ailing I aunt in hospital, need give her no moral right to our visit.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
371 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

371

AT: Rights First

No absolute rights competing values and rights of different groups.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pg 129.

A similar distinction needs to be drawn and a similar terminology is required in respect of basic human rights. They are
always rights-inalienable, intrinsic rights-but they are simply prima facie rights; they are rights that are absolute rights only
if they are not overridden by more stringent moral rights or other moral considerations. The introduction of this distinction
into human moral rights theory is both right and necessary. It does however greatly complicate the problem of determining
what are the absolute, morally operative rights of a person in any concrete situation. Yet the acknowledgment of this feature
of basic human rights is necessary for two reasons, the one because (physical resources may be inadequate to allow all to
enjoy their basic rights, and the other because, in specific situations, we may have to decide between the rights of different
persons, and between respecting rights and securing other values.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
372 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

372

AT Rawls

Rawls conception of rights flawed fails to explain why small incursions on liberty would
threaten citizenship.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 5. Project MUSE.

Up to this point, Rawls has said nothing about the priority of the basic liberties; rather, he has focused exclusively on their
equal provision. Only at the end of his main presentation of the Self-Respect Argument does he briefly discuss the Priority of
Liberty: When it is the position of equal citizenship that answers to the need for status, the precedence of the equal liberties
becomes all the more necessary. Having chosen a conception of justice that seeks to eliminate the significance of relative
economic and social advantages as supports for mens self-confidence, it is essential that the priority of liberty be firmly
maintained (p. 478).These two sentences provide a good illustration of what I earlier called the Inference Fallacy: Rawls tries
to derive the lexical priority of the basic liberties from the central importance of an interest they supportin this case, an
interest in securing self-respect for all citizens. Without question, the Self-Respect Argument makes a strong case for
assigning the basic liberties a high priority: otherwise, economic and social inequalities might reemerge as the primary
determinants of status and therefore of self-respect. It does not explain, however, why lexical priority is needed. Why, for
example, would very small restrictions on the basic liberties threaten the social basis of self-respect, so long as they were
equally applied to all citizens? Such restrictions would involve no subordination and, being very small, would be unlikely to
jeopardize the central importance of equal citizenship as a determinant of status.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
373 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

373

AT Rawls

Rawls fails to provide warrants for the absolute preservation of basic liberties over other ends.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pgs 20-21. Project MUSE.

Although Rawls briefly discusses and defends the Priority of Liberty early in Political Liberalism (PL, pp. 41, 74, 76), his
most sustained arguments for it are to be found late in the book, in the lecture entitled The Basic Liberties and Their
Priority. All of these arguments are framed in terms of Justice as Fairness rather than liberal political conceptions of justice
more generally, a point to which we will return below. The three arguments for the Priority of Liberty that we identified in
Theory can also be found in Political Liberalism, and both their strengths and weaknesses carry over into the new context.18
At least two new arguments can be found, however, arguments that I will refer to as the Stability Argument and the Well-
Ordered Society Argument, respectively. As I will now show, both of these arguments are further illustrations of the
Inference Fallacy. The Stability Argument has a structure similar to that of the Self- Respect Argument. In it, Rawls notes the
great advantage to everyones conception of the good of a . . . stable scheme of cooperation, and he goes on to assert that
Justice as Fairness is the most stable conception of justice . . . and this is the case importantly because of the basic liberties
and the priority assigned to them.Taking the second point first, Rawls never makes clear why the Priority of Liberty is
necessary for stability, as opposed to strongly contributory to it. Very small restrictions on the basic liberties would seem
unlikely to threaten it, and some types of restrictions (e.g., imposing fines for the advocacy of violent revolution or race
hatred) might actually enhance it. Even if we assume, however, that the Priority of Liberty is necessary for stability, this fact
is not enough to justify it: as highly valued as stability is, sacrificing the basic liberties that make it possible may be
worthwhile if such a sacrifice is necessary to advance other highly valued ends. Pointing out the high priority of stability, in
other words, is insufficient to justify the lexical priority of the basic liberties that support itonly the lexical priority of
stability would do so, yet Rawls provides no argument for why stability should be so highly valued.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
374 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

374

AT Rawls

Rawls conception of personal freedom cannot resolve utilitarian democratic ideals.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pgs 22-23. Project MUSE.

Rawls speculates that the narrower the differences between the liberal conceptions when correctly based on fundamental
ideas in a democratic public culture . . . the narrower the range of liberal conceptions defining the focus of the consensus. 25
By correctly based, Rawls appears to mean at least two things: first, that the conceptions should be built on the more
central of these fundamental ideas; second, that these ideas should be interpreted in the right way (PL, pp. 16768). For
example, Rawls asserts that his conception of the person as free and equal is central to the democratic ideal (PL, p. 167).
This idea is in competition with other democratic ideas, however (e.g., the idea of the common good as it is understood by
classical republicans), as well as with other interpretations of the same idea (e.g., the utilitarian understanding of equality
as the equal consideration of each persons welfare). A necessary condition, then, for Justice as Fairness to be the focus of an
overlapping consensus would be for adherents of all reasonable comprehensive doctrines to endorse this idea, along with the
interpretation Rawls gives it, as more central to the democratic ideal than other fundamental ideas. If they were to accept
not only this idea but also its companion idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, then the procedures of political
constructivism (including the Original Position) would presumably lead them to select Justice as Fairness as their political
conception of justice.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
375 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

375

AT: Liberty/Rights First

Priority of liberty not viable as basis of government at best it would be a competing theory
among other liberal conceptions of justice.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert. Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction. Princeton University Press.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 24. Project MUSE.

Is such acceptance likely? Consider the important example of the adherents of utilitarian reasonable comprehensive doctrines.
Would a utilitarian be able to endorse a Kantian conception of free persons, with its elevation of rationality over the
satisfaction of desire and its consequent implications for agent motivation in the Original Position? It seems unlikely that any
utilitarian (with the possible exception of John Stuart Mill in his most syncretic mood) would countenance this variety of
asceticism. Thus, utilitarians would be likely to focus on another interpretation of the idea of free persons or perhaps on an
entirely different fundamental idea or set of ideas; doing so would lead them to structure the Original Position differently and
would presumably produce a political conception of justice that did not include the Priority of Liberty. Rawls argues in
Political Liberalism that classical utilitarians (such as Jeremy Bentham and Henry Sidgwick) would be likely to endorse a
political conception of justice liberal in content, but he never suggests that they would choose the Priority of Liberty, or
Justice as Fairness more generally (PL, p. 170). We can conclude from this finding that the class of liberal political
conceptions of justice constituting the focus of a realistic overlapping consensus would include conceptions that did not
endorse the Priority of Liberty (although they would all give the basic liberties special priority). Moreover, Justice as
Fairness might not be alone among the liberal conceptions in endorsing the Priority of Liberty: a reasonable comprehensive
doctrine might, for example, support a Kantian conception of free persons but not Rawlss particular interpretation of society
as a fair system of cooperation, leading through the procedures of political constructivism to a liberal conception of justice
that endorsed the Priority of Liberty but rejected, say, the Difference Principle. Thus, the Priority of Liberty would be one
competitor idea among many in an overlapping consensus, endorsed by both adherents of Kantian comprehensive doctrines
and their fellow travelers, but rejected by others.


No justification for violation of rights to prevent external loss - principle of intervening actions means
that government is not held responsible for death of others.
Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U Chicago. 1994.
Alan. Are There Any Absolute Rights? Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Joram Graf Haber. Pgs 143.

He may be said to intend the many deaths obliquely, in that they are a foreseen but unwanted side-effect of his refusal . But
he is not responsible for that side-effect because of the terrorist s' intervening action. It would be unjustified to violate the
mother's right to life in order to protect the rights to life of the many other residents of the city. For rights cannot be
justifiably protected by violating another right which, according to the criterion of degrees of necessity for action, is at
least equally important. Hence, the many other residents do not have a right that the mother' s right to life be violated for their
sakes . To be sure , the mother also does not have a right that their equally important rights be violated in order to protect
hers. But here too it must be emphasized that in protecting his mother's right the son does not violate the rights of the others;
for by the principle of the intervening action, it is not he who is causally or morally responsible for their deaths . Hence
too he is not treating them as mere means to his or his mother's ends.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
376 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

376

AT: Morals First

Government cannot act to uphold the rights of the subject on the basis of moral principle.
Gewirth, professor of philosophy, 81.
Alan. Reason and Morality. Pg 65.

In the agent's statement, 'I have rights to freedom and well-being,' the subject of the rights is the agent himself, the same
person for whom freedom and well-being are necessary goods. The object of the rights is these same necessary goods. Now
in rights-judgments, the subject who is said to have rights is not always the same as the person who makes a claim or a right-
judgment attributing the rights to the subject. Moreover, a rights-judgment need not be set forth independently; it may,
instead, figure as a subordinate clause wherein the attribution of rights to the subject is only conditional. In all cases.
however, there is assumed some reason or ground that is held, at least tentatively, to justify that attribution. This reason may,
but need not, be some moral or legal code. In the present case, where what is at issue is the justification of a moral
principle, such a principle cannot, of course, be adduced as constituting the justifying ground for the attribution of the
generic rights to the agent. Rather, in his statement making this attribution, the justifying reason of the generic rights as
viewed by the agent is the fact that freedom and well-being are the most general and proximate necessary conditions of all his
purpose- fulfilling actions, so that without his having these conditions his engaging in purposive action would be futile or
impossible. Because of this necessity, the agent who is the subject of the generic rights is assumed to set forth or uphold the
rights-judgment himself, as knowing what conditions must be fulfilled if he is to be a purposive agent; and he upholds the
judgment not merely conditionally or tentatively but in an unqualified way.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
377 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

377

AT: Gewirth

Gewirths theories fail to leave the theoretical realm
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

Despite his best efforts to demonstrate the way in which the PGC applies to real agents, Beyleveld has
simply restated Gewirth's argument and, in my estimation, added additional jargon that seems to encourage
rather than refute Held's objection. The biggest difficulty with this defense--apart from the way it is worded,
which lends credence to our belief that there is something not quite human about these PPAs--is that Beyleveld seems
to have conflated characteristics and purposes. It is correct that a PPA must accept the PGC regardless of the nature
of his purposes, for having any purposes at all entails that he is a PPA and being a PPA necessitates his acceptance of the
PGC. However, it does not follow that he must accept the PGC regardless of the nature of his (or others')
characteristics, for these characteristics might invalidate some aspect of the PGC. He might be, for
example, one of the unfortunate marginal agents discussed above; alternately, he might be acting upon one of
those marginal agents, in which case he need not worry about granting the generic rights that he claims for himself.
Beyleveld's response to this concern seems lackluster: "a PPA, regardless of its particular occurrent characteristics,
is logically required to concentrate attention on the generic features as the basis of its rights-claims, and must restrict its
categorically binding rights-claims to these features, because it is not logically required to attend to any other features. "94
Leaving aside the fact that Beyleveld refers to PPAs as neither "him" nor "her," but rather "it," at the same
time that he is attempting to humanize them, the argument he makes here does not stand up to scrutiny.
All he claims is that PPAs are required to base their rights-claims on the generic features of action (which
everyone, except for marginal agents, must possess)b because they are not required to base those claims on other features.
This does not mean that a PPA cannot base his claim on characteristics other than the generic features of
action; it simply means he must also include the generic features of action in his claim, as they--like the
other characteristics--are necessarily connected with agency. By and large, then, it seems that Gewirth has
not gone a great distance toward refuting this critique nor has Beyleveld offered much assistance. In fact,
Gewirth seems to recognize his shortcoming even as he attempts to offer his response to Engels: "Hence,
while not entirely exempt from Engels's criticism, the present approach in terms of the generic features of action has an
important justification. For it sets up a morally neutral starting point that does not accept persons' actual power relations and
other differences as a moral datum. ''95 This, though, seems to be the point of Engels' critique and of more recent critiques of
analytical theories that attempt to abstract from the world in order to discuss it. Indeed, Michael Sandel's objections to Rawls'
well-known ideas of the original position and veil of ignorance are equally apt in looking at the greatest weakness of
Gewirth's theory. Although Sandel stands quite close to Rawls on the question of what a liberal society's principles of justice
ought to be, he contends that Rawls' assumptions about the populace of that society provide a poor foundation for his
principles.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
378 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

378

AT: Gewirth

Gewirths study of contradiction fails, he never isolates where negative consequences come from
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

To begin, then, let us consider the argument that engaging in a self-contradictory action could be
impossibly problematic for any agent. It is important to note that the problem of contradiction seems
simply to be implied, for nowhere does Gewirth actually make a case for why we may not engage quite
comfortably in self-contradiction. In fact, in a footnote dealing with Millard Schumaker's multiple objections to the
PGC, Beyleveld points out that quite the opposite is the case: "The error lies in Schumaker's reading of "incurring the
pain of sell-contradiction.' We are to understand that Gewirth argues that PPAs will be motivated to be moral by the fact that
to act immorally is to suffer some form of emotional distress. But to say that X does Y on "pain of self contradiction" is to
say only that if X does Y, then X contradicts itself. It is not to say that if X does Y. then X contradicts itself
and that this state of affairs causes X to suffer anguish. ''67 It seems, then that self-contradiction is not
necessarily painful for the agent. If it is not, we might wonder, what reason is there for avoiding it,
particularly if engaging in it could be in an agent's self-interest or if avoiding it turns out to be costly? The only answer that
Gewirth seems to provide comes at the very beginning of his argument for the PGC, in the following statement about his
rational agent: "It is to be noted that the criterion of "rational' here is a minimal deductive one, involving consistency or the
avoidance of self-contradiction in ascertaining or accepting what is logically involved in one's acting for purposes and in the
associated concepts. "68 The assumption, here, is that all agents have a meta-desire for consistency upon which all of their
rational decisions are built. And yet, it seems important to question whatever we can assume that human
beings are necessarily rational actors who behave as Gewirth outlines or, instead, a bundle of desires
engaged in continual struggle, especially after looking at the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
379 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

379

AT: Gewirth

Gewirth ignores the fundamental differences between peoples
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

While this Lacanian critique is an interesting one, it is not the strongest argument against Gewirth on the question of
contradiction. Though it might be the case that people are unable to rationally order their preferences, as Lacan argues, or that
some people do not have the sort of meta-desire for rational consistency that Gewirth assumes for the purposes of his theory,
it certainly seems to be more often the ease that people can and do. What Gewirth fails to consider properly, however,
is the ability that people have to rationalize their actions in an effort to avoid the cognitive dissonance
that comes with self-contradiction. He clearly recognizes the problem, pointing out that "some person may
without inconsistency claim the right to inflict various harms on other persons on the ground that he possesses qualities that
are had only by himself or by some group he favors. ''72 By way of a response, as noted above, he puts forward the ASA:
that being a PPA is both the necessary and sufficient justificatory reason for having the generic rights. This
answer seems not to have placated Gewirth's detractors, nor has it gone far enough to suit me. Of course,
Beyleveld deals with multiple versions of this objection in the fortieth through forty-fifth objections to the PGC. One such
objection is that of Donald E. Geels, who "alleges that '[i]t is trivial to claim that whatever is right for one person
must be right for any relevantly similar person in any relevantly similar circumstances,' because there is no
determinate criterion of relevant similarity. ''73 This sounds remarkably similar to Gewirth's own objection to the formal
principle, described above. As Beyleveld points out, however, Gewirth has quite clearly specified the criterion of relevant
similarities: "a PPA must claim that it has the generic rights (according to the argument for the sufficiency of agency [ASA])
for the sufficient reason that it is a PPA. Because a PPA logically must claim the generic rights, it is the property of be/ng a
PPA that is logically required to be the criterion of relevant similarities. ''74 More interesting, in my estimation, are
arguments like the one made by N. Fotion, that "a 'fanatic' (read 'elitist') can grant itself rights on the grounds
that it is a superior PPA, yet refuse to grant these rights to other PPAs, who are not superior PPAs,
without contradiction. ''75


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
380 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

380

AT: Gewirth

Gewirths theories fail to answer how different people treat each other equally

Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

More challenging for Gewirth is the claim not that a PPA is in some way special and thereby deserving of rights, but
instead that some other PPA is somehow damaged and thereby not worthy of them. Such an argument,
however, seems neither to have been made directly against Gewirth nor is it carefully considered by him
or by Beyleveld. Gewirth seems to recognize the existence of this problem--indeed, he seems to put it forward
himself--but fails really to grapple with it in any meaningful way.
He says, To be P, that is, a prospective purposive agent, requires having the practical abilities the generic features of action:
the abilities to control one's behavior by one's unforced choice, to have knowledge of relevant circumstances, and to reflect
on one's purposes. These abilities are gradually developed in children, who will eventually have them in full; the abilities are
had in varying impaired ways by mentally deficient persons; and they are largely lacking among animals...Since the quality
that determines whether one has the generic rights is that of being P, it follows from these variations in degree, according to
the Principle of Proportionality, that although children, mentally deficient persons, and animals do not have the generic rights
in the full-fledged way normal human adults have them, members of these groups approach having the generic rights in
varying degrees, depending on the degree to which they have the requisite abilities. 77 Of course, in reading these remarks,
one must wonder whether it is acceptable to infringe upon the rights of those who fall within the
categories Gewirth lays out. If one is like a child, then perhaps it is acceptable for society to take away
one's rights to freedom and well-being. Surely that must be the case if one is like an animal for, as Gewirth says,
"the lesser the abilities, the less one is able to fulfill one's purposes without endangering oneself and
other persons. ''78 There is something rather troubling about making these sorts of statements, but
Gewirth seems not to see it. For him, it is sufficient to argue that one ought to have the generic rights to the degree to
which one approaches being a PPA. Beyleveld's response to this objection, unlike his many others, is
surprisingly lacking and is confined to a footnote. By doing so, he seems to have made things worse for
Gewirth, as he points out that five theorists have taken issue with the PGC on this important point but
then offers no substantive rejoinder.
He says, It seems to me that Gewirth's theory is essentially a theory of the rights of PPAs, and not a theory of human rights
as such...From this ft follows that there are some human beings (those who are not even marginal agents) who do not have
the generic rights, and that nonhuman beings might have the generic rights...The question of the rights of "marginal agents"
is, however, a more complex one. I do not discuss this, because I view its importance as being for the argument from the
PGC, rather than the argument to the PGC, with which this book is solely concerned; so I shall not discuss any of the above
claims in detail. 79




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
381 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

381

AT: Gewirth

Human beings are infinitely more complex than Gewirths theories assume
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

In order to offer a truly compelling secular foundation for the idea of human rights, one must do more
than Gewirth has done in demonstrating the logical necessity of accepting a principle that entails the universalization of
the generic rights of freedom and well-being. As we have seen. Gewirth crafts an interesting argument for human
rights in theory, but runs into considerable trouble when his theory is put into practice. As critics like Rorty
and Sandel point out, there is something about the Principle of Generic Consistency that rings a bit hollow.
For Rorty, the problem lies in Gewirth's failure to appreciate the fierce partiality that often drives human
rights violations; it is a confusion to point out contradictions to those who either refuse to recognize them or are not
terribly troubled by them. For Sandel, the PGC must fail for the same reason that Rawls' original position fails;
there is simply no getting around the fact that human beings are more complex than abstract possessors
of goods or prospective purjoiiooposive agents. Any examination of human life that abstracts in these ways removes the
discussion too far from the real world in which human rights are actually violated. These violations cannot be said to
be the same thing as the simple removal of freedom and well-being from a PPA, for this sort of language
is hopelessly sterile. Human rights violations happen, instead, to men like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Primo
Levi, who struggle desperately to survive and, if successful, carry the scars of their experiences with
them for the rest of their lives. This is a mistake of the highest order, one that insults the victims and
survivors of some of humanity's most terrible tragedies. It is one that Gewirth and Beyleveld cannot
possibly intend to make, but one that creeps up on them as the abstractions with which they deal
multiply.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
382 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

382

AT: Gewirth

Gewirths academic discussion of human rights ignores the actual human cost and suffering of
torture and death
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of Generic Consistency" Peer
Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf

In abstracting away so many characteristics from human beings in order to create the prospective purposive agent,
something has clearly been lost from Gewirth's account of the justification for human inviolability. It
might be philosophically interesting to consider whether the generic features of action can logically provide a secular
grounding for the idea of human fights, but what is at stake for Gewirth seems overly academic. Human rights,
however, are not simply academic and their justification is far more than a philosophical puzzle; they are
deadly serious, often a matter of life and death. For this reason, human fights cannot be considered in a
vacuum, and any attempt at their justification must be firmly entrenched in the real world. While I have
quibbled with the PGC on its own terms and argued that (15) does not necessarily follow from (1), and while I have noted
that a great many other theorists have done likewise, my deepest critique is that the PGC's assumptions cause a
great deal of trouble whether or not Gewirth's theory ultimately makes logical sense. As Rorty argues,
Gewirth's theory removes the discussion of human rights from the realm of the actual and concentrates
on the purely theoretical. In doing so, it calls to mind Arthur Koestler's point that "Statistics don't bleed; it is
the detail which counts. ''98 Neither, it seems to me, do PPAs. And the terrible reality is that human beings
do, often at the hands of others. This grim reality is not surprising to anyone, but it is not often expressed
in the way that Samantha Power does, for example. In writing about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Power offers a quotation
from a UN official on the ground during the worst of the violence: When we arrived, I looked at the school across the street,
and there were children, I don't know how many, forty, sixty, eighty children stacked up outside who had all been
chopped up with machetes. Some of their mothers had heard them screaming and had come running, and the militia had
killed them, too. We got out of the vehicle and entered the church. There we found 150 people, dead mostly, though some
were still groaning, who had been attacked the night before .... The Rwandan army had cleared out the area, the gendarmerie
had rounded up all the Tutsi, and the militia had hacked them to death. 99 This sort of thick description stands in
marked contrast to the kind of language that Gewirth employs in his discussion of the PGC's
applications. Consider the following example, one of the few in which Gewirth departs from talking about
PPAs and assigns names: Suppose Ames physically assaults Blake, who defends himself by physically assaulting Ames.
In a purely formal view, Ames and Blake are each disobeying the moral principle that requires persons to respect and not
infringe one another's well-being. On the PGC's substantive view, however, these two infractions are not on a par as being both
unjustified. Since Ames inflicted or acted to inflict basic harm on Blake. and hence intended to violate a generic right of Blake
while acting in accord with his own generic rights, Ames's intention was inconsistent and his action morally wrong? ~176
Because they are not real and no attempt has been made to make them real for us, we do not--we cannot-
-become emotional'ly attached to Ames and Blake, and we do not care, therefore, what happens to either of
them. Our eyes trip lightly over the words "physically assaults" in Gewirth's example in a way that they
cannot move past the words "who had all been chopped up with machetes" in Power's.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
383 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

383

Ethics Bad

Ethics is structurally flawed, in that it implies a transgression
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 95-
96)
This is why we propose to maintain the concept of the act developed by Kant, and to link it to the
thematic of overstepping of boundaries, of transgression, to the question of evil. It is a matter of
acknowledging the fact that any (ethical) act precisely in so far as it is an act, is necessarily evil. We
must specify, however, what is meant here by evil. This is the evil that belongs to the very structure of
the act, to the fact that the latter always implies a transgression, a change in what is. It is not a matter
of some empirical evil, it is the very logic of the act which is denounced as radically evil in every
ideology. The fundamental ideological gesture consists in providing an image for this structural evil.
The gap opened by an act (i.e. the unfamiliar, out-of-place effect of an act) is immediately linked in
this ideological gesture to an image. As a rule this is an image of suffering, which is then displayed to
the public alongside this question: Is this what you want? And this question already implies the answer:
It would be impossible, inhuman, for you to want this! Here we have to insist on theoretical rigour, and
separate this (usually fascinating) image exhibited by ideology from the source of uneasiness from the
evil which is not an undesired, secondary effect of the good but belongs, on the contrary, to its
essence. We could even say that the ethical ideology struggles against evil because this ideology is
hostile to the good, to the logic of the act as such. We could go even further here: the current
saturation of the social field by ethical dilemmas (bioethics, environmental ethics, cultural ethics,
medical ethics) is strictly correlative to the repression of ethics, that is, to an incapacity to think
ethics in its dimension of the Real, an incapacity to conceive of ethics other than simply as a set of
restrictions to yet another aspect of modern society: to the depression which seems to have became
the social illness of our time and to set the tone of the resigned attitude of the (post)modern man of
the end of history. In relation to this, it would be interesting to reaffirm Lacans thesis according to
which depression isnt a state of the soul, it is simply a moral failing, as Dante, and even Spinoza, said:
a sin, which means a moral weakness. It is against this moral weakness or cowardice [lachete morale]
that we must affirm the ethical dimension proper.

The ideology of good and evil is inherently flawed
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 90-
91)
The first difficulty with this concept of diabolical evil lies in its very definition: that diabolical evil
would occur if we elevated opposition to the moral law to the level of a maxim (a principle or law).
What is wrong with this definition? Given the Kantian concept of the moral law which is not a law
that says do this or do that, but an enigmatic law which only commands us to do our duty, without
ever naming it the following objection arises: if the opposition to the moral law were elevated to a
maxim or principle, it would no longer be an opposition to the moral law, it would be the moral law
itself. At this level no opposition is possible. It is not possible to oppose oneself to the moral law at the
level of the (moral) law. Nothing can oppose itself to the moral law on principle that is, for non-
pathological reasons without itself becoming a moral law. To act without allowing pathological
incentives to influence our actions is to do good. In relation to this definition of the good, (diabolical)
evil would then have to be defined as follows: it is evil to oppose oneself, without allowing pathological

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
384 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

384

incentives to influence ones actions, to actions which do not allow any pathological incentives to
influence ones actions. And this is simply absurd.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
385 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

385

Ethics Bad

The real drive behind ethics is desire, not the will to do good
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 3-4)
Kants second break with the tradition, related to the first, was his rejection of the view that ethics is concerned
with the distribution of the good (the service of goods in Lacans terms). Kant rejected an ethics based on my
wanting what is good for others, provided of course that their good reflects my own.
It is true that Lacans position concerning the status of the ethics of desire continued to develop. Hence his position in
Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis) differs on several points from the one he adopted in
Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis). That the moral law, looked at more closely, is simply desire in its
pure state is a judgment which, had it been pronounced in Seminar VII, would have had the value of a compliment; clearly
this is no longer the case when it is pronounced in Seminar XI. Yet even though the later Lacan claims that the analysts
desire is not a pure desire, this does not mean that the analysts desire is pathological (in the Kantian sense of the word), nor
that the question of desire has lost its pertinence. To put the matter simply, the question of desire does not so much lose its
central place as cease to be considered the endpoint of analysis. In the later view analysis ends in another
dimension, that of the drive. Hence as the concluding remarks of Seminar XI have it before this dimension opens up
to the subject, he must first reach and then traverse the limit within which, as desire, he is bound.



Morality is a demand for the impossible as it is based on our desires
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 3)
Kant is admired by Lacan above all for his break, at two crucial points, with traditional ethics. The first is his
break with the morality that spelled out obligations in terms of the possibility of fulfilling them. According
to Lacan, the crucial point here is that morality as such, as Kant well knew, is a demand for the impossible: the
impossibility in which we recognize the topology of our desire. By insisting on the fact that the moral imperative
is not concerned with what might or might not be done, Kant discovered the essential dimension of
ethics: the dimension of desire, which circles around the real qua impossible. This dimension was excluded from the
purview of traditional ethics, and could therefore appear to it only as an excess. So Kants crucial first step involves taking
the very thing excluded from the traditional field of ethics, and turning it into the only legitimate territory for ethics.
If critics often criticize Kant for demanding the impossible, Lacan attributes an incontestable theoretical value to this Kantian
demand.


Ethics is merely a tool by which personal morals are imposed on others, which is the root of
discontent in society
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 1)
The Freudian blow to philosophical ethics can be summarized as follows: what philosophy calls the moral law and,
more precisely, what Kant calls the categorical imperative is in fact nothing other than the superego. This
judgment provokes an effect of disenchantment that calls into question any attempt to base ethics on foundations other than
the pathological. At the same time, it places ethics at the core of what Freud called das Unbehagen in der Kultur.
the discontent or malaise at the heart of civilization. In so far as it has its origins in the constitution of the
superego, ethics becomes nothing more than a convenient tool for any ideology which may try to pass off
its own commandments as the truly authentic, spontaneous and honourable inclinations of the subject.
This thesis, according to which the moral law is nothing but the superego, calls, of course, for careful examination, which I
shall undertake in Chapter 7 below.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
386 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

386

Ethics Bad

It is impossible to determine whether an action is truly ethical or not
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 16-
17)
By spelling things out in this way we can see clearly that the ethical is, in fact, essentially a supplement. Let us, then, begin
with the first level (the legal). The content of action (its matter), as well as the form this content, are
exhausted in the notion of in conformity with duty. As long as I do my duty nothing remains to be
said. The fact that the act that fulfils my duty may have been done exclusively for the sake of this duty
would change nothing at level of analysis. Such an act would be entirely indistinguishable from an act
done simply in accord with duty, since their results would be exactly the same. The significance of acting
(exclusively) for the sake of duty will be visible only on the second level analysis, which we will simply call the level form.
Here we come across a form which is no longer the form of anything, of some content of other, yet it is not so much an empty
form as form outside content, a form that provides form only for itself. In other words, we confronted here with a supply
which at the same time seems to be pure waste, something that serves absolutely no purpose.



Ethics in terms of attempts to do something good only re-entrenches the presence of the
omnipresent evil
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 86)
The theme of radical evil is currently something of a hot topic, and Kant, as a theoretician of radical evil, is subject to very
diverse and sometimes contradictory readings. In his book, LEthique Alain Badiou points out that the topic of
radical evil has become a spectre raised by ethical ideologists every time a will to do something (good)
appears. Every positive project is capable of being undermined in advance on the grounds that it might
bring about an even greater evil. Ethics would thus be reduced to only one function: preventing evil, or
at least lessening it. It seems that such an ethics of the lesser evil is justified in its reference to Kant. The criticism of
Kant according to which he defined the criteria of the (ethical) act in such a way that one can never satisfy them goes as far
back as Hegel. From this point it follows that all our actions are necessarily bad, and that one can remain
pure only if one chooses not to act at all. In this perspective, good does not exist, whereas evil is
omnipresent.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
387 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

387

Deontology Bad No Assume Nuke War

Deontology does not hold up against the threat of nuclear war.
Hardin and Mearsheimer 85 [ Russell Hardin and John Mearsheimer are both Professors of Political Science at the
University of Chicago, ol. 95, No. 3, Special Issue: Symposium on Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence JSTOR ]

Discussion among philosophers often stops at the point of fundamental disagreement over moral
principles, just as discussion among strategists often stops at the point of disagreement over hypothetical assertions about
deterrence. But most moral theorists -- and all utilitarians -- also require consideration of hypothetical
assertions to reach their conclusions, although they are typically even less adept at objective, causal argument
than are strategists, who are themselves often quite casual with their social scientific claims. Even if one
wishes to argue principally from deontological principles, one must have some confidence in one's
social scientific expectations to decide whether consequences might not in this instance be overriding.
Only a deontologist who held the extraordinary position that consequences never matter could easily
reach a conclusion on nuclear weapons without considering the quality of various outcomes. Alas, on this
dreadful issue good causal arguments are desperately needed.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
388 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

388

Deontology Bad - Policy

Deontology is a terrible system for policy- policies must use means to an end framework and are
judged by their effectiveness

Institute For Public Policy 97 [ Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June, 1997 A Forum on the Role of
Environmental Ethics http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf]


At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for
public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in
public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a
regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually
making it worse. For example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the
best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to believe that any policy
that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so. Any number of policies might work, and others,
although seemingly consistent
with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for environmental
policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based environmental
laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level enforcement
officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their attendant incentive
structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation.
(There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often perverse outcomes
of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins,
1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist would, I believe,
be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman, The number of values
typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad categories which must be employed and above
all, thescope and complexity of the consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so
conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is seldom the case that only
one policy will meet the criteria of the public interest (1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy,
policymakers have an ethical duty to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the
problems they address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do
something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and methodology of
utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety are an insufficient,
though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy.
.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
389 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

389

Deontology Bad - Policy

Deontology is irrelevant in policy making - intentions are impossible to know, only the outcome
matters
Hinman98
(Lawrence Hinman is a professor of Ethics Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, p. 186)

When, for example, we want to assess the moral correctness of proposed governmental legislation, we may
well wish to set aside any question of the intentions of the legislators. After all good laws may be passed
for the most venal of political motives, and bad legislation may be the outcome of quite good intentions.
Instead, we can concentrate solely on the question of what
effects the legislation may have on the people. When we make this shift, we
are not necessarily denying that individual intentions are important on some
level, but rather confining our attention to a level on which those intentions become largely irrelevant.
This is particularly appropriate in the case of policy decisions by governments, corporations, or other groups. In
such cases there may be a diversity of different intentions that one may want to treat as essentially
private matters hwen assessing the moral worth of the proposed law, policy, or action. Therefore, rule
utilitarianism's neglect of intentions intuitively makes the most sense when we are assessing the moral
worth of some large-scale policy proposed by an entity consisting of more than one individual.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
390 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

390

Deontology Bad - Democracy

Deontology in policy making fails to uphold democracy and legitimizes oppression.


Institute For Public Policy 97 [ Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June, 1997 A Forum on the Role of
Environmental Ethics http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf]

Regarding the policymaking role of deontological philosophy in a democracy, I am concerned about the
same issue that concerned scholars such as Herman Finer and Victor Thompson--the specter of
policymakers (whether elected or unelected) imposing their own perceptions of higher-order moral
principles on an unwilling or uninformed society. History has shown that the imposition of higher-order
moral principles from above all too often degenerates into instrumental oppression. Thus as Finer has--I
believe correctly--pointed out, the crucial difference between democracy and totalitarianism is the people's
power to exact obedience to the public will. In a democracy, values are not "discovered" by policy
activists; instead, yhey emerge out of the democratic process. For this reason I find very troubling the suggestion
by Joel Kassiola that environmental ethics requires that such long-standing and powerful values as national sovereignty and
property rights will have to be ethically assessed and, perhaps, redefined or subordinated to a
more morally-weighty, environmentally-based values and policies. I cannot help but wonder just who will
be doing the refining and subordinating of these values and how this is to be done. As Kurt Baier reminds us, in a
democracy the moral rules and convictions of any group can and should be subjected to certain tests
(1958, p. 12). That test is the submission of those moral rules and convictions
to the sovereign public. While policymakers are expected to sort out the value conflicts that arise in light
of their duty to serve the public interest, they are seldom entitled to act solely according to some
perceived a priori moral imperative. (Those who would act this way in the case of environmental policy are aptly
described by Bob Taylor as environmental ethicists who discover 'truth' even though this truth can't or won't be seen by their
fellow citizens.) Herein lies one of the important moral dilemmas of democratic government. Individuals
are free, within the constraints of law, to act on perceived moral imperatives; democratic governments
are not. It is, for example, one thing for individuals to donate their property for environmental
preservation, but it is quite another thing for the government
to seize private lands (i.e., redefine property rights) for the same purpose.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
391 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

391

Deontology Bad -- Conflicts


Deontology fails-- no way of evaluating conflicting obligations

Rainbow 2002 [ Catherine Rainbow is a teacher at Davidson College.Descriptions of Ethical Theories and Principles
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/Indep/carainbow/Theories.htm]

Although deontology contains many positive attributes, it also contains its fair number of flaws. One weakness of
this theory is that there is no rationale or logical basis for deciding an individual's duties. For
instance, businessman may decide that it is his duty to always be on time to meetings. Although this
appears to be a noble duty we do not know why the person chose to make this his duty. Perhaps the reason
that he has to be at the meeting on time is that he always has to sit in the same chair. A similar scenario unearths two other
faults of deontology including the fact that sometimes a person's duties conflict, and that deontology is not concerned
with the welfare of others. For instance, if the deontologist who must be on time to meetings is running
late, how is he supposed to drive? Is the deontologist supposed to speed, breaking his duty to society to
uphold the law, or is the deontologist supposed to arrive at his meeting late, breaking his duty to be on
time? This scenario of conflicting obligations does not lead us to a clear ethically correct resolution
nor does it protect the welfare of others from the deontologist's decision. Since deontology is not based
on the context of each situation, it does not provide any guidance when one enters a complex situation in
which there are conflicting obligations (1,2).



The need for exceptions means deontology fails as a theory.

Treasury Board 2006 [Canadian Treasury Board Professional Ethics and Standards for the Evaluation
Community in the Government of Canada http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/eval/dev/career/pesecgc-enpcegc/pesecgc-
enpcegc_e.asp]


Among the criticisms of deontological theory is that it is difficult to get universal agreement on
what principles should be considered fundamental. It is also difficult to prioritize and to apply
such abstract principles as truth telling and the sanctity of life to specific cases that arise in ones
day-to-day work. In addition, the application of certain principles, without reference to
consequences, can have extremely negative resultsfor example, when telling the truth results
in penalties for well-intentioned actions. Moreover, it is often the case that one principle will
come into conflict with another. A celebrated example is truth telling versus the sanctity of life
when one is considering whether to lie to a prospective murderer about the location of the
intended victim. It is also argued that if exceptions are made in the application of a principle, it
cannot be considered a fundamental one. Many deontologists, however, would approve of
exceptions when a greater moral principle is at stake. At a less dramatic level than life and death,
one can envisage an evaluator having to choose between the publics right to know and a clients
right to privacy.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
392 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

392

Deontology Bad Subjective Rights

The subjectivity of what rights are important means deontology fails.

Rainbow 2002 [ Catherine Rainbow is a teacher at Davidson College.Descriptions of Ethical Theories and Principles
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/Indep/carainbow/Theories.htm]
In the rights ethical theory the rights set forth by a society are protected and given the highest priority. Rights
are considered to be ethically correct and valid since a large or ruling population endorses them.
Individuals may also bestow rights upon others if they have the ability and resources to do so (1). For example, a
person may say that her friend may borrow the car for the afternoon. The friend who was given the ability to
borrow the car now has a right to the car in the afternoon. A major complication of this theory on a larger
scale, however, is that one must decipher what the characteristics of a right are in a society. The society
has to determine what rights it wants to uphold and give to its citizens. In order for a society to determine
what rights it wants to enact, it must decide what the society's goals and ethical priorities are. Therefore, in
order for the rights theory to be useful, it must be used in conjunction with another ethical theory that
will consistently explain the goals of the society (1). For example in America people have the right to choose
their religion because this right is upheld in the Constitution. One of the goals of the founding fathers' of
America was to uphold this right to freedom of religion. However, under Hitler's reign in Germany, the Jews
were persecuted for their religion because Hitler decided that Jews were detrimental to Germany's future
success. The American government upholds freedom of religion while the Nazi government did not
uphold it and, instead, chose to eradicate the Jewish religion and those who practiced it.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
393 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

393

Extinction O/W Deontology

The risk of extinction is so great that deontological framework needs to be ignored in evaluating it.


Schell 82[Jonathan Schell 1982 Fate of the Earth pp. 93-96]

To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation just as it would be a misrepresentation
to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the
adversaries may not use all their weapons. If they do use all their weapons, the global effects in the ozone and elsewhere, may
be moderate. And if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand them
without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that mankind will not be extinguished
in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our
sense of urgency. Yet at the same time we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use
all their weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we as yet unaware, may be severe, that the ecosphere
may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished. We are left with uncertainty, and
are forced to make our decisions in a state of uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster
our resolve in spite of our awareness that the life of the species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other hand, if we
wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may be in danger of imminent self-
destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized
that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face the possibility of
extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would probably
occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass of
"the basic power of the universe" and of a means by which man could release that energy altered the relationship between
man and the source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the life of the human
species doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world ever since the
first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before
starting to worry about it. At just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having
the technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not
precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in
existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of
risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and
immeasurably greater than that of any other risk and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into
account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the framework of life; extinction would shatter
the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human purpose would
be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the
same footing as risk that we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment
of human history. To employ a mathematician's analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be
fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still infinity. In other
words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have no right to gamble, because if we
lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore,
although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a
holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no
choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use
would put an end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery,
and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to
wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence
and caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now post to the world and to
ourselves.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
394 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

394


Deontology Bad - Absolutist

Deontologys absolutism prioritizes morality as a concept over moral results.

Nielsen 93 [Kai Nielsen is a Philosophy Professor at University of Calgary
Absolutism and It Consequentialist CriticsEdited by Joram Haber, p. 170-2]

Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group drowns is
still more monstrous. The consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective moral
convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with certain reflective particular moral
convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One could even
usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's.
Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for
common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that intuition, not
theory, is corrupt." Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of consequentialism,
it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such a
theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered moral
convictions that would be another matter indeed Anticonsequentialists often point to the inhumanity of
people who will sanction such killing of the innocent but cannot the compliment be returned by speaking
of
the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow even more death and
far
greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend the death and misery
but
merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to prevent seems to me
to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in normal
circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity he
allows. when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to keep
his 'moral purity' and [to] avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what Kierkegaard
called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way but this
does not make it right.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
395 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

395

Deontology Bad - Absolutist


Deontologys absolutism means it will inevitably fail.

Pritchett No Date [ Adrian Pritchett is a University of Georgia graduate and an attorney. Paper written post 1998. Kai
Nielsens Support of Consequentialism and Rejection of Deontology http://pritchea.myweb.uga.edu/phil3200paper1.htm]

Throughout the article, Nielsen concurrently argues that deontology should be rejected but that consequentialism is viable.
We may reconstruct his argument as follows: Deontology, as a morally absolute theory, makes mistakes.
Likewise, an absolutist form of consequentialism also makes mistakes. So absolutism is wrong. Unfortunately,
deontology can only be formulated as some type of moral absolutism, while consequentialism can be
flexible. Therefore, deontology should be rejected, and by rejecting deontology we are left with
consequentialism as a viable theory.Nielsen relied heavily on examples to support his first premise that deontology
makes mistakes. He discussed warfare to show how it is not the case that one is necessarily morally corrupt if he or she
knowingly kills the innocent while making moves to kill combatants, but this point would not have been salient without
having seen the movie he referred to, The Battle of Algiers. Nielsen did present an effective example, though, with the case
of the innocent fat man. In this thought experiment, a fat man is leading a group of people out of a cave when he
gets hopelessly stuck in the opening. There is a rising tide that will cause everyone inside the cave to
drown unless they can get out. The only option for removing the fat man is to blast him out with
dynamite that someone happens to have. Nielsen explains that the deontologist would hold that the fat
man must not be blasted and killed because this would violate the prohibition against killing and it is
only nature responsible for everyone else drowning. Nielsen challenges this principle by declaring that
anyone in such a situation, including the fat man, should understand that the right thing to do is blast the
fat man out in order to save the many lives in the cave. Furthermore, the deontologist exhibits moral
evasion whenever he stands idly by and allows a greater tragedy than is necessary to occur. Nielsen
explains that this is the kind of example that highlights the corrupt nature of deontology.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
396 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

396

Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive

Ethical action cannot be based on legality and the illegal
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 12)
We might say that the ethical dimension of an action is supernumerary to the conceptual pair
legal/illegal. This in turn suggests a structural connection with the Lacanian notion of the Real. As
Alain Badiou has noticed, Lacan conceives of the Real in a way that removes it from the logic of the
apparently mutually exclusive alternatives of the knowable and the unknowable. The unknowable is just
a type of the knowable; it is the limit or degenerate case of the knowable; where the Real belongs to
another register entirely. Analogously, for Kant the illegal still falls within the category of legality
they both belong to the same register, that of things conforming or failing to conform with duty. Ethics
to continue the analogy escapes this register. Even though an ethical act will conform with duty, this
by itself is not and cannot be what makes it ethical. So the ethical cannot be situated within the
framework of the law and violations of the law. Again, in relation to legality, the ethical always
presents a surplus or excess.





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
397 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

397

Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive

Ethical action and legality cannot be related
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000, Ethics of the Real, p. 14-
16)
But then, what exactly is at stake, what is this pure form? First of all, it is clear that the form in question cannot be the
form of the matter, simply because Kant situates the legal and the ethical in two different registers. Hence matter and form,
the legal and the ethical, are not two different aspects of one and the same thing. Despite this, several commentators have
suggested the following solution to the Kantian problem of form: every form has a content associated with it; we are
always and only dealing with a form and a content. So, in this view, if we are to decide whether an act
is ethical or not, we simply have to know which in fact determines our will: if it is the form, our actions
are pathological; if it is the form, they are ethical. This indeed, would rightly be called formalism but it not what
Kant is aiming at this his use of the concept of pure form.
First of all we should immediately note that the label formalism is more appropriate for what Kant calls legality. In terms
of legality, all that matters is whether or not an action conform with duty the content of such an action, the
real motivated for this conformity, is ignored; it simply does not matter. But the ethical, unlike the legal,
does in fact present a certain claim concerning the content of the will. Ethics demands not only that an
action conform with duty, but also that this conformity be the only content or motive of that action.
Thus Kants emphasis on form is in an attempt to disclose a possible drive for ethical action. Kant is saying that form has
to come to occupy the position formerly occupied by matter, that form itself has to function as a drive. Form itself must be
appropriated as a material surplus, in order for it to be capable of the will. Kants point, I repeat, is not that all traces
materiality have to be purged from the determining ground of the moral will but, rather, that the form of the moral law has
itself become material, in order for it to function as a motive force of action.
As result of this we can see that there are actually two different problems to be resolved, mysteries to be cleared up,
concerning the possibility of a pure ethical act. The first is the one we commonly associate with Kantian ethics. How is it
possible to reduce or eliminate all the pathological motives or incentives of our actions? How can a subject disregard
all self-interest, ignore the pleasure principle, all concerns with her own well-being and the well-being
of those close to her? What kind of a monstrous, inhuman subject does Kantian ethics presuppose? This line of
questioning is related to the issue of the infinite purification of the subjects will, with its logic of no matter how far you
have come one more effort will always be required. The second question that must be dealt with concerns what we might
call the ethical transubstantiation required by Kants view: the question of the possibility of converting a mere form into a
materially efficacious drive. This second question is, in my view, the more pressing of the two, because answering it would
automatically provide an answer to the first question as well. So how can something which is not in itself
pathological (i.e. which has nothing to do with the representation of pleasure or pain, the usual mode of subjects
casuality) nevertheless become the cause or drive of a subjects actions? The question here is no longer that
of a purification of motives and incentives. It is much more radical: how can form become matter, how
can something which, in the subjects universe, does not qualify as a cause, suddenly become a cause?
This is the real miracle involved in ethics. The crucial question of Kantian ethics is thus not how can we eliminate all the
pathological elements of will, so that only the pure form of duty remains? but rather, how can the pure form of duty
itself function as a pathological element, that is, as an element capable of assuming the role of the driving
force or incentive of our actions?. If the latter were actually to take place if the pure form of duty were actually to
operate as a motive (incentive or drive) for the subject we would no longer need to worry about the problems of the
purification of the will and the elimination of all pathological motives.This, however, seems to suggest that for such
a subject, ethics simply becomes second nature, and thus ceases to be ethics altogether. If acting ethically is a
matter of drive, if it is as effortless as that, if neither sacrifice, suffering, nor renunciation is required, then it also seems
utterly lacking in merit and devoid of virtue. This, in fact, was Kants contention: he called such a condition the holiness of
the will, which he also thought was an unattainable ideal for human agent. It could equally be identified with utter banality
the banality of the radical good to paraphrase Hannah Arendts famous expression. Nevertheless and it is one of the
fundamental aims of this study to show this this analysis moves too quickly, and therefore leaves something out. Our

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
398 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

398

theoretical premiss here is that it will actually be possible to found an ethics on the concept of the drive, without this ethics
collapsing into either the holiness or banality of human actions.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
399 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

399

**AT EGAL**



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
400 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

400

Egalitarianism Frontline (1/2)

1. Distributive justice leads to global poverty
Carl Knight P.h.d International Studies 2008, 34, 713733, British International Studies Association A
pluralistic approach to global poverty

But Rawls masterpiece also presents some obvious obstacles to global poverty alleviation. A Theory of Justice
explicitly states that the theory is only to be applied within a society. Furthermore, in those few places where the book oers
some tangential discussion of transdomestic justice, it is characterised as a question of the justice of the law of nations and of relations between
states.16 Hence, in a discussion occasioned by his analysis of conscription and conscientious refusal, Rawls suggests that one may extend the
interpretation of the original position and think of the parties as representatives of dierent nations who must choose together the fundamental
principles to adjudicate conicting claims among states.17 He com- ments that this procedure is fair among nations, and that there would be no
surprises in the outcome, since the principles chosen would . . . be familiar ones ensuring treaty compliance, describing the conditions for just
wars, and granting rights of self-defence and self-determination the latter being a right of a people to settle its own aairs
without the intervention of foreign powers.18 This is, then, a thoroughly nationalist conception of justice: social
justice applies only within a state or nation. Rawlss radical principles of distributive justice, such as the dierence principle, would
only hold transdomestically where, improbably, states had signed treaties to this eect. Given that such wide ranging internationally
redistributive treaties have never been signed, A Theory of Justice provided a rationale for the Western general
publics impression that their duties to the global poor are, at most, those of charity. Rawls full expression of his views
in this area came nearly three decades later in The Law of Peoples.19 Here Rawls again uses the notion of a transdomestic original position,
arguing that it is an appropriate instrument for selecting laws to govern relations between both liberal societies and
decent non-liberal societies, especially those which are decent hierarchical societies, being non-aggressive, recognising their citizens human
rights, assigning widely acknowledged additional rights and duties, and being backed by genuine and not unreasonable beliefs among judges and
other ocials that the law embodies a common good idea of justice.20 This Society of Peoples would agree to be guided by eight principles
constituting the basic charter of the Law of Peoples.21

2. Focusing exclusively on the poor stigmatizes the issueno solvency
Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State, January 1999 Misfortune,
welfare reform, and right-wing egalitarianism

Yet nobody in the welfare debate, as far as I know, invoked the Charles Murray of The Bell Curve rather than the Murray of Losing Ground.
Moreover, while many right-wing arguments are neutral about questions of class distinctions, others actually seem to be grounded in a kind of
relational egalitarianism. For example, conservatives sometimes argue that welfare stigmatizes recipients. As we have already heard Gingrich
(1995, 71) say, "The welfare state reduces the poor from citizens to clients." This argument raises a serious issue for
relational egalitarians: How can the poor be given material aid with- out others thinking less of them? The stigma of being on the
receiving end of welfare may create the very divisions in society that the relational egalitarian seeks to avoid. If
government programs designed to help the poor stand in the way of citizens relating to each other non-
hierarchically, maybe we should abolish such programs in the interest of a society in which citizens stand as equals.

3. Egalitarianism does not equate society
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

Egalitarianism forces persons who exceed the average, in the respect deemed by the theorist to be relevant, to
surrender, insofar as possible, the amount by which they exceed that average to persons below it. On the face of it,
therefore, egalitarianism is incompatible with common good, in empowering some people over others: roughly,
the unproductive over the productive. The formers interests are held to merit the imposition of force over others,
whereas the interests of the productive do not. Yet producers, as such, merely produce; they dont use force against
others. Thus egalitarianism denies the central rule of rational human association. What could be thought to justify
this apparent bias in favour of the unproductive, the needy, the sick, against the productive the healthy, the
ingenious, the energetic? What are the latter supposed to have done to the former to have merited the egalitarians
impositions? The answer cant be, Oh, nothing theyre just unlucky! or We dont like people like that! A
rational social theory must appeal to commonvalues. By definition, those have not been respected when a
measure is forced upon certain people against their own values.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
401 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

401

Egalitarianism Frontline (2/2)

4. Principles of justice cement the political sphereerode the possibility for real change
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 Between Justice and Legality: Derrida
on Decision, Political Research Quarterly, http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341

In Rawlss (1993: 157) universe, consensus is cemented into the political founding and overrides all other issues. 26
Anything that triggers political conflict is excluded from the public sphere: A liberal view removes from the
political agenda the most divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social
cooperation. Difficult issues may be interesting but, for Rawls, they are not the stuff of politics. They threaten
consensus and must be excluded or contained in the private sphere. Politics is about tinkering, not controversy.
The only truly political moment in Rawlss work, then, is laying the ground for justice as fairness in the original posi-
tion. Once the principles of justice as fairness are established, however, the political sphere is essentially closed.
Efforts to re-open the foundation are a threat to political stability. The range of acceptable political issues is framed
by principles that are not up for debate. Hence, citizens are prevented from pursuing those modes of civic
involvement that would open the political sphere to real contestation. Given the imperative of consensus, the regime
must protect its political founding from interrogation. Narrowing the range of acceptable political issues exacts a
high cost from citizens. Space for dissent is eliminated. The range of political possibilities is restricted to one (and
only one) that will be fixed once and for all (Rawls 1993: 161). Once the principles of justice are instituted, only
the support of the status quo is possible (Alejandro 1998: 144). For Rawls, all citizens affirm the same public
conception of justice (1993: 39). Public discussion about alternative political possibilities is not necessary.31 Since
a critical disposi- tion toward the founding moment of justice as fairness would risk destroying consensus, it is better
to treat it as a monument before which one genuflects. Rawls, however, does not purge all conflict from his model of
politics in the name of consensus. Some level of reasonable disagreement is permitted in his liberal utopia. It arises
from the burdens of judgment. The causes of these burdens are formidable:

5. Inequality inevitablecapitalism
Stuart White 2k, ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract Political Theory and the
New Welfare Politics Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 50753

How Much Equality of Opportunity Does Fair Reciprocity Require? I have presented only a very intuitive account of
the conditions of fair reciprocity; I have not formally presented a full conception of distributive justice and
demonstrated how each condition follows from this conception, something one might attempt in a lengthier
analysis. However, I do wish to examine one general philosophical issue that arises when we come to think about
the conditions of fair reciprocity. Assume that distributive justice is centrally about some form of equal
opportunity. The notion of equality of opportunity can, of course, be understood in a number of different ways. But
assume, for the moment, that we understand it in the radical form defended in contemporary egalitarian theories
of distributive justice.40 Equal opportunity in this sense requires, inter alia, that we seek to prevent or correct for
inequalities in income attributable to differences in natural ability and for inequalities in capability due to handicaps
that people suffer through no fault of their own. The question I wish to consider can then be put like this: How far
must society satisfy the demands of equal opportunity before we can plausibly say that all of its members have
obligations under the reciprocity principle? One view, which I shall call the full compliance view, is that the
demands of equal opportunity must be satised in full for it to be true that all citizens have obligations to make
productive contributions to the community under the reciprocity principle. The intuition is that people can have no
obligation to contribute in a signicant way to a community that is not (in all other relevant respects) fully just at
least if they are amongst those who are disadvantaged by their societys residual injustices. Reciprocity kicks in, as it
were, only when the terms of social co-operation are fair, where fairness requires (inter alia) full satisfaction of the
demands of equal opportunity. If equal opportunity is understood in our assumed sense, however, then this full
compliance view effectively removes the ideal of fair reciprocity from the domain of real-world politics. For there
is no chance that any advanced capitalist (or, for that matter, post-capitalist) society will in the near future
satisfy equal opportunity, in our assumed sense, in full. And so, following the full compliance view, we should, if we

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
402 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

402

are egalitarians in the assumed sense, simply abandon the idea that there can be anything like a universal civic
obligation to make a productive contribution to the community.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
403 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

403

Public Sphere Ext Arg Plurality

As an intellectualerr on the side of protecting argument plurality
Martha C. Nussbaum 01 P.h.D @ Harvard Political Objectivity Vol. 32, No. 4, Objectivity in
Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics (Autumn, 2001), pp. 883-906

But the project of political liberalism constrains the search for objectivity. One of the things about which people
reasonably disagree is what type of objectivity we are able to attain in judgments about fundamental ethical/political
matters. Different comprehensive doc- trines give different verdicts on this matter. The comprehensive doctrine of
Roman Catholic Christianity, for example, gives a very different answer from that supplied by postmodernism,
Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and, even, Protestant Christianity. I shall explore the implications of this fact for the role a
concept of objectivity can and should play in the political sphere. I shall argue that respect for pluralism indeed con-
strains us here. Although each of us in our ethical and scientic lives will have some view about the issues addressed
in the present symposium, we ought not to build our fundamental political principles around a particular contested
conception of objectivity, for example Allen Woods conception, or the conception of self-evident truth used in the
U.S. Declaration of Independence. On the other hand, we are not entirely at a loss: for we can articulate and defend a
specically political conception of objectivity that can itself be the object of an overlapping consensus among
comprehensive doctrines. To indicate the direction of my argument very briey, think what it would be like to live in
a nation that built its fundamental political principles around the view that Allen Woods view of objectivity is
correct, and that anyone who holds otherwise is simply mistaken. I admire Woods arguments. I think that something
close to this is probably true. But still, to build basic political principles on Woods view10 seems problematic. Even if
the doctrine did not have any specic consequences for political life, as it probably would, still its public recognition
itself poses a problem. All those Americans who hold to some revealed religion, and ground their understanding of
objectivity on the idea of revelation, as well as all those skeptical or relativist or neo- Humean Americans who think
that Wood is wrong on other grounds, would be put in the position of second-class citizens.11 Because they donot
share the true doctrine, their vision of truth and objectivity does not get to count in what shapes the polity, even
though, let us suppose, it is a liberal regime and their freedom of speech would in no way be curtailed. We would
not like such a way of proceeding even in the classroom: we philosophers think that all the major positions should
be studied and debated, and treated with respect, and none should be an unexamined cornerstone for the entire
enterprise. How much worse, then, if the foundations of a nation itself were built in ways that show disrespect for
the views of many people about what truth is and where it lies. Although I disagree with more or less everything
Richard Rorty says, and think that on the matters where he and Wood disagree Wood is right and Rorty is wrong,
still, I would not like to live in a nation built around the denial of Rortys epistemological and metaphysical view, any
more than in one built around the denial of my own. He is a reasonable man, and a fellow citizen; the disagreements
we have are reasonable disagreements. Political respect for his reason requires respecting his comprehensive
doctrine, and that, in turn, requires not building the polity on the contradiction of that doctrine.12

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
404 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

404

Hierarchies Inevitable

Hierarchies are inevitable even after the redistribution of wealth
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

Egalitarians can only defend their view by reference to values that many or most people do not have. People
below the mid-point of the proposed redistributional scale will, of course, have some reason to rejoice at their
unearned egalitarian windfalls temporarily. Meanwhile, people from whom they are wrested have the opposite
motivation, so common good is out the window from the start. Nor can equality relevantly be held to be an
objective or an absolute value a value in itself, that doesnt need to be held byanybody (except the
theorist himself, of course). That is intuitional talk, which has already been dismissed. Do real people (as
opposed to theorists) care about equality as such? No. They want better and more reliable food on the table,
nicer tables to put it on, TVs, theatres, motorcars, books, medical services, churches, courses in Chinese
history, and so on, indefi- nitely. Equality is irrelevant to these values: how much of any or all of them anyone
has is logically independent of how much anyone else has. People are rarely free of envy, to be sure. Most people
would like to be better than others in some way and some will pay others to let them look down on them.
But few will make themselves worse off in order to make some other people equally badly off. Values that can
be improved by human activity are not independent in any other way, though, for production is cooperative,
requiring arrangements agreed to by a great many people work- ers, financiers, engineers, customers.
Nobody can attain to wealth, insofar as the free market obtains, without others likewise benefiting. These are
truisms, though I am aware that they will be seen by many readers as ideological even at the present
time, when the absurdities of alternative views of economics have been so completely exposed.13

Equality is impossibleenvy
Jon Mandle 2k Reviwed: Liberalism, Justice, and Markets: A Critique of Liberal Equality by
Colin M. Macleod The Philosophical Review, Vol. 109, No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 601-604 Duke
University Press. Jstor
Here, I can only illustrate one of Macleod's many distinct criticisms of Dworkin's use of idealized markets. Dworkin
argues that the initial division of resources (prior to adjustments made in light of differences in individual ambition)
should satisfy an "envy test": "No division of resources is an equal division if, once the division is complete, any
[person] would prefer someone else's bundle of resources to his own bundle" (Dworkin 1981b, 285). And the
mechanism he proposes to satisfy this test is a hypothetical auction in which individuals bid on resources using some
counter (itself without value and equally distributed). This market-based solution values resources entirely in terms
of the preferences that individuals express in the auction. Macleod recognizes that a great strength of Dworkin's
auction is that it is sensitive to the opportunity costs to others of giving some re- source to a particular individual. As
Macleod helpfully points out, "The resources a person can acquire are a function not only of the importance she
attaches to them but also of the importance attached by others to them .... Phrased in the language of opportunity
costs, the auction ensures that aggregate opportunity costs are equal" (26).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
405 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

405

Egal = Envy

Distribution of benefits to equalize the impoverished is indefensible encourages envy and moral
disorientation.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian Approach. Journal of Global
Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.

Suppose, again, that the sufficiency level for all was 50. Whereas intrinsic egalitarianism seems, other things being equal, to
favour outcome (3) and prioritarianism would favour allocation (1), sufficientarianism would favour outcome (2) since this
would be the only outcome in which at least some people had enough. For the sufficientarian, the distribution of benefits
and burdens to achieve equality or priority in such circumstances is indefensible. It would be analogous to the tragedy
involved in a famine situation of giving food to those who cannot possibly survive at the cost of those that could survive if
they received extra rations. In this sense, the ideal of sufficiency is related to the medical concept of triage according to
which, when faced with more people requiring care than can be treated, resources are rationed so that the most needy receive
attention first. However, because the category of most needy is defined in terms of the overarching aim that as many people
as possible should survive a given emergency, triage protocols often lead to the very worst off being denied treatment for the
sake of benefitting those who can be helped to survive. Frankfurts view is that all distributive claims arise in some way
from an analysis of where people stand relative to the threshold of sufficiency, or as he puts it the threshold that separates
lives that are good from lives that are not good (Frankfurt 1997, p. 6). Egalitarianism, by contrast, posits a relationship
between the urgency of a persons claims and their comparative well-being without reference to the level at which they would
have enough. Since allocating people enough to lead decent lives exhausts our duties of distribution, sufficientarians argue
that egalitarianism recognizes duties that do not exist. In fact, in linking ethical duties to the comparative fortunes of people,
egalitarianism encourages envy and thereby contributes to the moral disorientation and shallowness of our time
(Frankfurt 1987, pp. 2223; Anderson 1999, pp. 287ff.).

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
406 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

406

Egal = Infinite Redistribution

Egalitarian and Prioritarian thinking flawed no standard baseline for equality guarantees
never-ending redistribution.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian Approach. Journal of Global
Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.

Although Frankfurt focuses his critique of rival distributive views on intrinsic egalitarianism, it can be readily extended to
cover prioritarianism. While the priority view is grounded in the badness of absolute rather than comparative disadvantage, it
is also inclined to divert resources to the worst off even if this would mean sacrificing substantial benefits to other, slightly
better off, persons who could be helped to lead a decent life. Frankfurt argues that: It is true that people in the lowest strata of
society generally live in horrible conditions, but this association of low social position and dreadful quality of life is entirely
contingent. There is no necessary connection between being at the bottom of society and being poor in the sense in which poverty is
a serious and morally objectionable barrier to life. (Frankfurt 1997, p. 2) The problem with prioritarianism, then, is not that it
fetishizes comparative wellbeing but rather that it fetishizes absolute well-being with the result that it mandates constant
interference in peoples lives to benefit the worst off. By doing so, prioritarianism is inclined to generate just as much envy
and pity as its egalitarian rival and to mandate a range of redistributions that do not help their recipients to lead decent lives.
Consider the following example. There are two groups in society, where one enjoys a considerably lower level of well-being
than the other, where both groups enjoy a far better than decent life, and where the inequalities are undeserved. We can call
these groups the very happy and the extremely happy. Egalitarians claim that, if we could do something about it, the very
happy group should be compensated for their relative well-being deficit. This is because this theory regards undeserved
inequality as bad even if everyone is at least very happy; that is, it makes no ethical difference that the inequality is between
groups, or persons, who are very well off. Prioritarians, by contrast, regard the very happy in isolation of their relative
happiness as they are only interested in absolute levels of well-being. Nonetheless, the very happy, as the worst off, deserve
our attention even if their lives are so good they want for nothing. According to sufficientarians, however, the egalitarian
and prioritarian claims are absurd. How can there be a duty to help the worst off, they ask, when they already lead
lives of such a high standard?

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
407 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

407

Egal Biased

Egalitarian claims are biased
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against egalitarianism: that it is essentially certain to
be counterproductive as well to defeat the very values whose equalization is required by the theory. Forced
transfers from rich to poor, from capitalists to proletarians, will worsenthe lot of the poor even as it decreases
the wealth of the rich. Not only is egalitarianism biased, but the particular people against whom it is biased are the
productive the source of what the people it is biased in favour of hope to receive in consequence. It is not too
much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a conspiracy against those it claims to be trying to help.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
408 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

408

Rejection of Egal K2 Check Abuse

Acceptance of egalitarianism dominates the political sphere and makes us powerless to the abuses
of elites
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 Between Justice and Legality: Derrida
on Decision, Political Research Quarterly, http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341

If Rawlss appeal to the burdens of judgment seems disingenuous insofar as the founding moment of justice as
fairness is somehow protected from them, his underlying notion of citizenship also leaves much to be desired. Even
though he claims citizens learn and profit from conflict and argument (Rawls 1993: lvii), he methodically closes
spaces for the types of dissent, conflict and argument that nurture democratic citizenship. If citizens with
competing comprehensive doctrines happen to meet on the street in Rawlss liberal utopia, they nervously grimace
at each other and then retreat to the private sphere, simply shrugging shoulders in silence during encounters. Both
the immediate impact and the intergenerational effect of Rawlss neutralization of public dialogue will produce a
society of inarticulate shoppers on Prozac: By taking Prozac, they may be able to alleviate their angst, which might
be a disruptive force to the liberal order (Alejandro 1998: 13). Citizens will not only be unable to contest abuses of
power but they will be incapable of negotiating encounters with others in substantive ways. Rawlss allergy to
even mild modes of political conflict results in a de-politicization of politics under the banner of neutrality.35 He
evacuates all political content from public discussion: We try to bypass religion and philosophys pro- foundest
controversies so as to have some hope of uncover- ing a basis of a stable overlapping consensus (Rawls 1993:
152).36Much to his credit, Rawls acknowledges the great deal of indeterminacy of decision in the burdens of
judgment but this indeterminacy is somehow absent from his image of political society. The indeterminacy of
decision in Rawls is mitigated by his de-politicization of political foundations. The indeterminacy of politics is
precisely what Rawls seeks to expel from the political horizon. Political liberalism purges politics from politics and
encloses the political field under the terror of uniformity.37The value Rawls ascribes to pluralism is disingenuous. It
is incompatible with the imperative of unanimity on basic principles.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
409 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

409

AT: Moral Egal

Moral calls for egalitarianism are self defeating
Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State, January 1999
Misfortune, welfare reform, and right-wing egalitarianism

How will democratic decision makers choose which welfare policy to endorse? They will speculate. The average
voter, for example, will have no option other than guessing which policy has the best long- term
consequences, and the average elected representative is probably in no better position. In speculating about
long-term consequences they may be inordinately swayed by any number of prejudices or pre- conceived
ideas. When the truth does not present itself clearly, it is easy to seize on the evidence that supports one's
ideological presuppositions. The consequence of applying equality of fortune to the welfare debate is not usefully
neutral in the sense that it avoids blind ideological presuppositions or commitments. It is tragically neutral in the
sense that it provides democratic voters and their representatives with no reason to challenge their blind
ideological commitments. For equality of fortune would focus the debate on the empirical question that did, in
fact, command the lion's share of attention: Which policy is best for the poor? Answers to this question will
be determined by prejudice and mood more than reasoned deliberation or real debate. If this consequence is
inevitable, then the implications for the ideal of equality are dismal: it would appear impotent as a political ideal,
for it requires democratic bodies to make decisions based on speculation about economic effects over the
course of decades or even generations.

Err on the side of combining political consequences with humanitarianism
Thomas Weiss 99, Presidential Professor of Political Science @ CUNY Graduate Center,
"principles, politics, and humanitarian action"

Political actors have a newfound interest in principles, while humanitari- ans of all stripes are increasingly aware
of the importance of politics. Yet, there remain two distinct approachespolitics and humanitarianism as self-
contained and antithetical realities or alternatively as overlapping spheres. Nostalgia for aspects of the Cold War
or other bygone eras is perhaps under- standable, but there never was a golden age when humanitarianism was
insulated from politics. Much aid was an extension of the foreign policies of major donors, especially the
superpowers. Nonetheless, it was easieq conceptually and practically, to compartmentalize humanitarianism and
politics before the present decade. Then, a better guide to action was provided by an unflinching respect for
traditional princi- ples, although they never were absolute ends but only intermediate means. In todays world,
humanitarians must ask themselves how to weigh the political consequences of their action or inaction; and
politicians must ask them- selves how to gauge the humanitarian costs of their action or inaction. The cal-
culations are tortuous, and the mathematics far from exact. However, there is no longer any need to ask
whether politics and humanitarian action intersect. The real question is how this intersection can be managed to
ensure more humanized politics and more effective humanitarian action. To this end, humanitarians should be
neither blindly principled nor blindly pragmatic.

Moral views of egalitarianism are self serving
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

2. Our subject concerns normative political theory, which I take to be part of morality. The subject is not
depiction of a way of life, a formula for individual happiness, or a view of the mean- ing of life, but rather,
rules for the (large) community, or better (as assumed henceforth), everybody. In the words of Aquinas, a
moral theory imposes a uniformity. It proposes a set a single set, however complicated of rules, declaring
that all should adhere to it. But this uniformity need not be egalitarian in the sense defined above. The one basic
set of directives to which everyone ought to adhere, and by reference to which the conduct of anyone may be

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
410 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

410

called to account, could be wildly inegalitarian (as with slave moralities.) Universality sameness of rules for all
is a defining feature of morals; egalitarianism is not.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
411 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

411

AT: Democratic Egal

Egalitarianism isnt democraticinevitable dilemma

Fabienne Peter Ph.D. in Economics 13 November 2006 The Political Egalitarians Dilemma
Springer Link

The dilemma is the following. If, on the one hand, the substantive constraints on the deliberative process are kept to
a minimum, only a weak criterion of political equality can be imposed on the deliberative process. This criterion may
fail to ensure the effective equality of participants in the deliberative process, which undermines the legitimacy of
the outcomes of such a process. If, on the other hand, political equality is interpreted comprehensively, many
substantive judgments will be packed into the conditions imposed on the deliberative process. They will be
treated as exempt from deliberative evaluation. The stronger the criterion of political equality, the more emphasis
is placed not just on general political resources, but on peoples abilities to make effective use of these resources,
the narrower the scope for democratic scrutiny. This, again, jeopardizes democratic legitimacy. Thus, a strong
criterion of political equality, which focuses on peoples possibilities to participate in the deliberative process as
effectively equals, will fail to ensure democratic legitimacy because it will exempt too many value judgments from
deliberative democratic scrutiny. A weak criterion of political equality will fail to ensure democratic legitimacy
because many will not have been able to participate in the deliberative process as effectively equals. In other words,
the political egalitarians dilemma reveals a clash between the attempt to ensure equal possibilities to participate
in the democratic process and the requirement of subjecting substantive judgments to deliberative evaluation.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
412 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

412

AT: Radical Egal

Forced attempts at equality perpetuate inequality
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

The conclusion stands, then, that egalitarians propose measures incompatible with Common Good, conceived
in liberal terms. Appeals to equity that are not simply question-begging fail; appeals to moral intuitions are
useless; appeal to the arbitrariness of nature is irrelevant; appeals to marginal utility are of questionable basic
relevance, and exactly wrong insofar as they are relevant. Society, I conclude, should make no interference in the
free actions of individuals in using their resources as they see best, by their own lights, within the constraints of
a no-harm-to-others rule. There is no socially acceptable case for forced equality.

Egalitarianism hurts the poor
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against egalitarianism: that it is essentially certain
to be counterproductive as well to defeat the very values whose equalization is required by the theory. Forced
transfers from rich to poor, from capitalists to proletarians, will worsen the lot of the poor even as it decreases
the wealth of the rich. Not only is egalitarianism biased, but the particular people against whom it is biased
are the productive the source of what the people it is biased in favour of hope to receive in consequence. It
is not too much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a conspiracy against those it claims to be trying to help.
There is a reason for this, whose incomprehension by philosophers even to this day should be a matter of
astonishment. A free economy is one in which no one forcibly intervenes against the property rights of any
other all are free to use their resources as they judge best, including engaging in commercial exchanges.
In such a system, the only ways to achieve wealth are by means which improve the situations of others.
Successful businesspeople become so by organizing or financially supporting the production of things that
other people want, and want more than the existing alternatives since those people, having no obligation
to buy, would not otherwise buy them. The only other possibilities are fairly uninteresting: gift, and the
discovery or original acquisition of valuable things. But gift, as such, is pure transfer and does not create
wealth, except in the form of good will. We may praise occasional acts of charity, but if everyone were only
charitable and unproductive, all, including the poor and sick, would quickly die. And as to acquisition, if we
would attain to wealth, those items must be harnessed to human use nature does not afford a free lunch any
more than our fellows. Even someone who acquired a natural beauty spot, say, and keeps it natural, will be
able to make a decent living thereby only if he is able to charge others for the right to enjoy that spot. And
so on.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
413 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

413

AT: Egal = Util

No such thing as a utilitarian defense of egalitarianism
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

An immensely popular argument, thought to provide a clear utilitarian defense for egalitarianism, appeals to a
principle of diminishing marginal utility. The idea is that the marginal return from possession of some
measurable good decreases as a function of the amount one already has money being the most familiar
and obvious case in point. From this it is inferred that general utility will be promoted by transferring such
goods from those above the midpoint to those below, where the marginal util- ity of unit increments is
much greater. Two major flaws destroy this argument. The first is fundamental:general (aggregate) utility
simply isnt a common value, and therefore cannot be appealed to. Individuals are not necessarily concerned
to promote the aggregate sum of good. They are mostly concerned to promote the goods of certain
particular persons themselves, friends, countrymen, whatever and not the sum of utility, even if that
sum could be objectively deter- mined. It is therefore inadmissible to appeal to it. Only if the particular
individual addressed can be shown that what matters to himwill be forwarded if the aggregate of utility grows
some- times plausible, to be sure is he rationally interested in its growth. That special case apart, utilitarian
arguments are dismissed. Second, and more important for present purposes, the argu- ment suffers from
myopia: it focuses only on the consumptionutil- ity of money. But all good things come from somewhere:
namely, human effort and know-how. Allocation of those requires invest- ment. But the poor, obviously, do
not invest the better-off do that. A well-invested dollar yields goods and services in the future greatly
exceeding the stock of consumption goods one could buy with the same money. The marginal utility of
dollars in the upper incomes is therefore greater, not less, than the marginal utility of dollars for the poor.


Utilitarian calculus not egalitarian doesnt act on the principle of intrinsic equality.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian Approach. Journal of Global
Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.

Perhaps the simplest theory of the pattern of justice is that benefits and burdens should be distributed across some population
so that inequality is minimized. We might call this view intrinsic egalitarianism as it holds that inequality is bad or unjust (I
use these terms interchangeably) in itself and not because of its consequences. As Temkin has put it, the essence of intrinsic
equality is that it is bad for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their own (Temkin 2003, p. 62). It is worth
contrasting intrinsic equality with some closely associated views. Utilitarians hold that acts and social policies should be
evaluated only in terms of their consequences and that these consequences ought to promote the maximum amount of welfare
possible. Depending on the circumstances the utilitarian may prefer an equal distribution of well-being because this coincides
with the desire to maximize welfare. The reason for this is that it is generally easier to help the worse off than othersone
only has to give them a little for their welfare level to improve a lot. In this sense, utilitarians are accidental, rather than
intrinsic, egalitarians.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
414 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

414

Inegal Solves

In-egalitarianism solves benefits trickle down
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

In short, successful investment enhances the lot of others in society. When people are employed, this enhances
their real incomes, more than any other opportunities they may have had. And when they spend their money,
it is because they judge that expenditure to contribute maximally to their well-being. Thus, if we wrest the gains
from investment or well-paid work from the investors and workers in question, we take from the productive and
transfer to the unproductive. This takes money that would have produced more and ensures that it will be
used in less productive ways. A large society that undertakes this kind of activity extensively decrees poverty for
itself, in comparison with what it could have done instead in a freed-up market. And it is the poor, above all,
who benefit, relatively speaking, from commercial activity activ- ity that, if unimpeded, continually drives
down prices, continually finds new employment for available labour, and continually real- locates resources in the
way that does most good for most people, as indicated by the actual choices and preferences of those
people.11

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
415 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

415


Egalitarianism is distinct from liberalism
Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial, Counterproductive and
Baseless Blackwell

I argue that egalitarianism is wrong, or at least incompatible with liberalism. Recent writers alleging to be liberals
dont often bother about defining what they believe, but in fact it is not particularly difficult to do so. It may be
sufficiently identified by just two theses: First, liberalism denies that government or morality is justified by its
tendency to benefit those in power. Justice is not the inter- est of the stronger party. Both liberals and
conservatives hold instead that the only justificatory purpose of legislation is the good of the ruled those whose
behaviour is to be controlled. Second, there is the question how the good of the people is to be understood. Here
lies the special feature of liberalism. It denies the very natural-sounding idea of Plato, Aristotle, and perhaps most
people, that if government is for the good of the people, surely the rulers should find out what is good for people
and then use the laws to make them good rather than bad. Liberalism, on the contrary, holds that it is the
preferences, the values held by those very peoplet hat is to guide legislation, whether or not those preferences
accord with others notion(s) of the good. We may discuss the good with people, of course, and urge them to do
things our way; but we may not force them to do so: individuals may live their lives as they see best. Rules for the
community are justified exclusively by their conduciveness to that end or rather, that very diverse set of ends.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
416 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

416

Econ Turns Egal

Economic collapse crushes egalitarian legitimacy
Stuart White 2k, ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract Political Theory and the New Welfare
Politics Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 50753

Respect for reciprocity is instrumentally important in so far as obvious violations of the principle will undermine
the legitimacy of economic arrangements and the willingness of individuals to maintain these arrangements. This is
perhaps especially true of egalitarian arrangements which involve signicant amounts of redistribution. If
egalitarian objectives are pursued in a way that is inattentive to economic free-riding and parasitism, there is a
clear risk that the egalitarian institutions in question will provoke feelings of alienation and resentment and so
undercut the very spirit of solidarity on which they depend. In this vein, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have
recently argued that popular resistance to the American welfare state derives not froman opposition to egalitarian
redistribution per se, but to redistribution that enables citizens to evade the contributive responsibilities that derive
from a widely shared norm of strong reciprocity.11 Bowles and Gintis start with the observation, conrmed in a
variety of experimental settings, that individuals tend not to conform to the standard model of Homo economicus,
who rationally pursues his/her self-interest without regard to any norms of fairness. People tend not to be rational
egotists, nor unconditional altruists, but conditional co-operators, willing to do their bit in co-operative ventures to
which they belong so long as they can be assured that others will also make a reasonable contribution: Homo
reciprocans. Commitment to the norm of reciprocity is such that people are often willing to accept costs to
themselves rather than see this norm violated with impunity. Widespread adherence to the norm may be explicable in
evolutionary terms: communities in which Homo reciprocans predominates may nd it easier to solve important
problems of trust and collective action than communities in which Homo economicus predominates.12 If, however,
commitment to the reciprocity norm is so deep-rooted, then egalitarians must frame their reform proposals in a way
that explicitly acknowledges and upholds the norm rather than being indifferent to it. A very similar argument
concerning the necessary conditions under which citizens will grant their contingent consent to egalitarian social
policy is made by Bo Rothstein in relation to European universalistic welfare states. Where social policies are
universalistic in the sense that there is an inclusive share-out of both benets and contributions, these policies have
greater perceived legitimacy and, Rothstein argues, will thus be relatively resistant to the politics of welfare state
retrenchment.13

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
417 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

417

Sufficientarianism Good

The goal of the judge should not be to make sure each person is equalrather ensure each person is
sufficient
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005 What Matters is Absolute
Poverty, Not Relative Poverty http://www.cdams.kobe-u.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf

Therefore, sufficientarianism is an alternative to economic egalitarianism. Sufficientarianism presents the idea of
sufficiency as an alternative to the idea of economic equality. The essence of sufficientarianism is to show that the
idea of economic equality has no intrinsic value. According to sufficientarianism, when people consider what is
important for their own lives, the amount of goods owned by other people becomes irrelevant. Instead, comparison
with the amount of goods owned by others prevents people from seeking what they consider valuable for
themselves. It is unnecessary to attach moral significance to economic egalitarianism. While Frankfurt
enumerates some reasons for the failure of economic egalitarianism, he indicates that egalitarians do not actually
defend the idea of equality, as indicated by the priority view. In other words, egalitarians objections are not based
on their moral aversion to a person holding a smaller amount of goods as compared to other people. In reality,
their objection is to the fact that the person owns only a remarkably small amount of goods. This naturally gives
rise to the following questions. What does sufficiency imply? What is the standard of sufficiency? Although
Frankfurt does not define the meaning of sufficiency in concrete terms, it does not imply that sufficientarianism is
pointless. Indeed, the meaning of sufficiency can be defined in various ways. However, the essence of
sufficientarianism is to seek what one finds valuable in his/her life and not compare the amount of goods one
owns with that of others; this is crucial to judge sufficiency.

Everything is relativethe goal should not be to carve everyone into the same statuerather ensure each
person is sufficientthis is distinct from economic egalitarianism
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005 What Matters is Absolute
Poverty, Not Relative Poverty http://www.cdams.kobe-u.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf

Irrespective of the definition of sufficiency selected, sufficientarianism cannot justify distribution to those whose
circumstances are above the standard of sufficiency. Therefore, it does not lead to the implausible conclusion that
goods should be distributed to millionaires in a society that comprises only billionaires and millionaires.
Sufficientarianism, which rejects economic egalitarianism and simultaneously requires distribution to those below
the standard of sufficiency, is consistent with moderate libertarianism or classical liberalism, which rejects
distribution aimed at reducing income disparity and admits the necessity of distribution that guarantees a minimum
standard of living. Indeed, the interpretation of sufficientarianism that I present in this paper might conflict with the
original intention of sufficientarians. As we have seen, I support sufficientarianism. Despite differences between
sufficientarianism and the priority view, I re-emphasize the fact that they have a common crucial viewpoint
regarding egalitarianism. They share the belief that being worse off than others does not have moral significance in
terms of the ethics of distribution. While the idea of equality that emphasizes relativity with others is set as a
default position in the argument on distribution, both theories demand criticism of the above assumption.
Egalitarians often confuse equality with priority or sufficiency; however, it is important to bear in mind that the
apparent plausibility of egalitarianism is derived from its humanitarian appeal. The point I wish to emphasize is
that absolute poverty, and not relative poverty, is important. Next, before turning to an examination of the
connection between sufficientarianism and libertarianism, I shall consider the necessity of highlighting the abuse of
egalitarianism.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
418 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

418

Sufficientarianism Good

Egalitarianism fosters never-ending comparison and obligation a sufficientarian framework
should take precedence.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian Approach. Journal of Global
Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.

In contrast to egalitarians and prioritarians, some theorists, such as Harry Frankfurt, hold that benefits and burdens should be
distributed in line with the doctrine of sufficiency. This states that as many people as possible should have enough (of the
currency of justice adopted) to pursue the aims and aspirations they care about over a whole life; and that this aim has
lexical priority over other ideals of justice (Frankfurt 1987, pp. 2143; 1997, pp. 314). Attaining what we really care
about, for Frankfurt, requires a certain level of well-being, but once this level is reached there is no further relationship
between how well-off a person is and whether they discover and fulfil what it is that they really care about. Frankfurt holds
that, above the level of sufficiency, it is neither reasonable to seek a higher standard of living nor expect, as amatter of
justice, any additional allocation of some currency of justice to further improve their prospects. It is important to add that
having enough is not the same as living a tolerable life in the sense that one does not regret ones existence. Rather it
means a person leads a life that contains no substantial dissatisfaction. According to Frankfurt, the flaw in intrinsic
egalitarianism lies in supposing that it is morally important whether one person has less than another regardless of
how much either of them has (Frankfurt 1987, p. 34). What matters, Frankfurt argues, is not that everyone should have
the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough it would be of no moral consequence whether some
had more than others (Frankfurt 1987, p. 21; original emphasis). This does not mean, however, that egalitarian and
prioritarian concerns will always frustrate sufficiency since each and every person should be helped to the threshold of
sufficiency if possible, and those who can be helped to lead a decent life are often among the worst off in a population. But
the aim of reducing inequality, or of improving the position of the worst off, has no intrinsic value for sufficientarians.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
419 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

419

Sufficientarian Perm

Moderate sufficentarianism offers a pluralist approach to justice which maximizes contextual
equality.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian Approach. Journal of Global
Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.

One way of responding to the problems raised by these two examples would be to construct a pluralist approach to
distributive justice. Pluralism, in this context, means that we would appeal to contrasting ideals in different contexts (Daniels
1996, p. 208). There are three possibilities, which I can only sketch here. First, the ideals could apply in different distributive
circumstances. For example, we might give lexical priority to sufficiency when at least some can be brought up to the
threshold, but appeal to equality or priority when all are above, or all below, the threshold (Crisp 2003, pp. 758ff.). Second,
sufficiency might be allocated non-lexical priority over other values so that large gains in these values will sometimes
outweigh lesser gains in sufficiency. Arneson has usefully labeled this moderate sufficientarianism (Arneson 2006, p. 28).
The strength of this view is that it can explain why we should opt for (2) over (1) since it offers tremendous gains in both
equality and priority with no adverse impact on sufficiency. Similarly, though more controversially, moderate
sufficientarians have at least some reason to opt for (4) over (3) since great benefits arise, in terms of equality and priority, if
we ignore the sufficiency of the few for the prize of giving major benefits to the many. Third, we might subsume one ideal
under another while attributing some degree of intrinsic value to the subsumed ideal. Sufficientarians generally view
inequality as regrettable because of its consequences, such as the way in which it inhibits economic growth, undermines
political processes, or is a malign influence on cultural life. Yet, there is a more subtle way that inequality matters. This is
that some people might fail to reach the standards of a decent life if they are continually faced with the discomfiture that
many others are far better off. Similarly, some people might fall below the threshold of sufficiency if they begin to enjoy life
less as a result of identifying with the resentment of others who are worse off (Marmor 2003, pp. 127ff).


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
420 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

420



**AGENCIES**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
421 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

421

Generic Agencies Fail

Regulatory agencies empirically failinherent problems
Tibor Machan, Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School, research fellow
@ Pacific Research Institute & Hoover Institution 6/29/09The reality of regulatory agencies

The confidence shown in regulators in the first statement seems to me to be plainly undermined by the historical claim
in the second, one that seems to follow from a certain plausible understanding of public choice theory, actually ignoring
rather than investigating warnings would come naturally to those who are, whether consciously or not, embarking upon
vested interest dealing, in this instance working for regulations to continue instead of doing what might make them
unnecessary in time. Regulators have a good job, and it is no surprise that they might work not so much to fix problems
they perceive in the marketplace but to keep working at what keeps them employed and well fed. In free markets, to the
extent that they exist, such vested interest dealings are checked by competition and budgetary constraints (to the extent
these are not thwarted by government policies that often produce monopolies). A shoe repairer may be tempted to fix shoes
not quite as well as they need to be fixed but just enough that they will last a while but need to be returned for further repair.
Indeed, automobile repairers are often suspected of this. What, apart from conscientiousness, keeps such folks on the straight
and narrow is competition, the knowledge that if they don't do the work well enough someone else will jump in to do so. One
main reason that bureaucracies are generally sluggish and unenthusiastic about serving the public as distinct from
private vendors is this element of constant competition, combined with the fact that bureaucrats gain their income from
taxes, which can often be raised with impunity by those who hire them. What public choice theorists claim is that
bureaucrats have a far better opportunity to yield to the temptation of malpractice than are those in the private
sector. The theory does not claim that all bureaucrats are cheats and all those in the private sector are professionally
responsible. But it identifies an evident tendency and shows it to exist through the study of economic and political history.
Common sense supports this, as well, when most people notice that if they go to, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles (one
of the more visible government outfits), they mostly get a reluctant, bored, at times even curmudgeonly treatment,
whereas in the private sector the routine tends to be eagerness to serve, to generate and keep business. There is an
element about public choice theory that economists do not emphasize often enough, namely that the objectives of regulators
are often very obscure, unclear, even contradictory. For example, governments often embark on historical preservation
but at the same time they are supposed to make sure that building and other facilities are properly managed, kept safe, etc.
But historical preservation mostly require keeping things in their original form, while the pursuit of safety involves making
use of the most up-to-date technology and science. One can generalize this kind of conflict within government policies all
over the place which is what accounts for vigilant propaganda against smoking while tobacco farmers keep receiving
government subsidies.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
422 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

422

NGOs Key Federal Sucess
NGOs the number one internal to federal government success
Booz Allen Hamilton, leading consulting firm, helps government clients solve their toughest problems The Role of Mission Integration in
the Federal Government Nov 5, 2008 http://www.acuf.org/issues/issue121/081201news.asp

An Increasingly Complex Environment Federal agencies are no longer communities unto themselvestechnology and
globalization have created greater interdependence between NGOs and the private sector. Respondents in every
federal sector, from agriculture and energy to defense, describe their mission as very complex. Furthermore, 88 percent of
respondents report that the complexity of their missions requires col- laboration with other federal agencies or third
parties outside the government structure. The need for increasingly integrated and complex misions will increase in
the coming years. More than 84 percent of respondents believe that their missions complexity has increased dramatically
since 2000. Furthermore, they recognize complexity and mission integration as vital to mission success. According to
respondents, joint missions will be increasingly critical in the future for agencies to meet mission goals. Nearly three
quarters of respondents (73 percent) believe that by 2012 joint missions will play a greater role in their agencys ability to
achieve mission success. A full 50 percent of respondents believe their missions will become significantly more
integrated over time. The Need for Mission Integration In an era of pervasive complexity, mission success is
increasingly dependent on mission integration. Federal agencies need to draw on a diverse mix of specialties and
capabilities, work across organizational boundaries, and operate from deliberate plans with accountability for clear,
measurable results.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
423 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

423

Administration for Children and Families
Administration for Children, has jurisdiction over asylum children
Chriss McGann June 19, 2003 U.S. gives harsh welcome to children seeking asylum
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/127345_juv19.html.

Responsibility of care for unaccompanied immigrant children was transferred in March from the INS to the Office of
Refugee Relocation a division of the Administration of Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human
Services.

ACF fails at implementation
GAO December 2002 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d039.pdf

ACF conducts much of its work through nonfederal service providers, which often limits the extent to which ACF can
influence national performance goals and can seriously complicate data collection. To address this, ACF has
successfully collaborated with providers to develop national performance goals and build data collection capacity. This has
also raised awareness of the importance of collecting and reporting performance data uniformly





Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
424 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

424

Agriculture Department
Agriculture department has internal problems and performance gaps
GAO-09-650T 6/29/09 U.S. Department of Agriculture: Recommendations and Options Available to the New
Administration and Congress to Address Long-Standing Civil Rights Issues Summary

ASCR's difficulties in resolving discrimination complaints persist--ASCR has not achieved its goal of preventing
future backlogs of complaints. At a basic level, the credibility of USDA's efforts has been and continues to be
undermined by ASCR's faulty reporting of data on discrimination complaints and disparities in ASCR's data. Even such
basic information as the number of complaints is subject to wide variation in ASCR's reports to the public and the Congress.
Moreover, ASCR's public claim in July 2007 that it had successfully reduced a backlog of about 690 discrimination
complaints in fiscal year 2004 and held its caseload to manageable levels, drew a questionable portrait of progress. By July
2007, ASCR officials were well aware they had not succeeded in preventing future backlogs--they had another backlog on
hand, and this time the backlog had surged to an even higher level of 885 complaints. In fact, ASCR officials were in the
midst of planning to hire additional attorneys to address that backlog of complaints including some ASCR was holding dating
from the early 2000s that it had not resolved. In addition, some steps ASCR had taken may have actually been counter-
productive and affected the quality of its work. For example, an ASCR official stated that some employees' complaints had
been addressed without resolving basic questions of fact, raising concerns about the integrity of the practice. Importantly,
ASCR does not have a plan to correct these many problems. USDA has published three annual reports--for fiscal years 2003,
2004, and 2005--on the participation of minority farmers and ranchers in USDA programs, as required by law. USDA's
reports are intended to reveal the gains or losses that these farmers have experienced in their participation in USDA
programs. However, USDA considers the data it has reported to be unreliable because they are based on USDA employees'
visual observations about participant's race and ethnicity, which may or may not be correct, especially for ethnicity. USDA
needs the approval of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to collect more reliable data. ASCR started to seek
OMB's approval in 2004, but as of May 2008 had not followed through to obtain approval. ASCR staff will meet again on
this matter in May 2008. GAO found that ASCR's strategic planning is limited and does not address key steps needed to
achieve the Office's mission of ensuring USDA provides fair and equitable services to all customers and upholds the civil
rights of its employees. For example, a key step in strategic planning is to discuss the perspectives of stakeholders. ASCR's
strategic planning does not address the diversity of USDA's field staff even though ASCR's stakeholders told GAO that such
diversity would facilitate interaction with minority and underserved farmers. Also, ASCR could better measure performance
to gauge its progress in achieving its mission. For example, it counts the number of participants in training workshops as part
of its outreach efforts rather than access to farm program benefits and services. Finally, ASCR's strategic planning does
not link levels of funding with anticipated results or discuss the potential for using performance information for
identifying USDA's performance gaps.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
425 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

425

Department of Health and Human Services
Conscience rule acts as a bureaucratic barrier to health care
Medical News Today, 22 Dec 2008 HHS 'Conscience' Rule Creates 'Huge Bureaucratic Barrier,'
Opinion Piece Says http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133861.php

The HHS "conscience" rule is "a huge bureaucratic barrier to health care -- a barrier the incoming Obama
administration will find difficult to remove," a Philadelphia Daily News editorial says. The editorial notes
that several state laws "already protect the 'right to conscience' of doctors and nurses not to perform
abortions. But federal laws also protec[t] the rights of patients to legal health care." It continues that the
new rule would "choose the former over the latter, and also remove protections for the 584,294 federally
funded medical entities -- hospitals, doctors' offices and pharmacies -- that might find it an 'undue
burden' to pay employees who refuse to do the work for which they were hired." According to the
editorial, it will cost about $44 million annually for medical entities to certify compliance with the rule,
which "doesn't include the cost in pain and confusion, and maybe litigation, that would come with
allowing health care workers to decide who is worthy of receiving what care." The editorial continues
that the rule demonstrates that the Bush administration "doesn't care about the objections of doctors or
hospitals or patients -- but what about the approximately 70 million Americans who voted Nov. 4 to let
Barack Obama lead the nation? Apparently, they don't matter either." To undo the regulation, Congress
could "resort" to using the Congressional Review Act, "which has been used only once," the editorial says. The
other option would be for incoming HHS Secretary Tom Daschle to "restart the rule-making process,"
which would "take months," according to the editorial. It adds, "The Obama team has signaled that it is
ready to go this route, with the inevitable political divisiveness -- and who knows how many individuals
who won't get the health care or information they need?" The editorial concludes that the HHS rule
provides "[m]ore proof that George W. Bush's historic unpopularity is the only thing he's ever earned"
(Philadelphia Daily News, 12/18).

HHS is to large to be effective
GAO, March 18, 1997 Department of Health and Human Services: Management Challenges and Opportunities
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/he97098t.pdf

In summary, the first challenge HHS faces is its ability to define its mission, objectives, and measures of success and
increase its accountability to taxpayers. Because of the size and scope of its mission and the resulting organizational
complexity, managing and coordinating HHS programs so that the public gets the best possible results are especially
difficult. The Department has eleven operating divisions responsible for more than 300 diverse programs. HHS has
not always succeeded in managing the wide range of activities its agencies carry out or fixing accountability for
meeting the goals of its mission. Another complicating factor is that HHS needs to work with the governments of the
50 states and the District of Columbia to implement its programs, in addition to thousands of private- sector
grantees. Developing better ways of managing is essential if HHS is to meet its goals.

HHS is too vulnerable to exploitation
GAO, March 18, 1997 Department of Health and Human Services: Management Challenges and Opportunities
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/he97098t.pdf

Finally, HHS responsibilities require it to constantly combat fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. HHS has
several programs that are vulnerable to such exploitation. For example, the size and nature of Medicare, which
accounts for over half of HHS total budget, make this program particularly vulnerable. HHS needs to be vigilant now and
in the future because its programs will probably continue to be the targets of fraud and abuse and because waste and
mismanagement can have such serious effects on taxpayers and program beneficiaries.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
426 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

426

Department of Education
The DOE is a total failure
Cato Cato Handbook for Congress 2003 http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html

The inevitable pattern of bureaucracy is to grow bigger and bigger. The Department of Education should be
eliminated now, before it evolves into an even larger entity consuming more and more resources that could be better
spent by parents themselves. 7. The $47.6 billion spent each year by the Department of Education could be much better
spent if it were simply returned to the American people in the form of a tax cut. Parents themselves could then decide how
best to spend that money. 8. The Department of Education has a record of waste and abuse. For example, the
department reported losing track of $450 million during three consecutive General Accounting Office audits. 9. The
Department of Education is an expensive failure that has added paperwork and bureaucracy but little value to the
nations classrooms.

The DOE is inefficient and wasteful
Cato Cato Handbook for Congress 2003 http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html

The NCLBA provides the Department of Education with $26.5 billion for spending on the program and perpetuates
most of the old federal education programs, most of which are ineffective and wasteful. The total could climb to $37
billion a year by the end of the six-year authorization period. If past experience is any guide, those dollars will go
primarily to feeding the hungry bureaucracy and will have little positive impact on public school students. Instead of
decreasing the role of the federal government in education, the NCLBA allows the federal government to intervene more than
ever in what should be strictly a local and state matter. While the act provides school districts with increased flexibility in
spending some of their federal subsidies, mandated testing and staff restructuring represent an unprece- dented usurpation of
the authority of local communities to run their own schools. During his presidential campaign, Bush emphasized that he did
not want to become the federal superintendent of schools. But the NCLBA gives the president and the federal government
far too much power over local schools and classrooms. Instead of proposing more top-down fixes for education, the
president should use his position to push for the return of control of education to states and localities and urge state-
level reforms that return the control of education to parents.

Federal action deters key state and local governments
Cato Cato Handbook for Congress 2003 http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html

2. No matter how brilliantly designed a federal government program may be, it creates a uniformity among states that
is harmful to creativity and improvement. Getting the federal government out of the picture would allow states and
local governments to create better ways of addressing education issues and problems.

Congress is to far away from local needs
Cato Cato Handbook for Congress 2003 http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html

Since most information about the problems and challenges of education is present at the local level, Congress simply
does not have the ability to improve learning in school classrooms thou- sands of miles away. These problems are best
understood and addressed by local authorities and parents.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
427 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

427

States Solve Education
State action solves beststates model other states
Cato Cato Handbook for Congress 2003 http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html

The way for Congress to improve American education is to step aside and let the states experiment with choice in a
variety of ways. Some will expand charter schools or experiment with private management. Others will institute scholarship
tax credits, parental tax credits, or vouchers either on a limited basis or open to all students. The most successful policies
and programs will be emulated by other states.

State programs have better educational effectiveness
Cato Cato Handbook for Congress 2003 http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html

3. If education were left at the local level, parents would become more involved in reform efforts. Differences in school
effective- ness among states and communities would be noted, and other regions would copy the more effective
programs and policies.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
428 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

428

Department of Interior
Infrastructure problems prevent DOI productivity
GAO Department of Interior Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Interior also faces a challenge in adequately maintaining its facilities and infrastructure. The department owns, builds,
purchases, and contracts services for assets such as visitor centers, schools, office buildings, roads, bridges, dams, irrigation
systems, and reservoirs; however, repairs and maintenance on these facilities have not been adequately funded. The
deterioration of facilities can impair public health and safety, reduce employees morale and productivity, and
increase the need for costly major repairs or early replacement of structures and equipment. In November 2008, the
department estimated that the deferred maintenance backlog for fiscal year 2008 was between $13.2 billion and $19.4
billion (see table 1). Interior is not alone in facing daunting maintenance challenges. In fact, we have identified the
management of federal real property, including deferred maintenance issues, as a government wide high-risk area since
2003.23

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
429 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

429

Department of Interior (Natives Link)
The aff falls under the department of interior
GAO Department of Interior Tuesday, March 3, 2009

BIA is the primary federal agency charged with implementing federal Indian policy and administering the federal trust
responsibility for about 2 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. BIA provides basic services to 562 federally
recognized Indian tribes throughout the United States, including natural resources management on about 54 million acres of
Indian trust lands. Trust status means that the federal government holds title to the land in trust for tribes or individual
Indians; land taken in trust is no longer subject to state and local property taxes and zoning ordinances. In 1980, the
department established a regulatory process intended to provide a uniform approach for taking land in trust.14 While some
state and local governments support the federal governments taking additional land in trust for tribes or individual Indians,
others strongly oppose it because of concerns about the impacts on their tax base and jurisdictional control. We reported in
July 2006 that while BIA generally followed its regulations for processing land in trust applications from tribes and
individual Indians, it had no deadlines for making decisions on them.15 Specifically, the median processing time for the
87 land in trust applications with decisions in fiscal year 2005 was 1.2 yearsranging from 58 days to almost 19 years. We
recommended, among other things, that the department move forward with adopting revisions to the land in trust regulations
that include (1) specific time frames for BIA to make a decision once an application is complete and (2) guidelines for
providing state and local governments more information on the applications and a longer period of time to provide
meaningful comments on the applications. While the department agreed with our recommendations, it has not revised the
land in trust regulations.

BIA is the department of interior
FCC Federal Communications Commision 11/26/08 Department of Interior (DOI) Bureau of Indian Affairs
(BIA) http://www.fcc.gov/indians/internetresources/bia.html.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (www.doi.gov/bia) is responsible for the administration of federal programs for federally
recognized Indian tribes, and for promoting Indian self-determination. In addition, the Bureau has a trust responsibility
emanating from treaties and other agreements with Native groups. Indian Affairs (IA) is the oldest bureau of the United
States Department of the Interior. Established in 1824, IA currently provides services (directly or through contracts, grants,
or compacts) to approximately 1.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. There are 562 federally recognized
American Indian tribes and Alaska Natives in the United States. Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is responsible for the
administration and management of 66 million acres of land held in trust by the United States for American Indian, Indian
tribes, and Alaska Natives. Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) provides education services to approximately 44,000 Indian
students. The mission of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is to: " enhance the quality of life, to promote economic
opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes, and
Alaska Natives."

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
430 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

430

Department of Interior (U.S. Territories DA)
A. Department of interior has jurisdiction over U.S. territories
GAO Department of Interior Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The Secretary of the Interior has varying responsibilities to the island communities of American Samoa, Guam, the
Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, all of which are U.S. territoriesas well as
to the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau, which are sovereign
nations linked with the United States through Compacts of Free Association. The Office of Insular Affairs (OIA), which
carries out the departments responsibilities for the island communities, is to assist the island communities in developing
more efficient and effective government by providing financial and technical assistance and to help manage relations
between the federal government and the island governments by promoting appropriate federal policies. The island
governments have had long-standing financial and program management deficiencies.

B. Not only is federal aid insufficient, but it creates dependency and ruins local economies
GAO Department of Interior Tuesday, March 3, 2009

In December 2006, we reported on serious economic, fiscal, and financial accountability challenges facing American
Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.16 The economic
challenges stem from dependence on a few key industries, scarce natural resources, small domestic markets, limited
infrastructure, shortages of skilled labor, and reliance on federal grants to fund basic services. In addition, efforts to meet
formidable fiscal challenges and build strong economies are hindered by financial reporting that does not provide
timely and complete information to management and oversight officials for decision making. As a result of these
problems, numerous federal agencies have designated these governments as high- risk grantees. To increase the
effectiveness of the federal governments assistance to these island communities, we recommended, among other things,
that the department increase coordination activities with other federal grant-making agencies on issues of common concern
relating to the insular area governments. The department agreed with our recommendations, stating that they were
consistent with OIAs top priorities and ongoing activities. We will continue to monitor OIAs actions on our
recommendations.








Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
431 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

431

Housing and Urban Development
HUD policies get co-opted by financial regulators
Ralph Nader, April 26, 2004 Bureaucratic Impediments to a Much Needed Integrated Urban Policy
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0426-04.htm

HUD has been looked on as the "urban department," but the ills and the needs of urban communities cut across a
wide swath -- health, transportation, education, business development, the environment. HUD remains essentially a
housing agency and even this responsibility has been scattered across the federal government. Similarly, on Capitol Hill
urban policies land under the jurisdiction of multiple standing committees, not just the Senate and House Banking
Committees with jurisdiction over HUD.
The giants of housing finance -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and the financial regulators like the Federal Reserve, the
Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of Thrift Supervision - exercise
immense power over housing and urban policy - probably more so than HUD. The Community Reinvestment Act, for
example, requires banks and thrifts to help meet the credit needs of their communities. It's requirements are enforced by
financial regulators interested in safety and soundness of federally insured institutions, not urban policy. As a result,
only a handful of institutions fail to get passing and outstanding grades on their efforts to help finance housing. And
HUD has no role despite the myth that it holds all the keys to urban policy.

HUD has no authoritytrapped in bureaucratic hurdles
Ralph Nader, April 26, 2004 Bureaucratic Impediments to a Much Needed Integrated Urban Policy
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0426-04.htm

HUD has to be an important cog in any new efforts to establish a workable urban-metropolitan policy, but it is folly to look
on the department as the centerpiece. Urban needs extend beyond affordable housing. Jimmy Carter was wise in
broadening the scope to include other Cabinet offices in the urban policy mix, but he left HUD as the key decision maker. In
the end the other Cabinet offices began to worry that their funds, staff and power would be eroded. And in such situations,
the officeholders always decide to scuttle the ship. This bureaucratic hurdle has to be removed if we truly are interested
in developing and managing an urban policy which stretches across the interconnected problems of housing, health,
transportation, education, jobs and livable wages. With nearly 80 percent of the nation's citizens living in urban-
metropolitan areas, it is time to establish a new office that recognizes the real world in the 21st Century-an office with the
authority to coordinate the disparate facets of federal programs which affect the overwhelming number of our citizens. An
Urban-Metropolitan Coordinator should be established under the President in a manner similar to that of the Council of
Economic Advisors and the Office of Management and Budget with the authority to recommend, review and coordinate
programs and budgets with a direct impact on urban-metropolitan areas. Only with such a structure can we place the full
force of the federal bureaucracy behind an urban policy worthy of the name.

HUD mismanages funds
GAO June 09 PUBLIC HOUSING HUDs Oversight of Housing Agencies Should Focus More on Inappropriate
Use of Program Funds GAO-09-33

Further, HUD has stated that its analysis of housing agency financial data is primarily intended to ensure the accuracy of the
information that is used to calculate the housing agencies PHAS scores and not to identify at-risk housing agencies. Our
analysis of housing agency financial data illustrates how such data could be leveraged to identify housing agencies at
greater risk of inappropriate use or mismanagement of public housing funds that neither PHAS nor the
departments current approach to analyzing financial data would detect. For example, our analysis of PHAS and
financial data from 2002 through 2006 found that 200 housing agencies had written checks that exceeded the funds
available in their bank accounts (bank overdrafts) by $25,000 or moreindicating a potential that these housing agencies
could have serious cash and financial management problems and could be prone to increased risk of fraudulent use of funds.
However, 75 percent of these agencies received passing PHAS scores. Although HUD has focused its efforts on the
challenges of improving the quality of single audits, the department has not taken steps to develop mechanisms to
mitigate the limitations of its oversight processes. Without fully leveraging the audit and financial information it
collects, the department limits its ability to identify housing agencies that are at greater risk of inappropriately using
or mismanaging program funds.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
432 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

432

Department of labor
Falls under the department of labor
Department of Labor July 6, 2009 III. DOL Mission and Agency Functions
http://www.dol.gov/osbp/pubs/dolbuys/mission.htm

The Department's many activities affect virtually every man, woman, and child in our country. Such activities include
protecting the wages, health and safety, employment, and pension rights of working people; promoting equal
employment opportunity; providing job training, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation; strengthening
free collective bargaining; and collecting, analyzing, and publishing labor statistics. Although created to help working people,
the Department's services and information benefit many other groups such as employers, business organizations, civil rights
groups, government agencies at all levels, and the academic community. Its enforcement activities and job training services,
in particular, affect large numbers of people who are not currently working. As the Department seeks to assist all
Americans who need and want work, special efforts are made to meet the unique job market requirements of older
workers, youths minority group members, women, the disabled, and other groups.

The DOL is massively incompetent GAO sting operations prove
Steven Greenhouse 5/25/09 Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says New York Times

The federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and many other labor laws is failing in that role,
leaving millions of workers vulnerable, Congressional auditors have found.
In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office found that the agency, the Labor
Departments Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10 cases brought by a team of undercover agents
posing as aggrieved workers. In one case, the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto,
Calif., were working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the nonpartisan
auditing arm of Congress, found. When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher called four times to complain about not
being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the divisions office in Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did,
the report said, an official told him it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case. This investigation clearly
shows that Labor has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal government assistance with
nowhere to turn, the report said. Unfortunately, far too often the result is unscrupulous employers taking advantage
of our countrys low-wage workers. The report pointed to a cavalier attitude by many Wage and Hour Division
investigators, saying they often dropped cases when employers did not return calls and sometimes told complaining workers
that they should file lawsuits, an often expensive and arduous process, especially for low-wage workers. During the nine-
month investigation, the report said, 5 of the 10 labor complaints that undercover agents filed were not recorded in
the Wage and Hour Divisions database, and three were not investigated. In two cases, officials recorded that employers had
paid back wages, even though they had not. The accountability office also investigated hundreds of cases that it said the
Wage and Hour Division had mishandled. In one, the division waited 22 months to investigate a complaint from a group of
restaurant workers. Ultimately, investigators found that the workers were owed $230,000 because managers had made them
work off the clock and had misappropriated tips. When the restaurant agreed to pay back wages but not the tips, investigators
simply closed the case.

Employees have no motivation
Steven Greenhouse 5/25/09 Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says New York Times
The report concluded that the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled more serious cases 19 percent of the time. In
such cases, the accountability office said, the division did not begin an investigation for six months, did not complete an
investigation for a year, did not assess back wages when violations were clearly identified and did not refer cases to litigation
when warranted.When you have weak penalties and weak enforcement, thats a deadly combination for workers, said
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who, as chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee,
asked the accountability office to do the report. Its clear that under the existing system, employers feel they can steal
workers wages with impunity, and that has to change.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
433 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

433

Department of Justice
Lack of data sharing hampers effectiveness
Office of the Inspector General, March 2009 The Department of Justices litigation case management system
Audit Report 09-22 http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/plus/a0922/final.pdf.

Each of the Departments litigating divisions currently maintains its own case management system, which is not able
to share information with other systems in the Department. As a result, these divisions cannot efficiently share
information or produce comprehensive reports among the divisions. separate systems also hamper the ability of the
litigating divisions to collaborate and limit the timeliness and quality of case information available to Department
leadership.

Courts are clogged
Mary Mack, Corporate Technology Counsel,. 4/9 2009 Total Revamp of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure?
http://www.discoveryresources.org/library/case-law-and-rules/total-revamp-of-federal-rules-of-civil-procedure/.

Two and a half years after the amendments to the FRCP took effect, the trial lawyers overwhelmed by clogged courts as
a result of increased litigation, discovery in general and e-discovery in particular are calling for change to fix a
broken system. While the starting point of their analysis was focused on discovery, the reports recommendations
ultimately upend current procedure in many significant ways.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
434 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

434

Environmental Protection Agency
EPA has staff and resource allocation problems
GAO March 2009 Environmental Protection Agency http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09434.pdf

Addressing human capital issues. EPA has struggled for several years to identify its needs for human resources and
to deploy its staff throughout the country in a manner that would do the most good. We found that EPAs process
for budgeting and allocating resources does not fully consider the agencys current workload, and that in preparing
requests for funding and staffing, EPA makes incremental adjustments, largely based on an antiquated workforce
planning system that does not reflect a bottom-up review of the nature or distribution of the current workload.6
Moreover, EPAs human capital management systems have not kept pace with changes that have occurred over the
years as a result of changing legislative requirements and priorities, changes in environmental conditions in
different regions of the country, and the much more active role that states now play in carrying out day-to-day-
activities of federal environmental programs.

EPAs lack of data hampers effectiveness
GAO March 2009 Environmental Protection Agency http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09434.pdf

Improving development and use of environmental information. Critical, reliable environmental information is needed to
provide better scientific understanding of environmental trends and conditions and to better inform the public about
environmental progress in their locales. We found substantial gaps between what is known and the goal of full,
reliable, and insightful representation of environmental conditions and trends to provide direction for future research and
monitoring efforts.7 EPA has struggled with providing a focus and the necessary resources for environmental
information since its inception in 1970. While many data have been collected over the years, most water, air, and land
programs lack the detailed environmental trend information to address the well- being of Americans. EPA program areas
have also been hampered by deficiencies in their environmental data systems. For example, the quality of
environmental data constrains EPAs ability to assess the effectiveness of its enforcement policies and programs throughout
the country and to inform the public about the health and environmental hazards of dangerous chemicals.

Performance problems
GAO March 2009 Environmental Protection Agency http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09434.pdf

While EPA has made some progress in improving its operations, many of the same issues still remain. EPAs mission
is, without question, a difficult one: its policies and programs affect virtually all segments of the economy, society, and
government, and it is in the unenviable position of enforcing myriad inherently controversial environmental laws and
maintaining a delicate balance between the benefits to public health and the environment with the cost to industry and
others. Nevertheless, the repetitive and persistent nature of the shortcomings we have observed over the years points
to serious challenges for EPA to effectively implement its programs. Until it addresses these long-standing challenges,
EPA is unlikely to be able to respond effectively to much larger emerging challenges, such as climate change. Facing
these challenges head-on will require a sustained commitment by agency leadership. As a new administration takes office
and begins to chart the agencys course, it will be important for Congress and EPA to continue to focus on the issues we
have identified.




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
435 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

435

Office of National Aids Policy
Sorry, its exclusively international
Jeff Gow 2002 The HIV/AIDS Epidemic In Africa: Implications For U.S. Policy
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/57

In response, the focus of U.S. government activities toward HIV/AIDS has shifted away from a domestic orientation
toward an increasingly international focus. The Office of National AIDS Policy now has an explicit international
focus. Although the African epidemic is now the worst, the potential exists for an epidemic of similar magnitude in Asia over
the next decade. Emerging epidemics in the Caribbean and Latin America are smaller in scale but closer to home.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
436 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

436

Social Security Administration

SSA funds get wasted
GAO-07-986 August 31, 2007 Social Security Administration: Policies and Procedures Were in Place over MMA
Spending, but Some Instances of Noncompliance Occurred

SSA spent the $500 million in MMA funds from December 2003 through January 2006 to implement activities outlined in
MMA. The majority of costs paid with MMA funds consisted of personnel-related expenses, contractors, and
indirect costs. More than half of the funds were spent on payroll for staff hours used on MMA activities in SSA
headquarters and field offices (see table). Once the $500 million was spent, SSA began to use its general appropriation
to fund the remaining costs of implementing MMA activities. SSA used its cost analysis system to track the total costs of
its implementation of MMA activities. As of February 20, 2007, SSA had completed implementation of 16 of the 22 tasks
for the six provisions under the act.

SSA funds dont get enforced
GAO-07-986 August 31, 2007 Social Security Administration: Policies and Procedures Were in Place over MMA
Spending, but Some Instances of Noncompliance Occurred

SSA had agency wide policies and procedures in place for its cost tracking and allocation, asset accountability, and
invoice review processes. It also established specific guidance to assign and better allocate SSAs costs in implementing
MMA. There were some instances though where SSA did not comply with these policies and procedures. SSA did not
effectively communicate the specific MMA-related guidance to all affected staff. SSA subsequently identified and
corrected at least $4.6 million of costs that initially were incorrectly allocated to MMA, but had not corrected approximately
$313,000 misallocated credit card purchase transactions. In addition, GAO found instances where accountable assets
purchased with MMA funds, such as electronic and computer equipment, were not being properly tracked by SSA in
accordance with its policies and instances where purchase card transactions were not properly supported. Although
purchase card transactions and accountable asset purchases represented a small percentage of total MMA costs, proper
approval and support for these types of transactions is essential to reduce the risk of improper payments.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
437 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

437

ICE
Immigration courts are brutally unfair and clog the system
Brad Heath 3/29/2009 Immigration courts face huge backlog USA TODAY

WASHINGTON The nation's immigration courts are now so clogged that nearly 90,000 people accused of being in
the United States illegally waited at least two years for a judge to decide whether they must leave, one of the last
bottlenecks in a push to more strictly enforce immigration laws. Their cases identified by a USA TODAY review of the
courts' dockets since 2003 are emblematic of delays in the little-known court system that lawyers, lawmakers and others
say is on the verge of being overwhelmed. Among them were 14,000 immigrants whose cases took more than five years to
decide and a few that took more than a decade. "It's an indication that they just don't have enough resources," says Kerri
Sherlock Talbot of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Some immigration courts are now so backlogged
that just putting a case on a judge's calendar can take more than a year, says Dana Marks, an immigration judge in
San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. "You could have a case that would take an
hour (to hear). But I can't give you that hour of time for 14 months," Marks says. In the most extreme cases, immigrants
can remain locked up while their cases are delayed. More often, the backlogs leave them struggling to exist until they
learn their fate, Marks and others say. The immigration courts, run by the Justice Department, have weathered years of
criticism that their 224 judges are unable to handle a flood of increasingly-complicated cases. Justice Department
spokeswoman Susan Eastwood acknowledges some long delays, but says that's often the result of unusual circumstances. She
says the department has enough judges.



Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
438 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

438

Veterans Health Administration
VA misuses its budget
Randall B. Williamson -- Director, Health Care, March 12, 2009 Challenges in Budget Formulation and
Execution

VA also faces challenges executing its health care budget. These include spending and tracking funds for specific
initiatives and providing timely and useful information to Congress on budget execution progress and problems. GAOs
2006 report on VA funding for new mental health initiatives found VA had difficulty spending and tracking funds for
initiatives in VAs mental health strategic plan to expand services to address service gaps. The initiatives were to enhance
VAs larger mental health program and were to be funded by $100 million in fiscal year 2005. Some VA medical centers
did not spend all the funds they had received for the initiatives by the end of the fiscal year, partly due to the time it
took to hire staff and renovate space for mental health programs. Also, VA did not track how funding allocated for the
initiatives was spent. GAOs 2006 report on VAs overall health care budget found that VA monitored its health care
budget execution and identified execution problems for fiscal years 2005 and 2006, but did not report the problems to
Congress in a timely way. GAO also found that VAs reporting on budget execution to Congress could have been more
informative. VA has not fully implemented one of GAOs two recommendations for improving VA budget execution.
Sound budget formulation, monitoring of budget execution, and the reporting of informative and timely information to
Congress for oversight continue to be essential as VA addresses budget challenges GAO has identified. Budgeting involves
imperfect information and uncertainty, but VA has the opportunity to improve the credibility of its budgeting by
continuing to address identified problems. This is particularly true for long-term care, where for several years GAO work
has highlighted concerns about workload assumptions and cost projections. By improving its budget process, VA can
increase the credibility and usefulness of information it provides to Congress on its budget plans and progress in spending
funds. GAOs prior work on new mental health initiatives may provide a cautionary lesson about expanding VA programs
namely, that funding availability does not always mean that new initiatives will be fully implemented in a given fiscal year
or that funds will be adequately tracked.

VA inefficientfraud, waste, and abuse
GAO September 2008, Improvements Needed in Design of Controls over Miscellaneous Obligations

VHA recorded over $6.9 billion of miscellaneous obligations for the procurement of mission-related goods and
services in fiscal year 2007. According to VHA officials, miscellaneous obligations were used to facilitate payment for
goods and services when the quantities and delivery dates are not known. According to VHA data, almost $3.8 billion
(55.1 percent) of VHAs miscellaneous obligations was for fee-based medical services for veterans and another $1.4 billion
(20.4 percent) was for drugs and medicines. The remainder funded, among other things, state homes for the care of disabled
veterans, transportation of veterans to and from medical centers for treatment, and logistical support and facility
maintenance for VHA medical centers nationwide. GAO's Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government states
that agency management is responsible for developing detailed policies and procedures for internal control suitable
for their agency's operations. However, VA policies and procedures were not designed to provide adequate controls over
the authorization and use of miscellaneous obligations with respect to oversight by contracting officials, segregation of
duties, and supporting documentation for the obligation of funds. Collectively, these control design flaws increase the
risk of fraud, waste, and abuse (including employees converting government assets to their own use without detection).
These control design flaws were confirmed in our case studies at VHA Medical centers in Pi ttsburgh, Pennsylvania;
Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Kansas City, Missouri.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
439 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

439

Ineffective Agency Political Capital Link
The solvency deficit is our linkCongress reluctant to fund inefficient agencies
Mark Wilson, Nina H. Shokraii, and Angela Antonelli August 7, 1998 Labor-Health-Education Appropriations:
Eliminating Waste and Enhancing Accountability http://www.heritage.org/research/labor/bg1212.cfm

Fortunately, the House of Representatives has become far less willing to continue to feed the appetite of an ineffective,
bloated federal bureaucracy. The House Appropriations Committee has taken a bold first step by reporting an FY 1999
Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill that begins to hold agencies accountable for poor performance, eliminates
programs that are wasteful or no longer needed, and demands results from those that continue. It would either terminate
or reduce funding levels and reform many of the following programs because of their poor track records:




Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
440 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

440



**INTERNATIONAL LAW**

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
441 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

441

Intl Law Good

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
442 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

442

Accepting customary international legal norms is key to solving multiple global issues.

Charney 03 [10/03 Jonathan I. Charney, Of the Board of Editors. Support for this
paper was provided by the Vanderbilt University School of Law. Research
assistance was provided by Jennifer McGinty, J.D. Vanderbilt University,
1993. Universal International Law, Lexis]
To resolve such problems, it may be necessary to establish new rules that are binding on all subjects of
international law regardless of the attitude of any particular state. For unless all states are bound, an exempted
recalcitrant state could act as a spoiler for the entire international community. Thus, states that are not bound by
international laws designed to combat universal environmental threats could become havens for the harmful
activities concerned. Such states might have an economic advantage over states that are bound because they
would not have to bear the costs of the requisite environmental protection. They would be free riders on the
system and would benefit from the environmentally protective measures introduced by others at some cost.
Furthermore, the example of such free riders might undermine the system by encouraging other states not to
participate, and could thus derail the entire effort. Similarly, in the case of international terrorism, one state that
serves as a safe haven for terrorists can threaten all. War crimes, apartheid or genocide committed in one state
might threaten international peace and security worldwide. Consequently, for certain circumstances it may be incumbent on
the international community to establish international law that is binding on all states regardless of any one state's disposition.
Unfortunately, the traditions of the international legal system appear to work against the ability to legislate universal norms. States are said
to be sovereign, thus able to determine for themselves what they must or may do. State autonomy continues to serve the international
system well in traditional spheres of international relations. The freedom of states to control their own destinies and policies has substantial
value: it permits diversity and the choice by each state of its own social priorities. Few, if any, states favor a world government that would
dictate uniform behavior for all. Consequently, many writers use the language of autonomy when they declare that international law
requires the consent of the states that are governed by it. Many take the position that a state that does not wish to be bound by a new rule of
international law may object to it and be exempted from its application. If sovereignty and autonomy prevailed in all areas of international
law, however, one could hardly hope to develop rules to bind all states. In a community of nearly two hundred diverse states, it is virtually
impossible to obtain the acceptance of all to any norm, particularly one that requires significant expenses or changes in behavior. Complete
autonomy may have been acceptable in the past when no state could take actions that would threaten the international community as a
whole. Today, the enormous destructive potential of some activities and the precarious condition of some objects of international concern
make full autonomy undesirable, if not potentially catastrophic. In this article I explore the limits of state autonomy to determine whether
some or all of international law may be made universally binding regardless of the position of one or a small number of unwilling states. To
accomplish this objective, I begin by analyzing the secondary rules of recognition (the doctrine of sources) used to establish primary rules
of international law. While treaties may require the consent of individual states to be binding on them, such consent is not required for
customary norms. Finally, I explore in greater depth the actual processes by which many customary law norms have come into being in the
last half of the twentieth century. The contemporary process that is often used is significantly different from that described in the classic
treatises on the formation of customary law. Contemporary procedural developments place the international legal system closer to the more
formal notions of positive law, facilitating the development of universal international law. These procedural developments strengthen the
argument that the system may establish general international law binding on all states, regardless of the objection of a small number of
states. Like many others, I take the position that there exists an international legal system with standards and procedures for making,
applying and enforcing international law. n6 As a jurisprudential matter, the source of the obligation to abide by international law is a
matter of debate. Perhaps the most popular theory is that states become bound to the international legal system on the basis of a social
contract, actual consent or tacit consent. n7 Other theories dispense with consent as the source of a state's obligation to abide by
international law. The principal ones maintain (1) that natural law imposes a duty on those located within the territorial scope of the legal
system to abide by it, especially when it is legitimate and just; n8 (2) that principles of fair play or gratitude bind those who benefit from
the legal system to abide by its rules; n9 and (3) that utilitarian considerations based on the value of the rule or of the system to individuals
obligate them to abide by the law. n10 Depending upon the theory, the consent of states may or may not be found at the root of all
international law. Be that as it may, the system of international law serves the practical interests of states. As is true of all societies,
the international community has a need for rules to impart a degree of order, predictability and stability to
relations among its members. The rules of the system also permit members to avoid conflict and injury, and
promote beneficial reciprocal and cooperative relations. They may even promote values of justice and morality.
The international legal system is supported not only by states' interests in promoting individual rules, but also by
their interests in preserving and promoting the system as a whole. Thus, states collectively and severally maintain

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
443 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

443

an interest in encouraging law-abiding behavior. There is also an effective decentralized system for imposing
sanctions on violators of the law through individual state and collective acts of
Intl Law Good

disapproval, denial and penalties. Fear of sanctions, the desire to be viewed by others as law-abiding, and
domestic institutional inclinations to conform to rules denominated as law further impel states to comply with
international law. Despite the decentralized nature of the international legal system, there are strong reasons why
states need international law and are compelled to abide by it. Its decentralized structure places some limits on
what can be accomplished, but within those limits international law has an important role. Even though individual
states may find short-term advantages in violating the law in particular situations, their long-term interests are
likely to be served best by the system. Because the decentralized international legal system is governed directly
by the subjects of the law, i.e., states, it inherently favors rules of law that optimize the interests of states. Despite
the differences in power and influence of states, no individual or small group of states is now dominant. Decisions
tend to reflect the power relationships and the right of all states to participate in reaching them. When the
lawmakers themselves are the primary subjects of the law, the law should reflect their collective interests.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
444 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

444

Intl Law Impact


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
445 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

445

The only alternative to international law is genocide and nuclear war.

Shaw 01 [10/3/01 Martin Shaw Professor of International Relations and Politics at the University of
Sussex. The unfinished global revolution: intellectuals and the new politics of international relations
http://www.martinshaw.org/unfinished.pdf]

The new politics of international relations require us, therefore, to go beyond the anti-imperialism of the intellectual left as
well as of the semi-anarchist traditions of the academic discipline. We need to recognize three fundamental truths. First, in
the twenty-first century people struggling for democratic liberties across the non-Western world are likely to make constant
demands on our solidarity. Courageous academics, students and other intellectuals will be in the forefront of these
movements. They deserve the unstinting support of intellectuals in the West. Second, the old international thinking in which
democratic movements are seen as purely internal to states no longer carries conviction despite the lingering nostalgia for it
on both the American right and the anti-American left. The idea that global principles can and should be enforced worldwide
is firmly established in the minds of hundreds of millions of people. This consciousness will a powerful force in the coming
decades. Third, global state-formation is a fact. International institutions are being extended, and (like it or not) they have a
symbiotic relation with the major centre of state power, the increasingly internationalised Western conglomerate. The success
of the global-democratic revolutionary wave depends first on how well it is consolidated in each national context but
second, how thoroughly it is embedded in international networks of power, at the centre of which, inescapably, is the West.
From on these political fundamentals, strategic propositions can be derived. First, democratic movements cannot regard non-
governmental organisations and civil society as ends in themselves. They must aim to civilise local states, rendering them
open, accountable and pluralistic, and curtail the arbitrary and violent exercise of power. Second, democratising local states is
not a separate task from integrating them into global and often Western-centred networks. Reproducing isolated local centres
of power carries with it classic dangers of states as centres of war.84 Embedding global norms and integrating new state
centres with global institutional frameworks are essential to the control of violence. (To put this another way: the
proliferation of purely national democracies is not a recipe for peace.) Third, while the global revolution cannot do without
the West and the UN, neither can it rely on them unconditionally. We need these power networks, but we need to tame them
too, to make their messy bureaucracies enormously more accountable and sensitive to the needs of society worldwide. This
will involve the kind of cosmopolitan democracy argued for by David Held85. It will also require us to advance a global
social-democratic agenda, to address the literally catastrophic scale of world social inequalities. This is not a separate
problem: social and economic reform is an essential ingredient of alternatives to warlike and genocidal power; these feed off
and reinforce corrupt and criminal political economies. Fourth, if we need the global-Western state, if we want to
democratise it and make its institutions friendlier to global peace and justice, we cannot be indifferent to its strategic debates.
It matters to develop international political interventions, legal institutions and robust peacekeeping as strategic alternatives
to bombing our way through zones of crisis. It matters that international intervention supports pluralist structures, rather than
ratifying Bosnia-style apartheid.86 As political intellectuals in the West, we need to have our eyes on the ball at our feet, but
we also need to raise them to the horizon. We need to grasp the historic drama that is transforming worldwide relationships
between people and state, as well as between state and state. We need to think about how the turbulence of the global
revolution can be consolidated in democratic, pluralist, international networks of both social relations and state authority. We
cannot be simply optimistic about this prospect. Sadly, it will require repeated violent political crises to push Western and
other governments towards the required restructuring of world institutions.87 What I have outlined is a huge challenge; but
the alternative is to see the global revolution splutter into partial defeat, or degenerate into new genocidal wars - perhaps even
nuclear conflicts. The practical challenge for all concerned citizens, and the theoretical and analytical challenges for students
of international relations and politics, are intertwined.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
446 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

446

Intl Law K2 Rights

International law key to global human rights

Ignatieff April 4-7, 2000. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Princeton Univ.
http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Ignatieff_01.pdf

In If This Is a Man, Primo Levi describes being interviewed by Dr. Pannwitz, chief of the chemical department at
Auschwitz.1 Securing a place in the department was a matter of life or death: if Levi could convince Pannwitz that he was a
competent chemist, he might be spared the gas chamber. As Levi stood on one side of the doctors desk, in his concentration
camp uniform, Dr. Pannwitz stared up at him. Levi later remembered: That look was not one between two men; and if I had
known how completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between
two beings who live in different worlds, I would also have explained the essence of the great insanity of the third German
[reich]. Here was a scientist, trained in the traditions of European rational inquiry, turning a meeting between two human
beings into an encounter between different species. Progress may be a contested concept, but we make progress to the degree
that we act upon the moral intuition that Dr. Pannwitz was wrong: our species is one and each of the individuals who
compose it is entitled to equal moral consideration. Human rights is the language that systematically embodies this intuition,
and to the degree that this intuition gains inuence over the conduct of individuals and states, we can say that we are making
moral progress. Richard Rortys denition of progress applies here: an increase in our ability to see more and more
differences among people as morally irrelevant.2 We think of the global diffusion of this idea as progress for two reasons:
because if we live by it, we treat more human beings as we would wish to be treated 1 Primo Levi, If This Is a Man,
translated by Stuart Woolf (London: Abacus, 1987), pp. 11112. The signicance of the passage was pointed out to me by
Alain Finkielkrauts LHumanit perdue: essai sur le 20ime siecle (Paris: Seuil, 1996), pp. 711. 2 Richard Rorty, Truth and
Moral Progress: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 11. [287] 288 The Tanner Lectures
on Human Values ourselves and in so doing help to reduce the amount of unmerited cruelty and suffering in the world. Our
grounds for believing that the spread of human rights represents moral progress, in other words, are pragmatic and historical.
We know from historical experience that when human beings have defensible rightswhen their agency as individuals is
protected and enhancedthey are less likely to be abused and oppressed. On these grounds, we count the diffusion of human
rights instruments as progress even if there remains an unconscionable gap between the instruments and the actual practices
of states charged to comply with them. Calling the global diffusion of Western human rights a sign of moral progress may
seem Eurocentric. Yet the human rights instruments created after 1945 were not a triumphant expression of European
imperial self-conscience but a reection on European nihilism and its consequences, at the end of a catastrophic world war in
which European civilization very nearly destroyed itself. Human rights was a response to Dr. Pannwitz, to the discovery of
the abomination that could occur when the Westphalian state was accorded unlimited sovereignty, when citizens of that state
lacked criteria in international law that could oblige them to disobey legal but immoral orders. The Universal Declaration
represented a return by the European tradition to its natural law heritage, a return intended to restore agency, to give
individuals the juridical resources to stand up when the state ordered them to do wrong. 2. The Juridical, Advocacy, and
Enforcement Revolutions Historically speaking, the Universal Declaration is part of a wider reordering of the normative
order of postwar international relations, designed to create re-walls against barbarism. The juridical revolution included the
UN Charter of 1945, outlawing aggressive war between states; the Genocide Convention of 1948, protecting religious, racial,
and ethnic groups against extermination; the revision of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, strengthening noncombatant
immunity; and nally the international convention on asylum of 1951 to protect the rights of refugees. Before the Second
World War, only states had rights in international law. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the
[Ignatieff] Human Rights 289 rights of individuals received international legal recognition.3 For the rst time, individuals
regardless of race, creed, gender, age, or any other statuswere granted rights that they could use to challenge unjust state
law or oppressive customary practice.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
447 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

447




Intl Law Bad

International law is vague and unenforceable sovereign nations can interpret or ignore it

Casey et al. 06

(August 18, 2006, International Law and the Nation-State at the U.N.: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers, Lee A. Casey and
David B. Rivkin, Jr.)
At the same time, it is also fair to say that, beyond a few academics and activists, most Americans do not look to international
institutions or the international community for validation of their governments actions or their own. One might well ask, in
response to the German Foreign Ministry, what is the international community? Does it, for example, include Chinas
Communist rulers or the Persian Gulfs divine right monarchs? And what obligations, exactly, might Americans have to
them? Law, in the United States, is made by our elected representatives, and the measure of its legitimacy is the United States
Constitution. As a result, of course, international law has never been treated as a rigid and imperative code of con duct by
U.S. policymakers. This attitude toward international law transcends political ideology and party label. Nowhere was it better
displayed than in an exchange between then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her British counterpart, Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook, during the run-up to NATOs 1999 intervention in Kosovo. As reported by Mrs. Albrights
spokesman James Rubin, when Cook explained that British lawyers objected to the use of military force against Serbia
without U.N. approval, she replied simply get new lawyers.[3]Mrs. Albrights suggestion was perhaps undiplomatic, but it
revealed a firm grasp of the essential genius of international law: It is a body of norms made by states for states, and its
content and application are almost always open to honest dispute. Moreover, and most important of all, there is no global
power or authority with the ultimate right to establish the meaning of international law for all. Every independent state has
the legal rightand the obligationto consider and interpret international law for itself. In other words, when questions are
asked about the meaning and requirements of international law, the answers will probably, and properly, depend on who the
lawyers are. This does not mean that international law is illusory or that it can or should be ignored by states in the day-to-
day exercise of power. It does mean, however, that international law is best viewed as a collection of behavioral norms
some arising from custom and some from express agreement, some more well-established and some less sothat it is in the
interest of states to honor. As Chief Justice John Marshall explained in 1812 in describing one important aspect of
international law:[4]The world being composed of distinct sovereignties, possessing equal rights and equal independence,
whose mutual benefit is promoted by intercourse with each other, and by an interchange of those good offices which
humanity dictates and its wants require, all sovereigns have consented [to certain legal norms].The key, of course, is consent.
Ultimately, the binding nature of international law is a matter of the consent of sovereign states. They can interpret that law
in accordance with their understanding and interests, they can attempt to change it, and they can choose to ignore itso long
as they are prepared to accept the very real political, economic, and even military consequences that may result. This is the
essence of sovereignty, which itself is the basis and guarantor of self-government.

Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
448 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

448

Intl Law K2 Democracy

IL is key to democracy and survival.


Dowling Debate
2008-2009
File Name
449 /449
Nelson
<tournament>

449

Intl Law Bad

International law is un-American tyranny which the US must subvert
Casey et al. 06

(August 18, 2006, International Law and the Nation-State at the U.N.: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers, Lee A. Casey and
David B. Rivkin, Jr., http://www.heritage.org/Research/WorldwideFreedom/bg1961.cfm)


The reason is simple enough. A genuine system of international law, comparable to domestic legal systems in its reach and
authority, would require a universally accepted institution entitled both to adjudicate the conduct of states and, by extension,
their individual officials and citizens and to implement its judgments through compulsory process with or without consent of
the states concerned. Such a universal authority, however, would be fundamentally at odds with the founding principles of
the American Republic. It would require the American people to accept that there is, in fact, a legal power that has legitimate
authority over them but is not accountable to them for its actions.

Pending this revolution in American beliefs and principles, U.S. officials and diplomats should recall two basic points in their
approach to international law:

As an independent sovereign, the United States is fully entitled to interpret international law for itself. The views of
international organizations, including the United Nations, other states, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) may be
informative, but they are not legally binding unless, and only to the extent that, the United States agrees to be bound.

Any institution or individual invoking international law as the measure of U.S. policy choices is only expounding an opinion
of what international law is or should be. That opinion may be well or poorly informed, but it is not and cannot be
authoritative. There is no supreme international judicial body with the inherent right to interpret international law for states.

In short, the United States, like all other states, is bound by international law; but, like all other states, it is also
entitled to interpret international law for itself. Whether the U.S. or any other state has been reasonable in its
interpretation is ultimately a political determination.