Security Kritik - UTNIF 2019

UTNIF Security K – 2019-2020
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Limiting arms sales is a ruse of governmentality to enable the smooth
functioning of wider networks of racism, colonial order, and imperial
power. The aff’s naïvely optimistic embrace of tactical disarmament without
structural demilitarization sustains liberal militarism
Cooper ‘18 (Neil, Professor of International Relations and Security Studies and Head of Peace Studies at University of
Bradford. “Race, Sovereignty, and Free Trade: Arms Trade Regulation and Humanitarian Arms Control in the Age of Empire,”
Journal of Global Security Studies, 3(4), 2018, 444–462 doi: 10.1093/jogss/ogy013, p. 457-459)
This article has offered a more complete understanding of the dynamics of arms trade regulation in the
late nineteenth century. In this concluding section, I also draw on this understanding toprovide insights into current
debates about norms, arms regulation, and arms control as governmentality. The 1890
Brussels Act can be understood as the first matryoshka doll of arms trade governance—a
discrete initiative that, in this case, aimed to regulate the import of a specified class of weapons into
a specified area of Africa. From the perspective of proponents, the act was the outcome of a
grand humanitarian campaign to restrict the arms (and liquor) trade to Africa. Indeed, it can be
understood, in part, as an effort to graft a regulatory arms trade norm onto an established and constitutive anti-slavery norm. At
the same time, policymakers were also motivated by a more prosaic concern to maintain
qualitative military superiority over colonial subjects in Africa. Nevertheless, judged in
isolation, the campaign for the Brussels Act can be understood as a relatively successful
initiative that managed to merge the requirements of colonial order with a particularly paternalist
and orientalist humanitarianism. Moreover, with the exception of the arms traffic to Abyssinia and Somalia,
implementation of the act was more extensive than has generally been acknowledged. However, the Brussels Act
represented just one element in a larger network of regulation aimed at restricting the
supply of arms to colonial subjects in all the spaces of empire. This constituted the second
Matryoshka doll of arms trade governance. Thus, rather than being an era of free trade in arms,
the period was actually characterized by a dual regime of regulation: the operation of a
peacetime liberal export norm for transfers from imperial metropoles combined with widespread
efforts to manage arms flows into, within, and between the spaces of empire (using post-export
blockades, import controls, internal regulations, and restrictions on transfers between colonial spaces). This contrasts with
the contemporary emphasis on producer export controls as a primary (if not exclusive)
vehicle for managing the global trade in conventional arms. When located in this broader
network of prohibitory regulation, the humanitarian underpinnings of the Brussels Act are
revealed to be far less significant than the concerns about the maintenance of colonial
order and qualitative military advantage for imperial powers. Of course, the operation of a free
trade in arms philosophy combined with competition for colonies, markets, and influence
amongst imperial powers is generally deemed to have trumped substantive efforts at limiting
arms flows. However, practices of proscription and permission were both part of the attempt to
delineate who could legitimately use which gradations of weapons according to where they were
located in the triple hierarchies of civilization, loyalty, and utility to empire. This is not to deny that local
actors constantly engaged in strategies of evasion or that imperial policies were perennially reversed or amended. Indeed, both
permissive and proscriptive arms trade norms were the site of recurring contestation that played out in the form of competing
appeals to transnational constitutive norms such as sovereignty, free trade, colonialism, and the standard of civilization.
Nevertheless, the oscillations in policy this produced are better understood less as a failure of
prohibition and more as constituting the fluid cartography of regulation that was (and is) a
defining feature of arms control as governmentality. Moreover, the process of serially
reinventing the border between legitimate and illegitimate ownership of, and trade in, the
means of violence represented an important political project in its own right, irrespective of the
actual material impact on arms flows. Indeed, the understanding of arms trade governance as a
Sisyphean endeavor was (and remains) central to the legitimizing politics of arms control as
governmentality; sanctifying the performative of regulatory and institutional refinement, an á la
carte approach to normative frameworks (e.g. humanitarianism, free trade, military necessity)
and their application to specific arms trade policy questions. Nevertheless, by the early 1900s colonial powers
had developed fairly extensive mechanisms of regulation that, in general, were probably as effective as the mechanisms of
What
contemporary arms trade regulation heralded by optimists as signaling a shift to a novel form of global arms governance.
insights, then, can we draw into contemporary debates in the literature on post-Cold War arms
trade regulation? First, the simplistic claim that contemporary HAC initiatives, including those on
small arms, are “novel” just does not stand up to historical analysis. This bears repeating time
and time again given the frequency with which the former claim is recycled. What is more
useful, therefore, is to reflect on the ways in which contemporary HAC is or is not novel
compared to antecedents such as the Brussels Act and to use this reflection as the basis for
evaluating current debates in the literature on HAC. There are some notable differences. The Brussels Act was
concerned with restricting what were then considered new, modern, and technologically cutting-edge firearms, whereas
contemporary small arms are generally viewed as a mature technology. Even more notably, the overt racism that characterized the
discursive landscape of nineteenth-century HAC has largely disappeared. Similarly, a feature of contemporary transnational
initiatives on small arms, landmines, and the ATT has been the way these initiatives have been actively promoted by key states and
civil society organizations from the Global South (Efrat 2012, 66; Bromley, Cooper, and Holtom 2012, 1039). The global architecture
of small arms regulation also includes regional agreements, such as the ECOWAS moratorium on SALW, that are composed solely
This is certainly indicative of changes in power relations between North
of states from the Global South.
and South. Nevertheless, northern NGOs remain the primary gatekeepers determining what issues
(e.g., landmines as opposed to thermobaric weapons) become the focus of civil society
campaigns (Carpenter 2014). Northern actors have also been the largest funders of HAC campaigns on small arms, landmines,
and cluster munitions, whilst northern NGOs have been the largest recipients of this funding (Stavrianakis 2011, 208; O’Dwyer
2014). Moreover, whilst HAC campaigns are certainly framed as expressions of cosmopolitan solidarism, they have also drawn on
largely uninterrogated standard of civilization norms and are not immune to the recycling of orientalist assumptions about the
legitimacy and motivations of different suppliers, recipients, and users of the instruments of violence (Stavrianakis 2011; Mathur
2014). Furthermore, there have been notable moves to liberalize arms exports, particularly with respect to intra-Western transfers
(Cooper 2011, 147–49). This
indicates the need to abandon the uncritical assumption of the
optimists that the merging of arms control and humanitarianism must, by definition, be both
positive and transformative. As demonstrated here, the merging of the two is not necessarily
incompatible with colonialism, racism, and imperial violence. Moreover, both Brussels and the broader
operation of arms control as governmentality illustrate how HAC initiatives may not represent a
victory for “good norms” over “bad norms” but the way in which such initiatives are situated
within the regulatory logics produced by both. Indeed, victories for HAC may neither
challenge nor reconstitute hegemonic practices of security and economy. Instead, they
may be achieved because apparently disparate and divergent normative frameworks constitute
historically contingent norm hierarchies that produce the conditions of possibility for the
emergence of particular modes of arms trade governance and their associated logics of
permission and restraint. Certainly, arms trade regulation in the age of empire, including its
humanitarian variants, never challenged the logic of liberal militarism and in many
respects was harnessed to it. The Brussels Act, in particular, represented an early example of
the “devil’s bargain” in which humanitarian restraint was achieved at the expense of legitimizing
the arms, forms of violence, and ways of war practiced by hegemonic powers. There are similarities
here with many contemporary HAC campaigns, which have been equally focused on controlling violence in the peripheries. Such
campaigns have also been characterized by the way in which key groups such as the ICRC have sought to distance themselves
from disarmament activists and antimilitarism to make HAC agendas more palatable to policymakers (Carpenter 2014, 105 and
117). This indicates the need for caution in assuming that successive limited humanitarian
initiatives can change the dominant logics of militarism whilst also extracting a critique of
militarism from those same initiatives. Of course, the recent success of the humanitarian campaign to ban nuclear
weapons might suggest a shift in HAC towards a more effective merging of humanitarianism and antimilitarism. Even here, however,
it is notable that campaigners have attempted to retain the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate weapons, and the
distinction between disarmament as an overarching goal and strategy and disarmament as a weapons-specific tactic (Fihn 2017;
UNIDIR 2017, 10). Moreover, it is notable that nuclear weapon states have neither signed the ban treaty nor abandoned expensive
nuclear modernization programs (Korb 2017). Thus, both
Brussels and contemporary HAC initiatives illustrate
the “limits of possibility” inherent in pursuing the empty promise of tactical humanitarian
“disarmament” without strategic demilitarization. It is worth noting in this context that in
historical terms, the Brussels Act and the broader range of initiatives to manage arms flows in
the spaces of Empire were essentially transitory—they did not produce a lasting change in
arms trade norms or in the international system. In part at least, this was because prohibitory arms trade
norms emerged as elements in the normative superstructure of the era rather than as constitutive norms in their own right. At the
same time, it was also the case that from the 1930s onwards, changes in the substance of transnational constitutive norms
pertaining to sovereignty, security, economy, and colonialism created the permissive conditions for a new set of regulatory arms
trade norms to emerge through new processes of grafting and counter-grafting. There were, of course, elements of earlier
approaches in the use of arms supplies to “the friendlies” in the wars of decolonization and anticommunism. More generally,
however, arms trade regulation in the Cold War was characterized more by a sovereign approach to arms control that emphasized
the creation and expansion of peacetime national export licensing systems and the use of regulation to achieve security between
All this
states. Arms trade norms were ultimately at the mercy of these far larger shifts in foundational constitutive norms.
should prompt due modesty on the part of the optimists heralding the normative transformations
supposedly wrought by HAC initiatives such as those on small arms. This article also highlights the need
for a more thoroughgoing genealogical approach to the histories of both HAC and arms trade
regulation (governmental and sovereign). This is more obviously the domain of the critical
school of thinking on arms trade regulation. In the case of the optimists, both the evident flaws
of humanitarian arms trade regulation in the late nineteenth century and its essentially transient
nature demonstrate why they need to think more historically about the relationship between
humanitarianism and arms regulation. Indeed, despite the differences between nineteenth- and
twenty-first-century HAC, they have yet to convincingly demonstrate why things might turn out
differently this time around.
The aff perpetuates discourse of the imagined threatening identity of China

leading to an American national identity of neorealist and neoliberal
dominance while legitimizing US security policy.
Turner 2013 (Oliver, lecturer of International Relations @ University of Edinburgh, “'Threatening' China and US security: the
international politics of identity,” Cambridge University Press, 39:4, 903-924)
What protagonists of both sides of the argument demonstrate in equal measure, however, is the tendency to
assume that a single physical reality about China can be determined. This aim of classifying
China as a threat (or indeed a non-threat) is a legacy of the historical dominance within IR of the
overtly positivist neorealist and neoliberal schools.8 Positivist approaches to the discipline rely upon testable theory and
empirical analysis with the expectation that the world can be definitively understood. The traditional influence of these approaches
has precluded a more widespread appreciation of how, in fact, a single authoritative understanding about China is unachievable.
The inherent contestability and subjectivity of judgments about that country was once noted by John King Fairbank who argued that
the existence (or absence) of a
‘[a]t any given time the ‘‘truth’’ about China is in our heads’.9 From this understanding
China threat cannot be satisfactorily explained with reference to material forces alone. The
‘threat’ described by Director Clapper can never be dispassionately observed through assessments of
an external world, as he seemingly claimed to be able to do. The purpose of this article is not to speculate as
to whether China ‘is’ or ‘is not’ a threat to the United States. It does not concern itself with China’s nuclear arsenal nor dispute the
existence and expansion of its capabilities, or the possibility of there being a cause of future violence. It argues that while the
material realities of China are important, the nature and extent of their importance is, and has always been, regulated by ideas. Of
course, the understanding that international affairs are guided by more than the distribution of state capabilities is not original; it has
long been a primary contestation of the ‘critical’, or post-positivist, IR movement that the world is mutually
constitutive of material and ideational forces.10 Moreover, authors including Evelyn Goh emphasise the centrality of
ideas within Sino-US relations and to the formulation of US China policy at key moments.11 Chengxin Pan specifically examines
the China ‘threat’ as a discursive construction and its importance to Washington’s relations with
Beijing.12 Beyond these important works the discipline remains relatively quiet on the salience of ideational forces in
producing a fantasised China ‘threat’ and in enabling US policies in response.13 It also broadly fails to
explain how those policies themselves reinforce the understandings which make them possible in the first place. This is the arena
of enquiry towards which the article is directed. It contributes to a small but growing literature which challenges the contours of the
modern day China Threat Theory, exposing it as fundamentally flawed and even potentially dangerous. It does this by
today’s China ‘threat’ to US security conforms to those which have
demonstrating that, in many respects,
emerged before. It shows how, across the duration of Sino-US relations, China ‘threats’ have always emerged in
part from representation and interpretation and thus how fears about that country today continue
to be manufactured and engineered in a way not unique from those of the (sometimes distant) past. In
late 2011 the Obama administration shifted its foreign policy focus from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Asia Pacific.14 To a significant
extent this ‘pivot’, as it is commonly described, is motivated by the growth of China. Accordingly, as increasing concentrations of US
political, economic, and military recourses are diverted to the Asian region, American perceptions of China and their significance to
the enactment of Washington’s foreign policies there have once more become increasingly pertinent. The first part of the article has
two purposes. First, it explicates how it can be argued that the China ‘threat’ to US security is a subjective
representation of American society. It is explained that while the ‘dangers’ have an undeniable material base,
China’s capabilities are attributed ideas which produce a threatening identity regardless of
Beijing’s intentions. Second, it examines the significance of American representations to US China policy. It is asserted that
particular discourses have always made true a threatening China and enabled and legitimised
policy performances in response. It is also argued that those performances themselves have reaffirmed the
identities of both China and the United States. As such, it is shown that US China policies function to
protect the (equally imagined and socially constructed) American identity from which the ‘threat’ is
produced. The second part of the article applies these arguments to three case studies: the mid-to-late nineteenth century when
an influx of Chinese immigrants entered the United States; the early Cold War period following the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC); and the modern day period when a ‘rising’ China is increasingly powerful and influential. These are the
‘dangers’ from China to American security have been interpreted as the
temporal moments at which
most immediate and acute. The article concludes with an overview of the findings and their implications for our
understandings of, and potential approaches towards, the modern day China ‘threat’ to the United States. Imagining China: the
Chengxin Pan argues that the
construction of threat and political possibility In his analysis of the China Threat Theory
‘threat’ is an imagined construction of American observers.15 Pan does not deny the importance
of the PRC’s capabilities but asserts that they appear threatening from understandings about
the United States itself. ‘[T]here is no such thing as ‘‘Chinese reality’’ that can automatically speak for itself’, Pan argues.
‘[T]o fully understand the US ‘‘China threat’’ argument, it is essential to recognize its
autobiographical nature’.16 The geographical territory of China, then, is not separate from or external to,
American representations of it. Rather, it is actively constitutive of those representations.17 The
analysis which follows demonstrates that China ‘threats’ to the United States have to some extent always
been established and perpetuated through representation and discourse. Michel Foucault described
discourse as ‘the general domain of all statements’, constituting either a group of individual statements or a regulated practice which
accounts for a number of statements.18 American discourse of China can therefore be manifest as disparate and
single statements about that country or as collectives of related statements such as the China
Threat Theory. Ultimately, American representations of China are discursive constructions of truths or realities about its
existence. The article draws in part from the work of David Campbell who suggests that dangers in the international realm are
invariably threats to understandings about the self. ‘The
mere existence of an alternative mode of being’, argues
Campbell, ‘the presence of which exemplifies
that different identities are possible ... is sometimes enough
to produce the understanding of a threat.’19 As a result, interpretations of global danger can be traced to the
processes by which states are made foreign from one another through discourses of separation and difference.20 In this analysis it
is demonstrated that particular American discourses have historically made the US foreign from China. Case study one for example
demonstrates that nineteenth- century racial discourses of non-white immigrant Chinese separated China from a United States
largely defined by its presumed Caucasian foundations. In case study two we see that Cold War ideological discourses of
communism distanced the PRC from the democratic-capitalist US. These types of discourses are shown to have constituted a
Across the history of Sino-US relations then when
‘specific sort of boundary producing political performance’.21
‘dangers’ from China have emerged, they have always been perceived through the lens of
American identity. In consequence, they have always existed as dangers to that identity. In this
analysis it is argued that a key purpose of depicting China as a threat has been to protect components of American identity
representations of a threatening
(primarily racial and ideological) deemed most fundamental to its being. As such,
China have most commonly been advanced by, and served the interests of, those who support actions to
defend that identity. The case study analyses which follow reveal that this has included politicians and policymaking circles,
such as those within the administration of President Harry Truman which implemented the Cold War containment of the PRC. It also
exposes the complicity of other societal individuals and institutions including elements of the late nineteenth-century American
media which supported restrictions against Chinese immigration to the western United States.
This investment in securitization sustains an affective economy of

perpetual preemptive warfare
Massumi 14 (Brian Massumi, professor in the Communication Department of the University of Montreal, 2013-
2014, “The Remains of the Day,” On Violence Volume 1, modified)
To help answer our questions, preemption can't be thought of as simply a doctrine. Doctrines change as
political actors and institutions turn over. Preemption was a doctrine – in the aftermath of 9-11, it became the stated
war doctrine of the George W Bush administration. But as a formative historical force with a power to
regather itself and follow its own momentum, it overflowed the Bush administration and flowed
into the Obama administration, and will likely flow beyond it. In addition, it can be argued that it
overflowed the borders of the United States, going global.
Preemption in this sense is a tendency that cannot be reduced to a time- and place-specific
doctrine. Tendencies are self-propagating. They have a power to repeat their operations in different times and
places. Doctrines must be applied. Tendencies are self-applying. They are self-driving. This makes them a
force to be contended within their own right
The question, then, is how preemption constitutes a self-driving tendency that has to be
construed as a force of history passing through shifts in doctrine and changes in casts of
characters.
We'll start from the way preemption was formulated as a doctrine by George W Bush in response to the 9-11 attacks -- and then
consider how what was encapsulated in that doctrine took on a momentum of its own.
We must take
This is the doctrine, Bush's own words: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have
entered, the only path to safety is the path to action."
Now some might actually see this as an example of "the more things change, the more they stay the same," because the right to
preemptive attack has been a part of the practice of war for as long as there have been wars, and is a part of classical war theory
and the law of war. However, in the past, preemptive attack was considered justified in response to "a
clear and present danger." the Bush doctrine changed danger to threat.
The first thing this does is shift the emphasis to the affective register. A clear and present danger is
observable and in principle objectively verifiable, whereas a threat only has to be felt to be. It has a visceral
reality that is self-confirming. If you feel threatened, you are – end of story. On 9-11 we felt it.
Although formalized as a State doctrine, preemption establishes a direct relation to life at its most visceral
level. In other words, to affect – to what hits us in the gut so immediately that all we can do is reel,
not yet reflect, not yet knowing how to act in response. Affect at this level of the visceral hit that suspends
considered reflection and momentarily paralyzes [stifles] action isn't what we normally think about as emotion. Through a triggering
event like 9-11, it
hits collectively, directly riveting a whole population to a situation it is not yet
capable of categorizing. It braces us together in uncertainty, in the terror of not yet being able to answer the question, "what
just happened?" Unlike an emotion, affect at this level it is less something we each have
personally, than it is something that has us collectively. We are taken up together in the
terror. We are vaulted into it together. We are agape, in suspense together. We are all in it together, in the
disorientation of terror. We are swept up by it. We are moved by it
Preemption establishes a direct link between the institutional level of policy – the formal level of
collective organization -- and the informal affective level of sweeping collective disorientation
and agitated paralysis [inaction]. With preemption, this political link to the level of affective immediacy becomes a motor of
what happens. It goes off and running. It sets in motion an historical tendency that is difficult to put the
brakes on once it starts. That tendency has a certain logic of its own.
I'm not saying that the connection of politics to a visceral level where reflection is momentarily suspended makes politics simply
irrational. I'm saying that it gives preemption a logic of its own, and that to understand what changed on 9-11, and how it stays the
same the more it changes, we have to understand that logic, and what's different about it.
There is something else that happens with preemption. There is another significant shift, this one concerning time. Classically, a
preemptive attack is justified when there is "a clear and present danger." But threat inhabits the future. Threats don't
clearly present themselves. They vaguely loom, and their looming casts a shadow on the present. A
threat is how an uncertain future makes-itself-felt in the present. This has immediate consequences on
the plane of action. Even in paralysis [inaction], it can change how we will be disposed to act. This viscerally felt, affective
presence of an uncertain future has consequences for the future. In a weird way, threat is a
way in which the future affects itself.
What I've just described is like a time-loop. The future comes back to the present to trigger a reaction that
jolts the present back to the future, along a different path of action than would have eventuated
otherwise. Threat is a strange animal: a future cause. It comes from the future, to act on the futurity
from which it came. In a sense, threat makes future self-causing. There is a kind of short-
circuit in time. A future cause (the looming of the threat) loops through affect in a way that
effectively changes what goes down. Threat loops through affect to effect, never surrendering the future tense.
By contrast, the classical doctrine of preemption as it was understand pre-9-11 specifically referred to danger, not threat, as already
mentioned. Danger involves the linear relationship between cause and effect that we are used to dealing with in our common-sense
everyday lives. A situation clearly presents itself; its objective characteristics are analyzed; the analysis suggests reasonable paths
of action; a direction is chosen, and the present marches the straight and narrow path to the future, as dictated by the decision. The
effects of the decision flow logically, step-bystep from it. Of course allkinds of accidents can happen. The path
can be miscalculated. The deliberations can be flawed, the implementation flubbed. But the point
remains that there is an assumption that decisions affecting the future can be based on objectively
verifiable, empirically present conditions, and that political response begins with deliberation
and is guided by it. Here, the causes of things precede them in time. Their effects feed forward from the empirical past,
through the observable present, and if all goes well, into a better future. It's all nicely ordered, comfortably linear.
All of this gets seriously twisted by threat. Because, once again, it's enough for a threat to be felt
to make it real. It needs no objective validation to have an effect as a future cause. It doesn't
operate in the realm of the objective. The future is precisely what is not yet objectively
present. It's not empirically observable. Preemption operates in the realm of affect. Its concern is threat. If it is
enough for threat to be felt for it to be real and effective, then it's logical that the actions that effectively flow from the feeling of threat
are going to be justified affectively as well. With preemption, the justification for actions, the legitimation of political decision, tends to
become fundamentally affective. It is reasonable to say that a shift of this magnitude marks a threshold where "everything changes."
It's the death knell of centuries of politics that were supposed to be guided by the "reason of
State."
To get a sense of how this works, consider Bush's well-known rationales for invading Iraq: 1) Saddam Hussein had weapons of
mass destruction; 2) Iraq was a haven for Al-Qaeda and would be used as a launching pad for further attacks.
The first rationale was vigorously discounted at the time by people objectively a position to know, such as UN weapons inspector
Hans Blix. It was subsequently found to be entirely lacking any factual foundation. What was Bush's response when he had to face
up to the fact that he had embarked on a costly war on objectively false premises? Did he apologize for the thousands of allied lives
lost? For the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives lost? Did he admit having made a mistake? No, he reaffirmed that his decision to
invade had been right in spite of having no factual basis. Because, he said, we can be certain that if Hussein had had weapons of
mass destruction, he would have used them. In a word, if he could have, he would have. Maybe it's true he couldn't have then. But
had the US not invaded, he might have could-have later on.
What threat does is shift the mode of political decision from the objective to the
conditional – the "could have / would have" – and treat the conditional as a certainty. And it
is a certainty – affectively speaking. Bush certainly felt that Hussein would have if he could have. This certainty is
not an informed judgment about a set of objective conditions. It's a gut feeling that there is a potential for
something to happen. The thing is, it is impossible to disprove a potential. Even if nothing has
happened years later, nothing is disproven, because it might still happen years after that.
There's nothing to say that it couldn't. No one can know. The only certainty is that you have to act now to do
everything possible to preempt the potential. In the vocabulary of Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, the only
thing certain is that you have to "go kinetic," even though you don't really know and can't
know and know you don't know. There are known knowns, Rumsfeld famously said and there are known unknowns. But
in the post 9-11 era of threat and terror, what we're dealing with and have to act on are the "unknown
unknowns." As Bush put it in the quote cited earlier, "the only path to safety is the path to action" – against threats have not yet
emerged. What has not yet emerged can be nothing other than an unknown unknown.
The best way to act when faced with the unknown unknown of a felt threat vaguely looming is …
quickly. Otherwise you may have acted too late."We will have waited too long," Bush warned. The only way to act
quickly on an unknown unknown is to act intuitively, using the same "gut feeling" you used to
feel-thethreat-into-reality. Bush, it is well known, prided himself on deciding with his guts. He once actually said he used his
advisors primarily as "mood rings."
So not only does preemption locate our actions in a realm of affect; not only does it politically legitimate actions affectively; it makes
All of this short-circuits objective assessment or evidence-based
affect what makes them.
reasoning. Hair-trigger action replaces deliberation. Rapid-response tactical capabilities
replace considered strategy. Remember the outrage when members of Bush's inner circle were quoted by
investigative journalist Ron Suskind ridiculing what they called the "reality-based" community. While you're off deliberating all nice
and civil about what's really real, they said, we're busy making reality, in our gutsy, preemptive way. The phrase "reality-based" was
sarcastic. It's the height of illusion, they were saying, to treat a looming threat as if it were a clear and present danger that can be
No, what's realistic is go kinetic
responded to in the old-fashioned way, as if the world were still orderly and linear.
with utmost urgency. And when you do that, you're not sitting back reflecting on the reality, you're
making it, you're producing it.
How can an approach to decision-making based on vaguely looming futurities that have not yet emerged, that are still in potential,
that as-yet exist only in the conditional, as would-haves and could-haves, in a way that short-circuits the present of considered
reflection into a future time-loop – how can that actually produce the real? How can action legitimately bootstrap itself into reality,
from a grounding in affect and potential?
The answer is obvious if you think about the second rationale Bush gave for going into Iraq. Iraq, he said, was a staging ground for
Al Qaeda. Yes, the cynic might say. Iraq was a staging ground for Al Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-like
terrorist groupings – but only after the invasion, and as a direct result of that preemptive
action. It was the US invasion that created the conditions for AlQaeda to move in and capitalize on the chaos and resentment the
invasion unleashed. The retort to that, following the logic of preemption, is simple. It happened. That's the reality. Iraq did become a
staging ground for terrorrism – which only goes to show that the potential was there after all.
Beginning with a widened structural criticism of militarism is a pre-
requisite to effective critical ethico-political interventions – voting aff
crowds out critical readings of militarism
Eastwood ‘18 (James, Professor in the School of Politics and IR at the University of London. “Rethinking
militarism as ideology: The critique of violence after security,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 49 (1-2) – Special issue on
Militarism and security: Dialogue, possibilities and limits. 44– 56, doi: 10.1177/0967010617730949, p. 52-54)
The range of critical security studies literatures calling for desecuritization therefore do not yet offer
a full account of militarism as I have elaborated it above, in which organized political violence is made
desirable through ideology and thereby loses strategic impetus and restraint. This is important
because it has also shaped the response of those seeking to reclaim security against these
critiques. Revealingly, these responses tend either to reject the call for desecuritization as too
pacifist or to develop safeguards against the specific effects that these critics identify with
‘militarization’, rather than engaging with the underlying ideological nature of militarism.
While this has certainly left their analysis wanting, and reveals an equally unsatisfactory
conceptualization of militarism, it also shows the limitations and vulnerability of critical security
studies arguments calling for desecuritization. For example, Booth argues that security should only ever be the
‘means’ for the ‘end’ of emancipation (Booth, 2007: 114–115) and that means and ends should be related ‘non-dualistically’ (i.e. the
means should be consistent with the ends sought; see Booth, 2007: 428–441). He explicitly includes political violence as a means
that must be subject to this rule (Booth, 2007: 429–431), and he even embraces aspects of Gandhian nonviolence (Booth, 2007:
115). Discussing the critique offered by securitization theory, he responds, ‘we would all
presumably agree that the unnecessary securitisation (militarisation) of issues is to be deplored,
but there are occasions when introducing a military dimension is sensible’ (Booth, 2007: 168). Booth’s
ethical criteria for the use of force therefore give him the confidence to respond that not all
militarization is a bad thing, and that it can be used for progressive ends. What is notable here is that
Booth also invokes a thin notion of ‘militarization’, more or less reducible to the decision to use force, to establish his claim. He is
quite comfortable with the risks of militarization identified by securitization theory because he believes he has circumvented them.
By contrast, the critique of militarism as ideology gives us more powerful tools to disagree with Booth here. For Booth ignores the
danger that, in conditions of militarism, war can begin to serve a wide array of non-strategic instrumentalities as a result of its
ideological penetration of social relations. Militarism can entrench a pattern of conflict by binding social relations, subjectivities and
setting up
identities to the pursuit of war, thereby making war far less amenable to ethico-political discipline than he imagines. By
emancipation as an imperative that must be ‘secured’, including militarily, Booth opens a
dangerous pathway to the entrenchment of violence. Responding to critiques of securitization in their
cosmopolitan approach, Burke, Lee-Koo and McDonald are more sensitive to these dangers, admitting that the use of
force can entrench conflict and thus impair the longer term pursuit of global security (Burke et al., 2014: 19–21). In response, they
argue that the ultimate aim of security practice should always be nonviolence, ‘a gradual but determined demilitarisation of global
politics’ in which force is permissible under strict conditions but always regrettable – ‘a pacifism of ends rather than means’ (Burke et
al., 2016: 74). They place
their confidence in a set of detailed principles restricting the use of force in
different circumstances, which they hope will help to avoid these risks (Burke et al., 2014: 71–97, 119–
145). Again, however, the ambition for nonviolence rests on the thin basis of an aspiration for
‘demilitarization’, something that they in fact derive from the critique of securitization, rather than
an understanding of militarism as ideology. As I have explained above, what characterizes militarism is
not violence with a lack of a true justification but an ideological desire for war and military
activity. Militarism is therefore fully compatible with a credible justification for violence, and may
even draw strength from it. Burke, Lee-Koo and McDonald’s criteria for the use of force may well be stricter than available
alternatives, therefore, but this is still no guarantee against militarism. Even if they succeeded in preventing some wars, they would
Cosmopolitan
still not ensure that the remaining, apparently justified wars did not indulge in and encourage militarism.
theories therefore do not disrupt the ideological factors making war desirable; rather, they risk
supplementing them with additional justifications. A more effective critical intervention against
cosmopolitan security is therefore to highlight the dangers of militarism as ideology, rather than
simply to call for demilitarization. Conclusion What the above arguments stress is the importance of
embracing a critical concept of militarism, one premised on the explicit ambition to disrupt its
ideological effects. With this in mind, it is worth considering why most critical security studies scholars prefer to adopt the
term ‘militarization’ rather than ‘militarism’. ‘Militarization’ in this usage seems to imply the process of making something a military
concern. In this way, it is similar to Shaw’s account, in which militarization implies an increase in the penetration of social relations in
For
general by military relations – or, in other words, the process by which more and more things are made military concerns.
Shaw, the concept of militarism functions as a measure of this penetration. But this is not the
same as a critical concept of militarism, in which the specific kind of penetration being analysed
is an ideological penetration and in which the intention is to disrupt this penetration through
critique. Like Shaw, critical security studies has also understood militarism as a measure (of
‘militarization’) rather than as a critical concept, with the result that its analytic and political
potential has been blunted when engaging in the critique of violence. However, this may also be a
reflection of an underlying tendency in critical security studies itself. For we could argue that neither security nor
securitization are critical concepts in the sense intended by ideology critique. Instead, they are
more like measures, in that they measure either how secure something is or how securitized an
issue has become. One consequence of this, which is particularly problematic for scholars
seeking desecuritization, is that these concepts therefore also actively participate in the process
they seek to critique: they name things as ‘security’ issues, even when the argument is that
these issues should not be security issues at all. This proliferation of security concerns,
encouraged as much by scholarship as by practitioners, results in the ‘crowding out’ of other
frameworks that may more accurately reflect the underlying dynamics – concepts such as
war (Barkawi, 2011) or neoliberalism (Montesinos Coleman and Rosenow, 2016) – and that may be more
appropriate for critical ethico-political interventions into phenomena that critical security studies
interprets as security or securitization. My final suggestion is that militarism is yet another
concept that risks being obscured in critical security studies analysis by this tendency to
measure rather than critique. By contrast, I have shown above how a more critical concept of
militarism as ideology can offer a superior starting point for an analysis of the shortcomings of
various justifications for the use of force, including those encountered in critical security studies.
Militarism can help us to think more precisely about the circumstances in which the use of
violence to achieve political objectives (such as ‘security’) can descend into a more generalized
and intractable desire for war and military activity. My hope is that from such an
understanding we might also better equip ourselves to intervene in this process and
resist it.
Survivors 1nc
Restricting arms sales doesn’t challenge militarism. The 1AC understands
violence through symptoms of militarism such as arms sales obscures
which wider systems of violence and hierarchy that remain unchecked by
the plan
Stavrianakis ‘19 (Anna, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. “Controlling weapons circulation
in a postcolonial militarised world,” Review of International Studies, 45: 1, 57–76, doi:10.1017/S0260210518000190, p. 75-76)
The disagreements and silences of the ATT negotiations demonstrate the ways in which weapons
circulation and regulation are marked by different forms of militarism. The human security
agenda has made significant inroads to international public policy and social science
scholarship, and was an explicit driver of the ATT. While there is much in the treaty that
optimists see as having the potential to better control the circulation of weapons, the argument
put forward in this article is that it is a mistake to see the treaty as a victory for human security
over militarism. Rather, human security has chipped away at some of the most egregious
manifestations of militarism, been silent on others, and proved to be an accommodation with
global militarism in its various forms. Human security, political economy and sovereignty came into contestation during
the negotiations as expressions of different modes of militarism. Weapons circulation takes places within a
system: there is a world arms market (including legal and illicit strands) marked by asymmetry,
hierarchy, and transnational practices, in which many major exporting states that claim to care
about human security, in particular European states, already participate in regimes based on
ATT-like principles. Those that don’t, or are ambivalent about such multilateralism – in particular Russia and China, and the
US, respectively – are sceptical about claims made on the basis of human rights and IHL. Claims to protect human
security disconnect human rights and IHL violations from these patterns of military asymmetry
and hierarchy, and generate resistance from non-liberal suppliers and recipients. So the human
security agenda rests on the assumption that international politics can remain militarised in one
way (the absence of efforts at disarmament or tackling military spending or military asymmetry)
and yet be demilitarised in another (efforts to decrease the likelihood that weapons will be used in human rights or IHL
violations), in ways that the examples discussed above suggest are untenable. Resistance to the ATT from a significant minority of
Southern states may well be politically ugly, but needs to be understood in the context of asymmetry in the world military order, as
does US dominance of the negotiations for a treaty to which it is a signatory but not a State Party. In the desire to promote the
spread of human security practices, there has been little attention to why an initiative such as the ATT might be resisted, beyond
Thinking about modes of
narrowly strategic or instrumental concerns or a failure to internalise human security norms.
militarism, and the ways in which the human security agenda has transformed, but not
necessarily diminished, militarism can help us think more creatively, both analytically and
politically, about what is at stake. We need to understand and explain patterns of militarism
because of the paradoxical role of military power and systematic or organised violence in
international relations. On the one hand, military power has historically been fundamental to the constitution of organised
political power, be it in the form of the state or otherwise. On the other hand, demilitarisation from current levels and forms is a
condition for improved human security. A contraction of the influence of the “social relations, institutions and values” of war and war
preparation on social relations, institutions and values more generally120 reduces the likelihood of violent responses to political
problems, reduces the secrecy and corruption associated with military decisions or military involvement in the economy, and lowers
the opportunity costs associated with high levels of military spending, to name a few reasons. But militarism has been pushed off the
agenda, precisely because it strikes at the core issues around war preparation and the constitution of political community and
political economy, and because the maintenance of coercive capacities in the South is central to aid donors’ and Southern elites’
interests, not to mention the entrenched coercive orientation of Northern states’ foreign policies. For these reasons a
human
security agenda is limited in terms of its ability to generate more restrictive weapons transfer
practices. However, it is also deeply interested, in the sense of having political effects. Human
security has become a dominant policy orientation among aid donors and NGOs, is eminently fundable
by donors who claim the mantle of benevolence without wanting to change their weapons
transfer practices, and has been mobilised in scholarship in pursuit of a normative project. While
the practical gains made by any treaty will always be partial, the more significant ramification is that the gains made in the ATT
help set the parameters of politically feasible action, and obscure some of the core political projects
that are sustained by the circulation of weapons.
Their descriptions of Russian domestic unrest stems from a narcissistic

cold war ideology that makes relations impossible
Crosston ’15 (Matthew, Professor of Political Science at Bellevue University, “NEMESIS: Keeping Russia an
Enemy through Cold War Pathologies”, Forthcoming in Сравнительная Политика, No. 3 (19), 2015, МГИМО
(Московский Государственный Институт Международного Отношения), Moscow, Russian Federation, pgs. 11-
15)
There is no stronger example of the schizophrenic nature of American foreign policy toward Russia than comparing statements
written in the formal National Security Strategy (NSS) of President Obama with actual testimony given by the Director of National
In 2010 the NSS asserted that the U.S. would endeavor to ‘build a stable,
Intelligence James Clapper.
substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests.’ What’s more, the
NSS called Russia a 21st century center of influence in the world and a country with whom America should build bilateral
cooperation on a host of issues, including forging global nonproliferation; confronting violent extremism;
fostering new trade and development arrangements; promoting the rule of law, accountability in
government and universal values in Russia; and in cooperating as a partner in Europe and
Asia.15 Now take into account Director James Clapper while appearing before Congress in 2013 to
discuss global threats. He described Russian foreign policy as a nexus of organized crime, state
policy, and business interests (let it be noted that all three of these descriptors were said
pejoratively).16 Clapper went on to warn that both China and Russia represented the most
persistent intelligence threats to the United States and that Russia could even face social
discontent (read: political disorder and revolution) because of a sluggish economy, the constraint of
political pluralism, and pervasive corruption.17 At first blush these two accounts seem to offer a
completely incompatible attitude toward Russia. Reading deeper between the lines of the NSS
reveals key words, however, that always trigger contempt from Russian actors in the Kremlin.
The ideal of ‘promoting rule of law, government accountability and universal values’ is not an
olive branch offering Russia the chance to team up with America. This ideal is not being
promoted with Russia but in Russia. To follow that goal up with being a ‘cooperative partner’ in Europe and Asia has
also always signaled to Russian ears an American skepticism about Russia’s ability to be a ‘non-meddler’ . In other words,
the NSS comes across to Russians not as a mechanism to promote deeper co-equal ties
between the two countries but rather as a snobbish slap across the face about how the United
States needs to engage Russia to stop it from getting in its own and others’ way. Clapper’s comments
in some ways garner even more derision from Moscow. Not so much the complaints about centralized power and corruption. Russia
has been hearing these criticisms since Yeltsin first came down off the tanks after the August coup in 1991. Russia has always been
rather dismissive of these arguments. Rather, Clapper’s comments about the possibility of social discontent and unrest, placing that
possibility at the feet of the Russian government because of repression and incompetence, always comes off as a red flag to the bull
of Russian conspiracy theorists: they are quick to see American interference in any and all things that go wrong in Russia. And even
if the more rational voices in Russian political power dismiss conspiracy theories, there is still the obvious interpretation that while
America might not try to personally foment unrest, Clapper’s comments make it seem like instability would be welcomed. The U.S.
government at times can play too fast and loose with semantics: as long as America does not actively try to create discord it thinks it
cannot possibly be seen as a source of such discord. Very few actors around the globe agree with that interpretation, especially
Russians. Tothis day Russians point to Georgia, to Ukraine, to the countries of the Arab Spring, to
Syria, and believe the build-up to the unrest was either directly orchestrated by the United
States or at least subtly fostered by America. To Russians there is no difference between
‘actively pursuing’ and ‘subtly managing’ while to Americans they are complete polar opposites.
This is what allows Russia to take statements about bilateral cooperation and substantive
partnership and see nothing but animosity, mistrust, and manipulation. Indeed, it is surprising there is not
more analysis comparing the U.S. National Security Strategy with the subsequent Russian foreign policy concept that came out in
2013 on the heels of Clapper’s testimony. It affirms the Putin criticism that U.S.-Russia relations will always remain complicated
American identity is
because of fundamental cultural differences. What might be these cultural differences? Namely, that
based on individual wants, racism, genocidal and other extreme forms of violence and thus will
always conflict with Russian identity, which is based on ‘loftier ambitions, more of a spiritual
kind.’18 This was only compounded on September 11th of the same year, when Putin published a letter to the New
York Times:  The UN could collapse and international law would suffer if nations take military
action without UN approval.  Such action in Syria would only result in a total destabilization of
the area and a widening of conflict and terrorism.  Russia is protecting, therefore, international
law rather than the Assad regime.  Many in the world are beginning to see the United States as
relying solely on brute force and that such U.S. reliance has proven ineffective and pointless. 
President Obama’s statement that the United States should act when possible to uphold
international norms was ‘extremely dangerous,’ arguing that all countries are equal already
under international law.19 This amounts to nothing more than posturing presidencies and tit-for-tat foreign
policy, where each side envisions the other as the chief global antagonist while promoting themselves as the cowboy in the white
hat standing up for the less powerful in the world. But it is important to note that Russia’s tit, as it were, came after America’s tat.
Rightly or wrongly, Russia is convinced that America has a global agenda that pushes not only itself as a single unilateral
superpower but also pays special attention to keeping Russia on the sidelines, politically and militarily marginalized. What this de
facto means for U.S-Russia relations is that the highest office in both countries cannot actually be counted upon to inspire new and
better interaction and engagement. Rather, the administrations of the two presidents seem rather intent and eager to only make
things worse. Given the aforementioned section showing how media outlets and academic think tanks also tend to not improve the
situation, this leaves very little room for analysts to carve some balance and fairness into the debate. Despite this problem, some
are indeed attempting to carve that space and deserve greater attention.

characters.
We must take
This is the doctrine, Bush's own words: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.
and the law of war. However, in
the past, preemptive attack was considered justified in response to "a
event like 9-11, it
State."
setting up
Cosmopolitan
For
resist it.
Sophomores
Restricting FMS/DCS maintains the colonial order. The aff results in a
regulation regime that helps to consolidate power in the West and restore
legitimacy to the image of the US
late nineteenth century. In this concluding section, I also draw on this understanding toprovide insights into current
debates about norms, arms regulation, and arms control as governmentality. The 1890 Brussels
Act can be understood as the first matryoshka doll of arms trade governance—a discrete
initiative that, in this case, aimed to regulate the import of a specified class of weapons into a
specified area of Africa. From the perspective of proponents, the act was the outcome of a
qualitative military superiority over colonial subjects in Africa. Nevertheless, judged in isolation,
the campaign for the Brussels Act can be understood as a relatively successful initiative that
managed to merge the requirements of colonial order with a particularly paternalist and
orientalist humanitarianism. Moreover, with the exception of the arms traffic to Abyssinia and Somalia, implementation of
the act was more extensive than has generally been acknowledged. However, the Brussels Act represented just
one element in a larger network of regulation aimed at restricting the supply of arms to colonial
subjects in all the spaces of empire. This constituted the second Matryoshka doll of arms trade
governance. Thus, rather than being an era of free trade in arms, the period was actually
characterized by a dual regime of regulation: the operation of a peacetime liberal export norm
for transfers from imperial metropoles combined with widespread efforts to manage arms flows
into, within, and between the spaces of empire (using post-export blockades, import controls, internal regulations,
and restrictions on transfers between colonial spaces). This contrasts with the contemporary emphasis on
producer export controls as a primary (if not exclusive) vehicle for managing the global trade in
conventional arms. When located in this broader network of prohibitory regulation, the
humanitarian underpinnings of the Brussels Act are revealed to be far less significant than the
concerns about the maintenance of colonial order and qualitative military advantage for imperial
powers. Of course, the operation of a free trade in arms philosophy combined with competition for
colonies, markets, and influence amongst imperial powers is generally deemed to have trumped
substantive efforts at limiting arms flows. However, practices of proscription and permission
were both part of the attempt to delineate who could legitimately use which gradations of
weapons according to where they were located in the triple hierarchies of civilization, loyalty,
and utility to empire. This is not to deny that local actors constantly engaged in strategies of evasion or that imperial policies
were perennially reversed or amended. Indeed, both permissive and proscriptive arms trade norms were the site of recurring
contestation that played out in the form of competing appeals to transnational constitutive norms such as sovereignty, free trade,
colonialism, and the standard of civilization. Nevertheless,
the oscillations in policy this produced are better
understood less as a failure of prohibition and more as constituting the fluid cartography of
regulation that was (and is) a defining feature of arms control as governmentality. Moreover, the
process of serially reinventing the border between legitimate and illegitimate ownership of, and
trade in, the means of violence represented an important political project in its own right,
irrespective of the actual material impact on arms flows. Indeed, the understanding of arms trade
governance as a Sisyphean endeavor was (and remains) central to the legitimizing politics of
arms control as governmentality; sanctifying the performative of regulatory and institutional
refinement, an á la carte approach to normative frameworks (e.g. humanitarianism, free trade,
military necessity) and their application to specific arms trade policy questions. Nevertheless, by the
early 1900s colonial powers had developed fairly extensive mechanisms of regulation that, in general, were probably as effective as
the mechanisms of contemporary arms trade regulation heralded by optimists as signaling a shift to a novel form of global arms
governance. What insights, then, can we draw into contemporary debates in the literature on post-
Cold War arms trade regulation? First, the simplistic claim that contemporary HAC initiatives,
including those on small arms, are “novel” just does not stand up to historical analysis. This
bears repeating time and time again given the frequency with which the former claim is
recycled. What is more useful, therefore, is to reflect on the ways in which contemporary HAC is
or is not novel compared to antecedents such as the Brussels Act and to use this reflection as
the basis for evaluating current debates in the literature on HAC. There are some notable differences. The
Brussels Act was concerned with restricting what were then considered new, modern, and technologically cutting-edge firearms,
whereas contemporary small arms are generally viewed as a mature technology. Even more notably, the overt racism that
characterized the discursive landscape of nineteenth-century HAC has largely disappeared. Similarly, a feature of contemporary
transnational initiatives on small arms, landmines, and the ATT has been the way these initiatives have been actively promoted by
key states and civil society organizations from the Global South (Efrat 2012, 66; Bromley, Cooper, and Holtom 2012, 1039). The
global architecture of small arms regulation also includes regional agreements, such as the ECOWAS moratorium on SALW, that
This is certainly indicative of changes in power relations
are composed solely of states from the Global South.
between North and South. Nevertheless, northern NGOs remain the primary gatekeepers determining
what issues (e.g., landmines as opposed to thermobaric weapons) become the focus of civil
society campaigns (Carpenter 2014). Northern actors have also been the largest funders of HAC campaigns on small arms,
landmines, and cluster munitions, whilst northern NGOs have been the largest recipients of this funding (Stavrianakis 2011, 208;
O’Dwyer 2014). Moreover, whilst HAC campaigns are certainly framed as expressions of cosmopolitan solidarism, they have also
drawn on largely uninterrogated standard of civilization norms and are not immune to the recycling of orientalist assumptions about
the legitimacy and motivations of different suppliers, recipients, and users of the instruments of violence (Stavrianakis 2011; Mathur
(Cooper 2011, 147–49). This
indicates the need to abandon the uncritical assumption of the optimists
that the merging of arms control and humanitarianism must, by definition, be both positive and
transformative. As demonstrated here, the merging of the two is not necessarily incompatible with
colonialism, racism, and imperial violence. Moreover, both Brussels and the broader operation of arms control
as governmentality illustrate how HAC initiatives may not represent a victory for “good norms”
over “bad norms” but the way in which such initiatives are situated within the regulatory logics
produced by both. Indeed, victories for HAC may neither challenge nor reconstitute hegemonic
practices of security and economy. Instead, they may be achieved because apparently
disparate and divergent normative frameworks constitute historically contingent norm
hierarchies that produce the conditions of possibility for the emergence of particular modes of
arms trade governance and their associated logics of permission and restraint. Certainly, arms
trade regulation in the age of empire, including its humanitarian variants, never challenged the
logic of liberal militarism and in many respects was harnessed to it. The Brussels Act, in
particular, represented an early example of the “devil’s bargain” in which humanitarian restraint
was achieved at the expense of legitimizing the arms, forms of violence, and ways of war
practiced by hegemonic powers. There are similarities here with many contemporary HAC campaigns, which have been
equally focused on controlling violence in the peripheries. Such campaigns have also been characterized by the way in which key
groups such as the ICRC have sought to distance themselves from disarmament activists and antimilitarism to make HAC agendas
This indicates the need for caution in assuming
more palatable to policymakers (Carpenter 2014, 105 and 117).
that successive limited humanitarian initiatives can change the dominant logics of militarism
whilst also extracting a critique of militarism from those same initiatives. Of course, the recent success of
the humanitarian campaign to ban nuclear weapons might suggest a shift in HAC towards a more effective merging of
humanitarianism and antimilitarism. Even here, however, it is notable that campaigners have attempted to retain the distinction
between legitimate and illegitimate weapons, and the distinction between disarmament as an overarching goal and strategy and
disarmament as a weapons-specific tactic (Fihn 2017; UNIDIR 2017, 10). Moreover, it is notable that nuclear weapon states have
both Brussels
neither signed the ban treaty nor abandoned expensive nuclear modernization programs (Korb 2017). Thus,
and contemporary HAC initiatives illustrate the “limits of possibility” inherent in pursuing the
empty promise of tactical humanitarian “disarmament” without strategic demilitarization. It is
worth noting in this context that in historical terms, the Brussels Act and the broader range of
initiatives to manage arms flows in the spaces of Empire were essentially transitory—they did
not produce a lasting change in arms trade norms or in the international system. In part at least, this
was because prohibitory arms trade norms emerged as elements in the normative superstructure of the era rather than as
constitutive norms in their own right. At the same time, it was also the case that from the 1930s onwards, changes in the substance
of transnational constitutive norms pertaining to sovereignty, security, economy, and colonialism created the permissive conditions
for a new set of regulatory arms trade norms to emerge through new processes of grafting and counter-grafting. There were, of
course, elements of earlier approaches in the use of arms supplies to “the friendlies” in the wars of decolonization and
anticommunism. More generally, however, arms trade regulation in the Cold War was characterized more by a sovereign approach
to arms control that emphasized the creation and expansion of peacetime national export licensing systems and the use of
regulation to achieve security between states. Arms trade norms were ultimately at the mercy of these far larger shifts in
foundational constitutive norms. All
this should prompt due modesty on the part of the optimists heralding
the normative transformations supposedly wrought by HAC initiatives such as those on small arms. This
article also highlights the need for a more thoroughgoing genealogical approach to the histories
of both HAC and arms trade regulation (governmental and sovereign). This is more obviously
the domain of the critical school of thinking on arms trade regulation. In the case of the
optimists, both the evident flaws of humanitarian arms trade regulation in the late nineteenth
century and its essentially transient nature demonstrate why they need to think more historically
about the relationship between humanitarianism and arms regulation. Indeed, despite the
differences between nineteenth- and twenty-first-century HAC, they have yet to convincingly
demonstrate why things might turn out differently this time around.
Legal debates about drones normalizes the virtuality of war – the aff will be
circumvented by the military industrial complex
Gregory ‘11 (Derek Gregory, Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of British Colombia in
Vancouver, 2011, “From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War,” Theory, Culture & Society Volume 28 Numbers 7-8)
ADVANCED MILITARIES like to boast that their conduct of war has become surgical, sensitive
and scrupulous (Gregory, 2010a). The development of a precision-strike capability, the cultural turn
towards a counterinsurgency that places the local population at the centre of its operations, and
the refinement of the legal armature that regulates armed conflict have all contributed to the
celebration of what Der Derian (2009) calls ‘virtuous war’. At its heart, he argues, is the technical ability and
ethical imperative to threaten and, if necessary, actualize violence from a distance – with no or
minimal casualties. Using networked information and virtual technologies to bring ‘there’ here in
near-real time and with near-verisimilitude, virtuous war exercises a comparative as well as
strategic advantage for the digitally advanced. Along with time (as in the sense of tempo) as the fourth dimension,
virtuality has become the ‘fifth dimension’ of US global hegemony. (2009: xxi) And at the heart of the
ascent of war from the virtual to the virtuous are the drone wars being waged by the USA in the
global borderlands.1 Two qualifications are immediately necessary. First, remotely piloted aircraft have been used since the
First World War, assault drones were deployed in the closing stages of the Second World War, and the first major combat use of
there is a considerable history behind today’s
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was during the Vietnam War, so
remote operations in the borderlands. There it intersects with the exercise of a profoundly
colonial modality of air power. The British invented aerial counterinsurgency on the North West Frontier with Afghanistan
and in Iraq (Mesopotamia) in the 1920s (Omissi, 1990; Satia, 2008, 2009), and for all the technical advances there are numerous
dispiriting parallels between then and now. Perhaps
the most telling is the repeated insistence that air
attacks are counterproductive. Two commentators closely identified with the new US counterinsurgency doctrine insist
that ‘expanding or even continuing the drone war [in Pakistan] would be a mistake’. They explain: While violent extremists may be
unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more
civilians than militants. ... [E]very
one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a
new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as
drone strikes have increased. (Kilcullen and Exum, 2009) Colonel F.S. Keen said much the same of the bombing of Pashtun villages
on the North West Frontier in 1923: ‘By driving the inhabitants of the bombarded area from their homes in a state of exasperation,
dispersing them among neighbouring clans and tribes with hatred in their hearts at what they consider ‘‘unfair’’ methods of warfare’,
he wrote, these attacks ‘bring about the exact political results which it is so important in our own interests to avoid, viz., the
permanent embitterment and alienation of the frontier tribes’ (Keen, 1923: 400; see also Roe, 2008). As my parallel suggests – and
this is the second qualification – the
modern debate has focused on the covert war waged by CIA-
operated drones in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The campaign was initiated by
President George W. Bush in 2004, and by the end of 2008 there had been 46 strikes directed at killing so-called ‘High Value
Targets’. The attacks were ramped up by Obama, and by the end of 2010 there had been another 170 strikes.2 These operations
On one side are
raise complex and troubling legal questions, not least because the United States is not at war with Pakistan.
those who defend the strikes as limited and legitimate acts of self-defense against attacks from
the Taliban who seek sanctuary across the border and also as an effective counterterrorism
tactic against al-Qaeda. Indeed, Anderson describes ‘perfect war’, the very summit of ‘virtuous
war’, as ‘target selection perfected to the point of assassination’, a doctrine for which drones
have become the weapon of choice (‘the only game in town’, according to the Director of the CIA) (see, for example,
Anderson, 2009; Paust, 2009). On the other side are critics who insist that such targeting, however
‘precise’, amounts to extra-judicial killing, and that if civilian agencies like the CIA conduct
military operations then their agents become unlawful combatants. Their objections also fasten
on the spatiality of the war zone: they draw special attention to the imprecise legal delineation of
the ‘global battlespace’ invoked by the United States and to the lack of accountability for civilian
casualties (see, for example, O’Connell, 2009; Rogers, 2010; Solis, 2010). But for the most part all these
arguments assume that the use of UAVs by the United States Air Force (USAF) and its military allies in Afghanistan
– including Britain and Canada – is unproblematic, and in doing so they reinforce the claim that these
new technologies enable advanced militaries to conduct ‘virtuous war’. This article seeks to
interrogate those assumptions, but I have to note that it is not easy to disentangle one campaign
from the other. Some commentators have suggested that the USAF is involved to varying degrees in the CIA strikes, but in
any case the Air Force uses the Pentagon’s Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List to conduct its own strikes on leaders of the
Taliban and others who may have only a proximate relation to the war in Afghanistan, and makes no secret of the fact that a
prime function of its Predators and Reapers is to ‘put warheads on foreheads’ (Mulrine, 2008) (Figure
1).3

characters.
This is the doctrine, Bush's own words: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take
event like 9-11, it
State."
setting up
Cosmopolitan
For
resist it.
Neg
Topic/Plan Links
Link – Arms Sales
Restricting arms sales doesn’t challenge militarism. The 1AC understands
violence through symptoms of militarism such as arms sales obscures
which wider systems of violence and hierarchy that remain unchecked by
the plan
Stavrianakis ‘19 (Anna, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. “Controlling weapons circulation
in a postcolonial militarised world,” Review of International Studies, 45: 1, 57–76, doi:10.1017/S0260210518000190, p. 75-76)
human
Link – Arms Sales
Restricting FMS/DCS maintains the colonial order. The aff results in a
regulation regime that helps to consolidate power in the West and restore
legitimacy to the image of the US
late nineteenth century. In this concluding section, I also draw on this understanding to provide insights into current
debates about norms, arms regulation, and arms control as governmentality. The 1890 Brussels
Act can be understood as the first matryoshka doll of arms trade governance—a discrete
initiative that, in this case, aimed to regulate the import of a specified class of weapons into a
specified area of Africa. From the perspective of proponents, the act was the outcome of a
qualitative military superiority over colonial subjects in Africa. Nevertheless, judged in isolation,
the campaign for the Brussels Act can be understood as a relatively successful initiative that
managed to merge the requirements of colonial order with a particularly paternalist and
orientalist humanitarianism. Moreover, with the exception of the arms traffic to Abyssinia and Somalia, implementation of
the act was more extensive than has generally been acknowledged. However, the Brussels Act represented just
one element in a larger network of regulation aimed at restricting the supply of arms to colonial
subjects in all the spaces of empire. This constituted the second Matryoshka doll of arms trade
governance. Thus, rather than being an era of free trade in arms, the period was actually
characterized by a dual regime of regulation: the operation of a peacetime liberal export norm
for transfers from imperial metropoles combined with widespread efforts to manage arms flows
into, within, and between the spaces of empire (using post-export blockades, import controls, internal regulations,
and restrictions on transfers between colonial spaces). This contrasts with the contemporary emphasis on
producer export controls as a primary (if not exclusive) vehicle for managing the global trade in
conventional arms. When located in this broader network of prohibitory regulation, the
humanitarian underpinnings of the Brussels Act are revealed to be far less significant than the
concerns about the maintenance of colonial order and qualitative military advantage for imperial
powers. Of course, the operation of a free trade in arms philosophy combined with competition for
colonies, markets, and influence amongst imperial powers is generally deemed to have trumped
substantive efforts at limiting arms flows. However, practices of proscription and permission
were both part of the attempt to delineate who could legitimately use which gradations of
weapons according to where they were located in the triple hierarchies of civilization, loyalty,
and utility to empire. This is not to deny that local actors constantly engaged in strategies of evasion or that imperial policies
were perennially reversed or amended. Indeed, both permissive and proscriptive arms trade norms were the site of recurring
contestation that played out in the form of competing appeals to transnational constitutive norms such as sovereignty, free trade,
colonialism, and the standard of civilization. Nevertheless,
the oscillations in policy this produced are better
understood less as a failure of prohibition and more as constituting the fluid cartography of
regulation that was (and is) a defining feature of arms control as governmentality. Moreover, the
process of serially reinventing the border between legitimate and illegitimate ownership of, and
trade in, the means of violence represented an important political project in its own right,
irrespective of the actual material impact on arms flows. Indeed, the understanding of arms trade
governance as a Sisyphean endeavor was (and remains) central to the legitimizing politics of
arms control as governmentality; sanctifying the performative of regulatory and institutional
refinement, an á la carte approach to normative frameworks (e.g. humanitarianism, free trade,
military necessity) and their application to specific arms trade policy questions. Nevertheless, by the
early 1900s colonial powers had developed fairly extensive mechanisms of regulation that, in general, were probably as effective as
the mechanisms of contemporary arms trade regulation heralded by optimists as signaling a shift to a novel form of global arms
governance. What insights, then, can we draw into contemporary debates in the literature on post-
Cold War arms trade regulation? First, the simplistic claim that contemporary HAC initiatives,
including those on small arms, are “novel” just does not stand up to historical analysis. This
bears repeating time and time again given the frequency with which the former claim is
recycled. What is more useful, therefore, is to reflect on the ways in which contemporary HAC is
or is not novel compared to antecedents such as the Brussels Act and to use this reflection as
the basis for evaluating current debates in the literature on HAC. There are some notable differences. The
Brussels Act was concerned with restricting what were then considered new, modern, and technologically cutting-edge firearms,
whereas contemporary small arms are generally viewed as a mature technology. Even more notably, the overt racism that
characterized the discursive landscape of nineteenth-century HAC has largely disappeared. Similarly, a feature of contemporary
transnational initiatives on small arms, landmines, and the ATT has been the way these initiatives have been actively promoted by
key states and civil society organizations from the Global South (Efrat 2012, 66; Bromley, Cooper, and Holtom 2012, 1039). The
global architecture of small arms regulation also includes regional agreements, such as the ECOWAS moratorium on SALW, that
This is certainly indicative of changes in power relations
are composed solely of states from the Global South.
between North and South. Nevertheless, northern NGOs remain the primary gatekeepers determining
what issues (e.g., landmines as opposed to thermobaric weapons) become the focus of civil
society campaigns (Carpenter 2014). Northern actors have also been the largest funders of HAC campaigns on small arms,
landmines, and cluster munitions, whilst northern NGOs have been the largest recipients of this funding (Stavrianakis 2011, 208;
O’Dwyer 2014). Moreover, whilst HAC campaigns are certainly framed as expressions of cosmopolitan solidarism, they have also
drawn on largely uninterrogated standard of civilization norms and are not immune to the recycling of orientalist assumptions about
the legitimacy and motivations of different suppliers, recipients, and users of the instruments of violence (Stavrianakis 2011; Mathur
(Cooper 2011, 147–49). This
indicates the need to abandon the uncritical assumption of the optimists
that the merging of arms control and humanitarianism must, by definition, be both positive and
transformative. As demonstrated here, the merging of the two is not necessarily incompatible with
colonialism, racism, and imperial violence. Moreover, both Brussels and the broader operation of arms control
as governmentality illustrate how HAC initiatives may not represent a victory for “good norms”
over “bad norms” but the way in which such initiatives are situated within the regulatory logics
produced by both. Indeed, victories for HAC may neither challenge nor reconstitute hegemonic
practices of security and economy. Instead, they may be achieved because apparently
disparate and divergent normative frameworks constitute historically contingent norm
hierarchies that produce the conditions of possibility for the emergence of particular modes of
arms trade governance and their associated logics of permission and restraint. Certainly, arms
trade regulation in the age of empire, including its humanitarian variants, never challenged the
logic of liberal militarism and in many respects was harnessed to it. The Brussels Act, in
particular, represented an early example of the “devil’s bargain” in which humanitarian restraint
was achieved at the expense of legitimizing the arms, forms of violence, and ways of war
practiced by hegemonic powers. There are similarities here with many contemporary HAC campaigns, which have been
equally focused on controlling violence in the peripheries. Such campaigns have also been characterized by the way in which key
groups such as the ICRC have sought to distance themselves from disarmament activists and antimilitarism to make HAC agendas
This indicates the need for caution in assuming
more palatable to policymakers (Carpenter 2014, 105 and 117).
that successive limited humanitarian initiatives can change the dominant logics of militarism
whilst also extracting a critique of militarism from those same initiatives. Of course, the recent success of
the humanitarian campaign to ban nuclear weapons might suggest a shift in HAC towards a more effective merging of
humanitarianism and antimilitarism. Even here, however, it is notable that campaigners have attempted to retain the distinction
between legitimate and illegitimate weapons, and the distinction between disarmament as an overarching goal and strategy and
disarmament as a weapons-specific tactic (Fihn 2017; UNIDIR 2017, 10). Moreover, it is notable that nuclear weapon states have
both Brussels
neither signed the ban treaty nor abandoned expensive nuclear modernization programs (Korb 2017). Thus,
and contemporary HAC initiatives illustrate the “limits of possibility” inherent in pursuing the
empty promise of tactical humanitarian “disarmament” without strategic demilitarization. It is
worth noting in this context that in historical terms, the Brussels Act and the broader range of
initiatives to manage arms flows in the spaces of Empire were essentially transitory—they did
not produce a lasting change in arms trade norms or in the international system. In part at least, this
was because prohibitory arms trade norms emerged as elements in the normative superstructure of the era rather than as
constitutive norms in their own right. At the same time, it was also the case that from the 1930s onwards, changes in the substance
of transnational constitutive norms pertaining to sovereignty, security, economy, and colonialism created the permissive conditions
for a new set of regulatory arms trade norms to emerge through new processes of grafting and counter-grafting. There were, of
course, elements of earlier approaches in the use of arms supplies to “the friendlies” in the wars of decolonization and
anticommunism. More generally, however, arms trade regulation in the Cold War was characterized more by a sovereign approach
to arms control that emphasized the creation and expansion of peacetime national export licensing systems and the use of
regulation to achieve security between states. Arms trade norms were ultimately at the mercy of these far larger shifts in
foundational constitutive norms. All
this should prompt due modesty on the part of the optimists heralding
the normative transformations supposedly wrought by HAC initiatives such as those on small arms. This
article also highlights the need for a more thoroughgoing genealogical approach to the histories
of both HAC and arms trade regulation (governmental and sovereign). This is more obviously
the domain of the critical school of thinking on arms trade regulation. In the case of the
optimists, both the evident flaws of humanitarian arms trade regulation in the late nineteenth
century and its essentially transient nature demonstrate why they need to think more historically
about the relationship between humanitarianism and arms regulation. Indeed, despite the
differences between nineteenth- and twenty-first-century HAC, they have yet to convincingly
demonstrate why things might turn out differently this time around.
Link – Disarmament
Disarm consolidates and preserves US military superiority and hegemonic
domination
Cooper ‘06 (Neil, Department of Peace Studies @ University of Bradford, “Putting Disarmament Back into
Frame,” Cambridge Review of International Studies, 32.2, pg. 353-376, card p. 361-4)
However, whilst it is important (if only to counter the pessimistic discourse surrounding this issue) to recognise the various disarmament
outcomes that have been generated under the current arms limitation system, it is also important to recognise the context in which these have
occurred. In particular, both disarmament and broader arms limitation initiatives are now taking place as
part of an asymmetrical arms limitation system that has replaced the emphasis on balance
between the superpowers that dominated Cold War practice. 34 It is sufficient at this juncture to
note that what characterises this system of arms limitation is the way in which it is structured to
consolidate and preserve the military superiority of the US in particular and the West in
general. Moreover, rather than reinforcing security this profound military imbalance promotes insecurity –
both by creating incentives for other actors to pursue asymmetric technologies (NBC) or
strategies (terrorism) that offset the US’s conventional superiority,35 and by diverting resources
that could be expended on human security to militarism. At best, the contemporary arms limitation
system aims to keep the lid on such contradictions by setting in place a variety of disciplinary
mechanisms that attempt to constrain asymmetric military responses whilst simultaneously
preserving the asymmetrical advantages of the West. At worst, in attempting to contain pressures that may
ultimately be uncontainable, the contemporary arms limitation system may promote an illusion of relative
security whilst positively fostering a variety of insecurities. However, a few more comments are in order before we
proceed to consider this system of asymmetrical arms limitation in more detail. Stuart Croft and arms control as threat construction The
corollary of the preceding critique of arms control theory is of course a requirement to develop
conceptual frameworks (and framings) that are capable of simultaneously challenging the
hegemonic discourse within the discipline and of producing greater explanatory value. To date
this attempt has been most convincingly pursued by critical theorists and postmodernists such
as Mutimer,36 and Krause and Latham.37 Even within the mainstream literature on arms limitation however, there has been
some attempt to reconceptualise arms limitation practice. Most notably, Stuart Croft in Strategies of Arms Control explicitly rejects the
distinction between arms control and disarmament as a basis for framing discussions of arms limitation.38 Instead he develops a typology
based around five different strategies of arms control: arms control at the conclusion of major conflicts, arms control to strengthen strategic
stability, arms control to create norms of behaviour, arms control to manage the proliferation of weapons and arms control by international
organisation. This
certainly represents an improvement on more traditional discussions of arms
limitation. However, there are also a number of problems with his analysis. First, Croft locates his typology in a
broader analysis that emphasises the idea that arms control as an activity has been constantly widening (in the sense that there has been a
gradual accretion of strategies deployed to achieve it) and that arms control agreements have become ever ‘deeper’ (in the sense that
agreements have become more detailed, arrangements for verification have become both more common and more sophisticated, and the
likelihood of agreements taking on the qualities of a regime have increased). Consequently, although Croft states that he is determined to avoid
making judgements on the success or failure of arms control both as theory
and practice, he nevertheless manages to
produce a profoundly teleological (and indeed optimistic) account of the history of arms
control/arms limitation. However, there has not been a straightforward accretion of arms limitation activity. Partly this is because the
relevance of many arms control agreements has simply declined with the advent of new military technology. But even where this has not been
the case, politics
and power have constantly intruded both to kill off arms limitation initiatives
and to influence their depth. Examples include Japanese and German disarmament after the Second World War, and the US
decision to renounce the ABM Treaty. Similarly, the two page SORT Treaty highlights how the inexorable increase in depth described by Croft in
1996 was, at best, a function of historically contingent Cold War practices rather than some evolutionary manifest destiny.39 Second, Croft
states that investigation of the motivation for arms limitation is outside the remit of his book. Despite noting the influence of politics and power
on arms limitation then, what Croft presents is a largely mechanistic and apolitical analysis of the subject. Indeed, the development of arms
limitation practice is depicted as an essentially autonomous process – as if, to paraphrase Cox, arms limitation were not always for some
purpose and for someone.40 This is not untypical of the majority of the literature in this field which tends to focus on the technical minutiae of
military strategy, diplomatic texts or policy battles. The problems that arms limitation deals with are generally taken as given and the purpose
of such activity (just like arms control theory itself) is to engage in producing ‘problemsolving’ solutions to these issues. What Croft, and
mainstream arms controllers in general ignore, is the role that arms limitation activity plays in both
reflecting broader constructions of threat and in reinforcing them. Moreover, whilst the idea that
arms limitation represents an arena where political power is exercised is taken as axiomatic,
power is generally understood to be expressed in the relations between states (or internal
bureaucracies) negotiating (or sometimes imposing) specific treaties, and measured in terms of who wins or
loses in these negotiations. The myriad ways in which hegemonic power is expressed through
developments in the dominant modes of arms limitation thinking and practice rarely intrude. For
example, the power expressed as a result of the role played by discourse and action over arms
limitation in affirming hegemonic projects of securitisation; the power manifested in the specific
ways in which the system of arms limitation contributes to maintaining particular military and
social hierarchies whether internally, within the state, or throughout the global system; and the relationship
between the interests of power and the ways in which arms limitation reflects and reinforces powerful political,
economic and cultural tools of legitimation/delegitimation surrounding military technology.
In other words (from a critical security studies perspective at least), the key questions surrounding arms limitation are
not so much who wins or loses in negotiations over a specific treaty or how effective/ineffective
that treaty turns out to be. Rather, the principal concern is with how the dominant discourse and
practice of arms limitation (not always the same thing) contributes to processes of
securitisation and othering as well as military and broader hegemonic practices.
Link – Distancing
The 1AC constructs [X REGION] as a distant zone dominated by the
violence and trauma of technological conflict. This contributes to the
aestheticization of virtual warfare by representing the plan as a quick-fix
solution to the spectacle of violence while leaving the social processes of
militarization unchallenged.
Deer ’16 (Patrick, Associate Professor of English at New York University, “Mapping Contemporary American War
Culture”, College Literature Volume 43, Number 1, Winter 2016)
When it comes to the conflicts abroad, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have frequently been represented
through the familiar tropes of militarized high technology, which both distance the war
zones and turn their civilian populations into targets, rendering them invisible as individual
human subjects. Tracing the metaphors, imagery, and terminologies through which these wars have
been represented in the domestic public sphere allows us to reconstruct the disturbed
imaginary of the recent wars and see the ways in which war culture has struggled to
mediate these conflicts to its citizens and soldiers. By drawing on the influential discussion of the
ways that dominant, residual, and emergent cultural forms contribute to hegemonic cultural
periods or historical conjunctures by Raymond Williams (1977), we can gain some traction on the
slippery terrain of our war culture. Recent representations for domestic consumption have
tended to emphasize high tech warfare, paramilitary special forces, and trauma as the
dominant lenses for understanding the conflicts. Alongside these dominant modes of
comprehending war, the period has also seen the powerful emergence and normalization of
images of bodily torture, of embedded reportage, and of the sacralization of veterans.
Compared with the power of these dominant and emergent imaginaries, traditional panoramic
representations of war, familiar from World War I, World War II, or even the Cold War—like
coherent historical, “big picture” narratives of war—have become residual ways of representing
conflict. Instead of the persuasive ideological narratives of “the good war” or the “the struggle against Communism,” we have “the
forever war” and the “forgotten war.” One of the dominant tropes is provided by the imaginary of high tech
warfare, waged chiefly through US air power: the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad; the use of “precision”
airstrikes; camera footage from helicopter gunships; drones assassinating enemy combatants with Hellfire missiles; satellite
imagery of distant battle zones. This seductive imaginary for the American way of war emerged
forcefully during the 1991 Gulf War, in the mediatized spectacle of helicopter and warplane gun
camera footage and endlessly replayed loops of video shot from cruise missiles and tank and
bunker busting bombs just before the moment of impact. The projection of warfare as high
tech media spectacle had reached its apogee. Perhaps appropriately, given its limited duration, the most
powerful responses to the mediatized version of the 1991 Gulf War were satirical, like Jean Baudrillard’s Swiftian critique, The Gulf
War Did Not Take Place (1991), David O. Russell’s imperial romance, Three Kings (1999), Anthony Swofford’s enormously
influential and caustic memoir, Jarhead: A Marine’s Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles (2003), or Gabe Hudson’s often
representations of the
outrageous short story collection, Dear Mr. President (2003). In the best traditions of satire, these
1991 Gulf War frequently emphasize the newness, shock, and discontinuity of that conflict in order to
contest claims that it provided a hygienic, precise mode of postmodern warfare that had
finally (as President George H. W. Bush declared to US troops in March 1991) exorcized the ghosts of Vietnam
(Bush 1991). As Stacey Peebles has compellingly argued, literary representations of both the Gulf War and the Iraq war
continue to be powerfully shaped by writers’ immersion in “the digital battlefield” (2011). By the time of the
“shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad in March 2003, these images of violent spectacle were embedded in the
public consciousness along with the mythology of hygienic “precision” bombing. High tech
rhetoric became a constant feature of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s press briefings, as he
warded off comparisons between the “decapitation strike” bombing of Baghdad with the area bombing of German and Japanese
cities in World War II: The
care that goes into it, the humanity that goes into it, to see that military
targets are destroyed, to be sure, but that it’s done in a way, and in a manner, and in a direction
and with the a weapon that is appropriate to that very particularized target. And I think the comparison is
unfortunate and inaccurate. And I think that will be the case when ground truth is achieved. (Rumsfeld 2003) Despite Rumsfeld’s
flamboyant postmodern rhetoric, the “shock and awe” campaign drew on a longer history both of colonial air power and World War
Accompanying tropes of high technology
II–era bombing campaigns (Tanaka and Young 2010; Crowder 2003).
warfare are the representations of special forces and elite paramilitary warfare as the dominant
human and physical embodiment of US military power. Already familiar to television audiences at home through
obligatory sequences of anonymous, masked SWAT teams accompanying the detectives on raids in the Law and Order franchise,
Miami: CSI, and in the post-Vietnam rise of paramilitary popular culture (Gibson 1994), the US special forces emerged into the
public eye during the media spectacle of the rescue of Jessica Lynch on April 1, 2003. Their reputation and popularity as a
paramilitary elite survived the subsequent media controversy, and has remained a consistent source of patriotic pride and media
attention despite the travails of the US military during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. They once again received
prominence for the role Navy Seal Team Six played in the May 2011 raid in Pakistan, which killed Osama Bin Laden. And they
featured prominently in the 2012 State of the Union speech, in which President Obama announced, “One of my proudest
possessions is the flag that the SEAL Team took with them on the mission to get bin Laden” (Obama 2012). The representations of
Navy Seal operators or special forces soldiers in films like Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Captain Phillips (2013), or American Sniper
(2014), like the best-selling memoirs by former Navy Seals, present the US military as an elite, hypermasculine cadre with unrivalled
expertise: fast, precise, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, laconic, likeable, typically Southern and blue collar, and ever ready to project
lethal violence anywhere in the world in a matter of moments. In Klaus Theweleit’s terms, they represent a powerful re-armoring of
the body against the threatening flows of enemy violence and the traumas of combat that he analyzed in veterans of World War I
contemporary representations project the world as a potential war
(Theweleit 1989). In contrast,
zone menaced by the threat of terrorism, in which the normal rule of law or rules of war
can be dramatically suspended at any moment. Like the drones and mythical special forces,
these dominant representations of war are permanently on standby, ready to be
dispatched into the battlefields of our imaginations at the push of a button or the issue of
an order. This celebration of hypermasculinity, albeit in the guise of the “trauma-hero,” is also a reminder
that the past decade and a half has also seen a continuation of the powerful logic of remasculinization that
followed the US defeat in Vietnam (Jeffords 1989; Scranton 2015). This projection of military force at
a distance is frequently represented as futuristic in its use of “precision” bombing,
paramilitary special forces, counterinsurgency warfare, or drone strikes, as if inhabiting a
temporality somehow different from previous forms of warfare and from the more barbaric
or primitive violence of the “enemy.” This fetishization of militarized forms of technology meshes
with and reinforces the aestheticization of violence, since it engages in a linguistic
redescription of killing and wounding, to use Elaine Scarry’s invaluable terms (1985), but this time
redescribed in terms of technology. These dominant images for wars that have seized the
collective imagination continue to offer the traditional satisfactions of modern war culture: they
claim to give citizens at home intimate knowledge of the warzones, projecting a
commanding perspective of the conflict in which we can share. Yet unlike the panoramic vision of
Churchill’s speeches or of World War II propaganda, these are delivered as strategic fantasies: as spectacle
mediated through our superior technologies of violence and surveillance and the stable,
omnipotent tactical perspective of paramilitary special forces. Yet if the imaginary of high tech
“power projection” continues to fascinate and beguile, it leaves out vast territories of the human
experience of war, especially the day-to-day monotony of military occupation into which the
unpredictable violence of combat can suddenly erupt. It misdirects our attention onto
particular sites of militarism, which now include the virtual sites of digital media, as if
they define the larger, more diffusely militarized war culture. As Geyer points out, concentrating
on “sites” risks distracting us from the social processes of militarization (Geyer 1989, 78). It
also tends to produce overly static inventories of particular media or genres during wartime. The
result can be an overemphasis on the role of technology and social media in the transformation of
recent war culture, which risks neglecting the powerful continuities between the “shock and
awe” high tech imaginary of contemporary conflicts and the official war culture and propaganda
of earlier twentieth-century conflicts.
Link – Drones
Debates around the ethicality and international legality of drone violence
ignore how the methods of distanced, technological violence point to the
veritable retreat of liberalism and thus liberal violence from zones of
conflict and instability.
Evans ‘16 (Brad, political philosopher, critical theorist and writer - Chairperson in Political Violence & Aesthetics at the
University of Bath, “Liberal violence: from the Benjaminian divine to the angels of history”, Theory and Event, 19:1, p23-24)
The liberal wars of the past decade have been premised on two notable claims to superiority. The
first was premised on the logic of technology where it was assumed that high-tech sophistry could
replace the need to suffer casualties. The second was premised upon a more humanitarian ethos, which
demanded local knowledge and engagement with dangerous populations. The narcissistic
violence of the Global War on Terror has put this secondary vision into lasting crises as the
violence of liberal encounter has fatefully exposed any universal commitment to rights and
justice. Not only did we appear to be the principle authors of violence, thereby challenging the notion that underdevelopment was
the true cause of planetary endangerment, populations within liberal societies have lost faith in worldly responsibilities. Metaphysical
Violence as such has
hubris displaced by a catastrophic reasoning that quite literally places us at the point of extinction.
assumed non-locatable forms as liberalism is coming to terms with the limits to its territorial will
to rule. Physically separated from a world it no longer understands, it is now left to the digital
and technological recoupment of distance to shape worldly relations with little concern for
human relations. Drone violence is particularly revealing of this shift in the liberal worldview. While
the first recorded drone strike was authorised by President George Bush in Pakistan on 18th June 2004, it has been during the
Presidency of Obama that the use
of the technology has become the more favoured method for dealing
with recalcitrant elements in the global borderlands. Indeed, it seems, whilst the Bush administration favoured
extraordinary rendition, detention and torture, the Obama policy for preventing the growth of inmates in camps such as Guantanamo
Hence inhumane torture and barbarity replaced by the more dignified and
has been their execution.
considerate method of targeted assassination! While debates on drone violence tend to centre
on questions its legality, especially whether it fits within established rules of war, little attention is
given to the wider political moment and how the violence points to the changing nature of liberal
power and its veritable retreat from the world of people. Whereas Bush and Blair launched a one-sided
territorial assault on Iraq and Afghanistan in order to promote 'civilisation', Obama has waged his war in the deregulated
technological supremacy allows for the continuation of uninhibited forms of
atmospheric shadows where
violence, while addressing the fact that the previous interventions failed by any given measure.
Hence, this time, out of respect for public sensibilities a 'precise' or 'surgical' form of violence is delivered remotely to its distant
adversaries. We should not forget however that the technologies, infrastructures and aesthetics
essential for remote warfare are essentially the same as those that support the economy and
consumer society. Targeted drone-strikes and the advertising that maintains the consumer
hothouse essentially rely on the same computer-based technologies and algorithmic sense-
making tools. Put another way, how Amazon mechanically predicts your next book purchase is not
fundamentally different from how adversarial behavioural patterns are isolated in authoring a
signature-kill. Drone technologies are not simply a new tool of warfare that allow for legal or
strategic reassessment. They are paradigmatic to the contemporary stages of liberal rule. As
technological advance compensates for the “soldiers on the ground” militaristic retreat, they further radicalise the very
idea of the territorial front line such that any Schmittean notion of inside/outside appears like some arcane remnant of an
out-dated past. What takes its place is an atmospheric gaze that further eviscerates the human. From the perspective of violence,
displacing the primacy of human agency from the act of killing represents more than the
realisation of the military’s dream of zero casualties. It reveals more fully the dominance of
dystopian realism as the defining rationality shaping the political landscape in the here and now,
and beyond52. Demanding then of a new conceptual vocabulary that allows us to critique what
happens when violence is neither orderly nor progressive, but is simply tasked to mitigate the
demise liberal power and ambition in an uncertain world seems more pressing than ever.
Link – Drones
Legal debates about drones normalizes the virtuality of war – the aff will be
circumvented by the military industrial complex
Gregory ‘11 (Derek Gregory, Peter Wall Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of British Colombia in
Vancouver, 2011, “From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War,” Theory, Culture & Society Volume 28 Numbers 7-8)
ADVANCED MILITARIES like to boast that their conduct of war has become surgical, sensitive
and scrupulous (Gregory, 2010a). The development of a precision-strike capability, the cultural turn
towards a counterinsurgency that places the local population at the centre of its operations, and
the refinement of the legal armature that regulates armed conflict have all contributed to the
celebration of what Der Derian (2009) calls ‘virtuous war’. At its heart, he argues, is the technical ability and
ethical imperative to threaten and, if necessary, actualize violence from a distance – with no or
minimal casualties. Using networked information and virtual technologies to bring ‘there’ here in
near-real time and with near-verisimilitude, virtuous war exercises a comparative as well as
strategic advantage for the digitally advanced. Along with time (as in the sense of tempo) as the fourth dimension,
virtuality has become the ‘fifth dimension’ of US global hegemony. (2009: xxi) And at the heart of the
ascent of war from the virtual to the virtuous are the drone wars being waged by the USA in the
global borderlands.1 Two qualifications are immediately necessary. First, remotely piloted aircraft have been used since the
First World War, assault drones were deployed in the closing stages of the Second World War, and the first major combat use of
there is a considerable history behind today’s
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) was during the Vietnam War, so
remote operations in the borderlands. There it intersects with the exercise of a profoundly
colonial modality of air power. The British invented aerial counterinsurgency on the North West Frontier with Afghanistan
and in Iraq (Mesopotamia) in the 1920s (Omissi, 1990; Satia, 2008, 2009), and for all the technical advances there are numerous
dispiriting parallels between then and now. Perhaps
the most telling is the repeated insistence that air
attacks are counterproductive. Two commentators closely identified with the new US counterinsurgency doctrine insist
that ‘expanding or even continuing the drone war [in Pakistan] would be a mistake’. They explain: While violent extremists may be
unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more
civilians than militants. ... [E]very
one of these dead noncombatants represents an alienated family, a
new desire for revenge, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as
drone strikes have increased. (Kilcullen and Exum, 2009) Colonel F.S. Keen said much the same of the bombing of Pashtun villages
on the North West Frontier in 1923: ‘By driving the inhabitants of the bombarded area from their homes in a state of exasperation,
dispersing them among neighbouring clans and tribes with hatred in their hearts at what they consider ‘‘unfair’’ methods of warfare’,
he wrote, these attacks ‘bring about the exact political results which it is so important in our own interests to avoid, viz., the
permanent embitterment and alienation of the frontier tribes’ (Keen, 1923: 400; see also Roe, 2008). As my parallel suggests – and
this is the second qualification – the
modern debate has focused on the covert war waged by CIA-
operated drones in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. The campaign was initiated by
President George W. Bush in 2004, and by the end of 2008 there had been 46 strikes directed at killing so-called ‘High Value
Targets’. The attacks were ramped up by Obama, and by the end of 2010 there had been another 170 strikes.2 These operations
On one side are
raise complex and troubling legal questions, not least because the United States is not at war with Pakistan.
those who defend the strikes as limited and legitimate acts of self-defense against attacks from
the Taliban who seek sanctuary across the border and also as an effective counterterrorism
tactic against al-Qaeda. Indeed, Anderson describes ‘perfect war’, the very summit of ‘virtuous
war’, as ‘target selection perfected to the point of assassination’, a doctrine for which drones
have become the weapon of choice (‘the only game in town’, according to the Director of the CIA) (see, for example,
Anderson, 2009; Paust, 2009). On the other side are critics who insist that such targeting, however
‘precise’, amounts to extra-judicial killing, and that if civilian agencies like the CIA conduct
military operations then their agents become unlawful combatants. Their objections also fasten
on the spatiality of the war zone: they draw special attention to the imprecise legal delineation of
the ‘global battlespace’ invoked by the United States and to the lack of accountability for civilian
casualties (see, for example, O’Connell, 2009; Rogers, 2010; Solis, 2010). But for the most part all these
arguments assume that the use of UAVs by the United States Air Force (USAF) and its military allies in Afghanistan
– including Britain and Canada – is unproblematic, and in doing so they reinforce the claim that these
new technologies enable advanced militaries to conduct ‘virtuous war’. This article seeks to
interrogate those assumptions, but I have to note that it is not easy to disentangle one campaign
from the other. Some commentators have suggested that the USAF is involved to varying degrees in the CIA strikes, but in
any case the Air Force uses the Pentagon’s Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List to conduct its own strikes on leaders of the
a
Taliban and others who may have only a proximate relation to the war in Afghanistan, and makes no secret of the fact that
prime function of its Predators and Reapers is to ‘put warheads on foreheads’ (Mulrine, 2008) (Figure
1).3
Link – Global/Local
Simplistic focus on the dominating (or imperial) nature of arm sales is
inadequate and only manufactures more violence, we must understand the
everyday aspect of hypermasculine and racialized logics of military arms
that reinforce a disconnect between military action and suffering outside of
state borders to effectively challenge US military interventions and
violence
Basham ‘18 (Victoria, Reader, Senior Lecturer of International Relations at Cardiff University, “Liberal militarism as
insecurity, desire and ambivalence: Gender, race and the everyday geopolitics of war” Militarism and security: Dialogue, possibilities
and limits, 2018, Vol. 49(1-2), pp 36-37)
Reading Cameron’s call to arms through a lens attentive to its gendered and racialized logics
reveals other ways in which the British liberal state justifies its military interventions and its
maintenance of military ‘capabilities’. Cameron’s extensive knowledge and detail about the
military’s ‘big boys’ toys’ echoes a longstanding ‘popular masculine pleasure-culture of war’
(Dawson, 1994: 3–4), through which association with war and its technologies confers a ‘virile
prestige’ on men, including politicians (Cohn, 1987; Kimmel, 2004; Prügl, 2003). His invocation of the UK’s
moral responsibility to its allies also betrays what Young (2003) has called a ‘logic of masculinist
protection’ whereby liberal states take on the traditionally masculine role of protector. This role for
liberal states cannot be one of simplistic domination, no matter how (militarily) strong a state may be. Instead,
it can be cast as chivalrous, self-sacrificing and responsibly masculine in valiantly facing the
dangers of the world. At the same time, while other liberal states may also see themselves as supposedly failing to be
‘warlike’ – and masculine ‘enough in the past’ (Edgerton, 2006: 1) – Britain’s peculiar history as the once imperial power par
excellence haunts its national military myth. As a nation frequently characterized as the former imperial
power but now in decline (Edgerton, 2006), its desire to engage in masculinist protection is
contingent upon particular historical and social factors, as well as its liberalism. It relies on specific
ideas of ‘Britishness’ that betray dynamics particular to the UK. One of these is the multiple cultural attempts to
erase colonial and postcolonial bodies from the national story, which Gilroy (2005: 431) argues results from
an ‘inability to process the loss’ of empire, so that ‘the shame that has attended the exposure of Britain’s colonial crimes’ continues
this allows for a seemingly
to shape the ‘country’s embattled politics of race and nation’. For Gilroy (2005: 437),
endless stream of popular revisionist histories in which ‘the empire comes back through a
nostalgic filter’ that casts Britain as both nation of past glories and prime victim of the colonial
history that has meant it has not been able to preserve the (imagined) whiteness of Churchill’s
Britain. Multiculturalism, as a result, has become a problem, and the arrival of immigrants and
refugees on Britain’s ‘shores’ is increasingly ‘experienced as invasive war’, reinforcing the idea
of a besieged island nation (Gilroy, 2005: 437). These ideas certainly seem to resonate in the embittered political
struggles around the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the UK, though they also reflect wider liberal logics around
migration. While a clear case was made for the UK’s responsibility to bomb parts of Syria, the
responsibility to resettle Syrians fleeing from those bombs was less clear. Stressing in his call to
arms that ‘Missiles may kill terrorists. But good governance kills terrorism’, Cameron (2015a:
col. 1492) emphasized the need for ‘immediate humanitarian support and, even more crucially,
longer-term stabilisation’. In boasting that the UK had already committed over £1.1 billion to this – ‘by far the largest
commitment of any European country, and second only to the United States of America’ – he made clear that this generosity was
While in
aimed at reducing ‘the need for Syrians to attempt the perilous journey to Europe’ (Cameron, 2015a: col. 1492).
keeping with the wider liberal logic of masculinist protection, the British state’s concern for
deterring refugees from reaching Europe’s borderlands is not about actively saving Syrian lives,
but is biopolitical; it involves letting Syrians die through prioritizing and seeking to preserve the
way of life of the European population (Foucault, 2004). Prior to early 2014, the UK’s stance on
refugees was to ‘be generous with humanitarian aid to Syria’s neighbours rather than to accept
Syrian refugees for resettlement in the UK’ (Gower and Politowski, 2016: 3). Under mounting parliamentary (and
some public) pressure, the government established a selective policy of refuge in early 2014. However, by the end of June 2015
only 216 people (including dependants) had come to the UK through the scheme (Gower and Politowski, 2016). In the wake of the
Paris attacks, Cameron once again stressed the need to ‘help refugees closer to their homes’ to prevent them ‘having to make that
terrible journey across the Mediterranean’ (Cameron, 2015b). This emphasis echoes EU-wide border policies and practices of
Such practices
frequently offshoring the policing of migration to third countries thousands of miles from EU member-states.
are often justified by liberal states in similarly humanitarian terms of trying to deter migrants from
embarking ‘on hazardous journeys towards the EU’ (EU Commission, cited in Vaughan-Williams, 2015: 25).
Many of these third countries are less developed or have poor human rights records, however, resulting in what Gammeltoft-Hansen
(2011: 30) calls ‘protection lite’: ‘the presence of formal protection, but with a lower degree of certainty about the scope and/or level
Another narrative at the centre of Cameron’s call to arms also reinforces the
of rights afforded’.
disconnect between military force and the suffering of others external to the UK homeland. This
is that the threat posed to the UK and to the British way of life necessitates military action. In
calling on Parliament for the UK to join the airstrikes, Cameron (2015a: col. 1494, col. 1489) claimed that throughout British history,
‘the United Kingdom has stood up to defend our values and our way of life’, and stated that the
very reason for military action ‘is the very direct threat that ISIL poses to our country and to our
way of life’. It follows, therefore, that military power and security rationally go hand in hand; but
this biopolitical rationality normalizes further insecurity for Syrians, whether through the
production of more direct violence or through further displacement. Moreover, it betrays
masculinist logics that overlook how military action and increased military spending can also
make some British citizens less secure (Blanchard, 2003; Sylvester, 1994; Tickner, 2004). Economic trade-offs
between warfare and welfare consistently impact disproportionately on some of the most
vulnerable members of society, including, and in particular, women, whose lives are shaped by ‘everyday patriarchy’
(Blanchard, 2003: 1290). War preparedness takes funds away from domestic violence shelters, care
provision for the elderly and disabled, and general healthcare. The discourses that the British
liberal state drew upon to justify its involvement in airstrikes over Syria simultaneously utilized
and concealed biopolitical, gendered and racialized logics that enable liberal democratic state
military action and military readiness to become intelligible. Liberal militarism becomes the
solution to insecurity, despite the threat to lives at home and abroad. However, state narratives
and their reproduction in social and political life are not the only source of liberal militarism.
Bellicose, ‘hard-headed’ calls to use superior military power at the state’s disposal can be co-
constituted by more banal, though no less ‘innocuous’, forms of militarism (Thomas and Virchow, 2005:
27). These are found in the stuff of everyday life, and it is thus to these forms of liberal militarism that I now turn.
Link – Covert Ops
The discourse and actions of the covert sphere maintain systems of
hypermasculinity, homophobia, racialized otherizing of the East, US
imperial actions, and capitalist propaganda
Melley ‘12 (Timothy, Professor of English, Affiliate of American Studies, and Director of the Humanities Center at Miami
University, “The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State”, Cornell University Press, pp. 23-31)
I have stressed the enhanced role of fi ction in the covert sphere, but I want to be clear that the
covert sphere is the sum of public discourse about secret government. In addition to popular
and “literary” fi ction, this discourse includes histories, documentaries, journalism, professional
intelligence and diplomatic writings, unclassifi ed or declassifi ed government documents,
conspiracy theories, blog posts, WikiLeaks, water-cooler conversations, and the book you are
reading right now.68 This body of discourse is politically and aesthetically diverse. While much of it
provides political support to the National Security State, it also includes many incisive critiques. Although popular fi lms, spy novels, television shows,
comic books, and electronic games have a large role in shaping public attitudes, I spend many of the pages that follow on writing by Coover, DeLillo,
Doctorow, Didion, and others whose historical fi ctions of Cold War secrecy are as illuminating as anything on the subject. Despite the
remarkable scope and variety of covert-sphere narrative, it has several defi ning general
features. First, it is overwhelmingly white and male, both in terms of authorship and content. Its
principal popular genres—the spy thriller, the western, the detective and combat narratives— were the crucible of Cold
War hypermasculinity, part of what Ellen Tyler May and Alan Nadel have both described as a domestic “containment
culture” that mirrored the logic of U.S. foreign policy in a gendered form of domestic
hypervigilance.69 As Michael Davidson and Robert Corber have so compellingly shown, an entire poetics of masculinity
and homophobia developed in response to the apparent dangers of enemy “penetration,”
“thought-control,” and subversion. While rugged male agency became articulated as a defense
against creeping socialism, metaphorically “leaky” forms of identity came under strict scrutiny:
mothers were chastised for mollycoddling their sons; women experienced extraordinary
feminizing pressures; gay and effeminate men were viewed as insuffi ciently tough to prevent
the spread of socialism, liberalism, and even cooperation.70 24 Introduction This spectacular intensifi cation of
traditional gender concepts has too often been viewed as a “mere” cultural effect of “real” political confl ict. But as Amy Kaplan notes, the
already-gendered relation of the (masculine) geopolitical to the (feminine) cultural sphere is
what produces the erroneous assumption that real geopolitical confl ict is always the cause, and
not the effect, of “mere” domestic culture.71 It is important to heed this warning. A number of important studies have shown that
U.S. policy was directly affected by a culture of masculinity among the architects of the Cold War.72 The CIA in particular was a
clandestine form of what Michael Davidson calls the “boy gang”—one of the many 1950s-era insular cohorts of
elite, artistically inclined men.73 The representations of covert action concentrate on this priesthood through
traditionally male genres and the familiar rhetoric of a carefully bounded body that does not leak
its secrets into the public. More surprising, perhaps, is what this hypermasculine imaginary suggests about the transformation of the Cold
War public sphere. As the Cold War covert sector became the arena in which foreign policy was made, U.S. citizens were shuttled into a more passive
civic role.
By offering security in exchange for submission to the inscrutable will of a state protector,
this new social compact placed the public in an increasingly feminized relation to a paternalistic
state. This is a signifi cant shift, for the public has historically been associated with masculinity.
As Habermas’s critics have often pointed out, the eighteenth-century public sphere is a fl awed ideal because its institutions were dominated by men of
privilege. Through at least the nineteenth century, a cult of domesticity construed the public sphere as male space and the domestic sphere as a zone
As the Cold War state concealed
of female infl uence outside the rough-andtumble world of political confl ict and policymaking.74
important political knowledge, however, the public increasingly took a position “out of the know”
and reliant on the clandestine agents of the state to act in its best political interests. In other words, the
public sphere was tacitly reconceived along the lines of the feminized domestic sphere. This transformation might have provoked more notice had it not
been accompanied by the rise of a new cultural imaginary for the contemplation of clandestine policy. This imaginary, the covert
sphere, offered an anxious recognition of, and imaginary compensation for, the feminization of
the public sphere. The anxiety came in the nightmarish form of brainwashed assassins, pliant
citizens, and a security state run amok; the compensation was a steady diet of masculinist
fantasy—heroic violence, individual agency, and rogue bravado. The Postmodern Public Sphere 25 The compensatory fantasies of the covert
sphere are among its most powerful cultural effects, and an entire cultural machinery is now in place to cultivate such fantasies. An astonishing array of
toys—including cameras, listening devices, and robotic vehicles—encourage Western children, especially boys, to view covert action as a fact of life
Youth fi ction not only makes “spycraft” a popular fantasy but it
and a privileged form of subjectivity.
normalizes the idea of foreign policy as a set of exceptions to democracy. At seven years old my son
selected for a school assignment the novel NERDS: National Espionage, Rescue, and Defense Society. This tale of a kid spy agency that is secret
even to the president of the United States begins with a portrait of “the United States’ most valuable spy,” Alexander Brand: “He had saved the world
on more than a dozen occasions. He had stopped three invasions of the United States by foreign powers. He had helped depose six dictators and four
Here, the celebration of covert action and plausible
corrupt presidents. . . . Plus, he looked awesome in a tuxedo.”75
deniability is decidedly “nonserious,” allowing readers (and their parents) to laugh off the
implications of a world where U.S. agents routinely manipulate foreign governments. Within the fantasy
of secret agency, as every child knows, the secret agent always has the power and moral rectitude to compensate for the abrogation of democracy.
For the past several decades, video gaming has offered an even richer fi eld for compensatory
fantasy. In hundreds of complex simulations, these interfaces invite users to imagine that they are hardened special operations forces engaged in
dangerous foreign missions. With several billions of dollars in sales and approaching one billion user hours, the Activision Call of Duty series is,
according to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, “likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history.”76 Such
entertainments not only market a fantasy of hypermasculine combat on the frontiers of empire but also critique the public sphere as a domestic fantasy.
A trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops informs the viewer, over a montage of air strikes, detonations, and small-arms fi re, “A lie is a lie. Just because they
write it down and call it history doesn’t make it the truth. We live in a world where seeing isn’t believing, where only a few know what really happened.
We live in a world where everything we know is wrong.” While making an argument about the public’s utter deception, the trailer invites us to pierce the
deceptive veil of the domestic sphere and enter “the real world” of hypermasculine racialized combat, political power, and 26 Introduction secret
knowledge. Another trailer explicitly connects this fantasy to state sovereignty and the state of exception: “You will move without boundaries,” intones
the grave, bass voiceover. “You will act above the law. You will use every means necessary to stop the wars that are hidden from the world. And if you
succeed, you will do so without recognition because you . . . do not . . . exist.”77 Activision knows that most of its players are the antithesis of the
hardened male action hero, hence a major advertising campaign for the games—“There’s a soldier in all of us”—shows civilian men, women, and
children on the simulated battlefi eld, awkwardly but enthusiastically engaged in mortal combat. This advertisement concisely registers the gender
The
dynamic of the covert sphere, which invites feminized civilians to project themselves into the hypermasculine bodies of professional warriors.
result is not merely a fantasy of masculine agency but also a fantasy of citizenship in which the
middle-class descendants of “the greatest generation,” safe on their living room sofas, imagine
risking their lives on behalf of a grateful nation. Such fantasies facilitate what Susan Jeffords
calls “the remasculinization of America”—in which hair-raising combat fi ctions resuscitate a
wounded national masculinity—and also the social transformation that Figure 4. In this trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 a
hardened special-ops veteran (Sam Worthington, right) schools a comically inept “nOOb” (Jonah Hill, left), who is a stand-in for the sheltered Western
consumer. The trailer, like the game, allows consumers to fantasize real citizenship through the simulation of heroic male action. The Postmodern
Public Sphere 27 Ann Douglas calls the “feminization of American culture.”78 These two social changes are in fact part of the same general
transformation in which an increasingly passive citizenry is recompensed by the fantasies of the covert sphere. This is why it seemed so natural to
President George W. Bush to suggest that the public respond to the events of 9/11 by visiting Disney World and going shopping.79 The work of the
post–Cold-War public is to keep the home well stocked, recall an upbeat version of U.S. history, and not worry its pretty little head about the grim and
secret work of the state. A second defi ning feature of covert-sphere narrative is its organization around two rival anxieties: on the one hand, a serious
external threat to the nation; on the other, the threat of the U.S. security state itself. In both cases, the primary object of interest—the external enemy or
the vast security apparatus itself—tends to be seen as a source of irrationality, mystery, or supernatural agency. Narratives dominated by a concern
with external enemies tend to enact the racialized logic Michael Rogin calls “demonology”—the tradition of shoring up U.S. identity through a paranoid
scapegoating of Native Americans, immigrants, Communists, and now jihadists. This dynamic is especially notable in narratives of Third World combat,
In the
where demonology not only provides a source of national identity and purpose but also registers the unknowability of covert warfare.
massive body of work on the U.S. war in Vietnam, Southeast Asia is routinely rendered as
radically other, a site of surreal horror where the enemy is invisible and the mission vague (see
chapter 3). In such cases, the distant frontiers of U.S. empire become a screen for the racialized
projection of Cold War epistemological uncertainty. A similar quality marks narratives of the
security state itself, which is usually depicted as a vast, mysterious, and astonishingly powerful
apparatus. It is striking how many popular representations of this system depict its negative consequences for U.S. citizens: its potential for
technological catastrophe (from Fail-Safe [1964] and Dr. Strangelove [1964] through Eagle Eye [2008] and Echelon Conspiracy [2009]); its labyrinth of
cynical, pointless, and ultimately fatal spy games (from The Spy Who Came in from the Cold [1963] through Syriana [2005] and The Good Shepherd
[2006]); its violent disregard for human rights (from Three Days of the Condor [1975] through Rendition [2007] and Body of Lies [2008]); or its
wholesale undoing of democracy (Seven Days in May [1964], Executive Action [1973], The Conversation [1974], The Parallax View [1975], Hangmen
Despite their profound
[1987], The Package [1989], 28 Introduction The Siege [1998], Enemy of the State [1998], and many others).
anxiety about the National Security State, these critiques are hardly rooted in solidarity with
those historically affected by U.S. intervention. They are, on the contrary, concerned that the
security state might be a danger to U.S. citizens. Indeed, as I explain in chapter 6, one of the
distinctive features of covert-sphere melodrama is that its hero usually takes the place of the
state’s enemies, doing battle with the U.S. security apparatus in an effort to save the world. Like
demonological fantasies, these narratives are narcissistic expressions of American
exceptionalism shaped by the epistemology of the covert sphere. When the state engages
covertly with a distant and inscrutable enemy, both the state’s enemies and its own methods
become a source of mystery, fascination, speculation, and anxious projection. This structure
fosters public ignorance about U.S. policy and supports the disavowal of U.S. empire.80 This is one
reason why there are such striking differences between U.S. and postcolonial narratives of U.S. foreign engagement.81 Third , the discourse
of the covert sphere is marked by a general sense of epistemological uncertainty, a feeling that Cold War secrecy has made it diffi cult to
know what is true or to narrate events as history. As Tobin Siebers writes in his compelling study of Cold War literary criticism, the Cold War
ushered in a generalized state of “distrust, suspicion, paranoia, and skepticism”: “It is a state
that requires skepticism, and this skepticism in turn preserves the state. This is the cold war effect.” As a result
of these general conditions, Siebers suggests, Cold War literary study began to describe textual “tactics, strategies, and maneuvers” and made a
“virtue of cold war paranoia” by cultivating theoretical suspicion.82 Similar forms of skepticism are the hallmark of writing by Pynchon, Heller, Didion,
DeLillo, Mailer, Atwood, Coover, Acker, Burroughs, and other important postmodern literary fi gures. Conspiracy fi lms such as The Conversation, The
More
Parallax View, and Syriana convey a haunting sense that no amount of exposure can reveal the state’s terrifying security capabilities.
conventional espionage plots tend to end with a fantasy of public revelation, when their
protagonists deliver evidence to the press or testify to Congress (notable cases include Three Days of the Condor,
Hopscotch [1980], The Package, Enemy of the State, and Green Zone [2010]). But even these “heroic public sphere” narratives lavish considerable
attention on the diffi culty of discovering what is real and true. Their protagonists uncover the The Postmodern Public Sphere 29 nature of the covert
state only through exceptional courage and heroism. As Sergeant Johnny Gallagher puts it in the covert-ops thriller The Package, “Who the hell knows
what’s real?”83 It is signifi cant that such expressions of skepticism haunt not only postmodern historiographic metafi ction—where confusion about
reality is an aesthetic strategy—but also more conventional forms like The Package. What does it mean that Sergeant Gallagher’s question could serve
It suggests a connection between the representation of
as a crude précis of Baudrillard’s “Precession of Simulacra”?
state secrecy and postmodernism, for the conditions of public knowledge under a regime of
state secrecy generate forms of suspicion and unknowing uncannily similar to those typically
associated with postmodern representation. I will turn to this matter momentarily. Before I do, however, I need
to complicate my account of covert-sphere fi ction by pointing to the epistemological effect of a
very different, and more literal, sort of state fi ction. The construction of strategic fi ctions is a
crucial element of intelligence work. A “cold” war, after all, is fought substantially through
elaborate simulations and invented plots—propaganda, psychological operations, and public
deception. It is hence no accident that the early CIA was packed with literature students and
writers. When the CIA decided it “wanted a terror campaign” against the left-wing Árbenz regime
in Guatemala, as the operative E. Howard Hunt put it, the agency hired the professional actor
David Atlee Phillips to broadcast fabricated news stories over Voice of Liberation Radio. These
stories were the stuff of pulp fi ction: they falsely reported that Árbenz was meeting with visiting Soviet offi cials, that Árbenz would
soon confi ne all sixteen-year-olds to concentration camps for “reeducation,” and so on. The CIA supplemented such operations by planting phony
caches of Soviet arms in the country (Operation WASHTUB), and it later concocted the even more cynical Operation PBHISTORY, which planted
fabricated “historical proof ” of Soviet infl uence in Guatemala.84 As many novelists have noted, such operations require the mind of a novelist; they
often require the fabrication of imaginary characters and false documents so rich in detail that unknowing investigators will be able to “reconstruct” an
entirely fi ctional event and believe it really happened (see chapter 3). The Cold War archive overfl ows with such plots. It resembles the private papers
of a postmodern fabulist whose unpublished sketches are regularly unearthed by persistent biographers. To take merely one example, 30 Introduction
after scrapping a proposal to blow John Glenn’s February 20, 1962, space fl ight out of the sky and blame the disaster on “electronic interference on
the part of the Cubans,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff formally recommended to President Kennedy, on March 13, 1962, a campaign of fabricated domestic
The goal of this false fl ag operation was to simulate “a
terrorist attacks called “Operation Northwoods.”
Communist Cuban terror campaign in Miami” in order to provide grounds for the invasion of
Cuba. According to JCS documents, covert U.S. operatives would “make it appear that Communist Cuban MiGs have destroyed a USAF aircraft
over international waters in an unprovoked attack”; detonate “plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots” in the United States; and “[shoot] down a
chartered civil airliner en route from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Panama, or Venezuela.” Still smarting from the 1961 debacle of the
If the Cold War state was in part a fi
CIA’s simulated “Cuban uprising” at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy rejected the proposal.85
ction-making machine designed to sway enemies and citizens alike, it was also a “literary agent”
and “arts patron.” During the 1950s and ’60s, the CIA was almost certainly the largest sponsor of serious art and literature in the Western
hemisphere. As Frances Stonor Saunders has shown, “the CIA was in effect acting as America’s Ministry of Culture” through a series of front
Over seventeen years, the CIA spent tens of millions
organizations, most notably the Congress for Cultural Freedom.86
of dollars funding an astonishing array of journals, exhibits, societies and other creative and
critical works that projected what it viewed as a strategically favorable view of Western liberal
capitalism. By 1977, the agency had underwritten the publication of over one thousand books, including many modernist classics, new
antisocialist fi ction, and works by current and former agency employees such as John Hunt, Peter Matthiessen, James Michener, Howard Hunt, and
As the chief of the CIA’s covert action staff explained, books were “the most
William F. Buckley Jr.
important weapon of strategic (long-range) propaganda.” Hence the CIA developed a way not only to “get books
published for operational reasons, regardless of commercial viability” but also to “[stimulate] the writing of politically signifi cant books by unknown
foreign authors—either by directly subsidizing the author, if covert contact is feasible, or indirectly through literary agents or publishers.”87 In short, the
work of the Cold War state was quite frequently literary and cultural work. And while this work often involved the promotion The Postmodern Public
Sphere 31 of modernism (the CIA air-dropped Eliot’s Four Quartets behind the Iron Curtain, for instance), its public effect was oddly similar to that of
postmodernism.88 Its operational goal, after all, was often to blur the authentic and the fabricated, reality and representation—precisely the sort of
ontological confabulation that has come to defi ne postmodernism. This is certainly not to say that the state’s work was “postmodern”—only to note that
the Cold War state made a considerable investment in transforming the conditions of public knowledge at home and abroad. It seems more than a
coincidence that this subject would become the dominant concern of postmodern expression—a subject I now address in detail.
Link – Israel Arm Sales
The aff misses the point: Arms sales aren’t what incentivize the Israeli state
to genocide Palestinians. The ontological questions of identity, territory,
culture, existence and security are what provoke the never-ending conflict.
The aff buys into the over-securitized mindset of Israeli justification and is
therefore part of the problem.
Burke ‘06 (Anthony; Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra; “Beyond Security, Ethics and
Violence: War Against the Other”; Routledge; pgs. 135-136)
A final example – modern Israel – which is testament to the non-passage 3 of sovereignty. In

particular, the drawn out death-struggle between Israel 4 and Palestine has been marked by the
perseverance of sovereignty’s 5 ontology in the fusion of violence, religious and territorial
identity, and 6 the national security state. Following the election of the hard-line Ariel 7 Sharon (shadowed by the
even harder-line Likud pretender Benjamin 8 Netanyahu) the conflict’s worst features were reignited, with suicide bomb- 9 ings,
assassinations, and ferocious IDF operations aimed at disabling the 40111 Palestinian authority itself. As I argue in Chapter
3, these culminated in 1 April 2002 with ‘Operation Defensive Shield’, the invasion of Palestinian
2 sovereign areas by the IDF, which saw the shelling of towns and refugee 3 camps, mass
arrests, torture, summary executions of Palestinian ‘mili- 4 tants’, shootings and the systematic
destruction of houses. In Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah this caused hundreds of deaths, with little impact – until 1111 the
58
construction of the separation wall – on the ability of suicide bombers 2 to shatter innocent Israeli lives. 3 The needs of
imperial capital have little purchase in this conflict, bar 4 a remote and confused link with US
geo-strategy. This is a struggle over 5 identity, sovereignty and territory: one carried out not only
between Arab 6 and Jew, but between Jews themselves, and between conflicting images 7 of
Zionism and Israeli identity. Twisting through the events of this conflict 8 are ongoing questions:
How do Jews and Arabs fit into Israeli citizenship 9 and identity? What is a ‘Jew’? What are the
borders of Israel, and can 1011 Israel’s existence accommodate the existence of a Palestinian
state or 1 indeed Palestinians themselves?59 2 In short, at the heart of this conflict lies a
profound anxiety about the 3111 existential security, integrity and unity of Israel, and we may
fear that in 4 the wake of the violence right-wing constructions of Israeli identity are 5 becoming
more powerful. As a major conference on Israeli security in 6 2000, attended by a wide range of powerbrokers on the centre
and right, 7 set out: ‘Israel must confront directly developments that manifest exis- 8 tential dangers. Failure in this confrontation or
an attempt to avert it are 9 liable to lead to the demise of the Zionist enterprise’. The Herzliya 2011Conference manifested acute
anxiety about Arab birth rates and advocated 1 the containment of such ‘geo-demographic’ threats through increased 2 Jewish
emigration to Israel and a settlement of the Palestinian conflict that 3 will ‘preserve’ a ‘Jewish majority’, i.e. little or no ‘right of return’
for 4 dispossessed Palestinians, the annexation of Jewish settlements beyond the 5 ‘green line’, and ‘the encouragement of Jewish
settlement in demograph- 6 ically problematic regions’ such as the Galilee, the Jezreel Valley and the 7 Negev ‘to prevent a
60
contiguous Arab majority that would bisect Israel’. 8 The most viable political resolution to the conflict – the
‘two state solu- 9 tion’ – still resides in modern sovereignty, but we face a fundamental 30111
question of how rigid and ontologically intransigent such a solution might 1 be. How can it
accommodate difference, provide some measure of justice, 2 and promote coexistence?61 The
ideal is that Palestinian territory might 3 be released from the ontological grasp of the dream of a Greater Israel, 4 but the Herzliya
conference also suggested deep division within Israel as 5 to whether a Palestinian state should be permitted or, if it was to be
62
estab- 6 lished, sought ways to permanently annex some Palestinian territory to 7 secure Israel against the ‘demographic threat’.
The Palestinians are most 8 unlikely to accept such a settlement, while in May 2002 the Likud voted 9 never to accept a Palestinian
Peace could be a pyrrhic accommodation: while
state of any kind, and thus the conflict was 4011 set to continue.
the irre- 1 dentist desire for Greater Israel may one day be defeated at the negotiating 2 table or
in an Israeli election, we can worry that the exclusivist onto- 3 logical image of the Zionist state
will persevere, (in)secure behind its ‘iron 4 wall’, while the Palestinian nation is born into a
cauldron of hatred and injustice.
Link – Positive Peace
The aff perpetuates an essentialist notion of peace as the absence of direct
and structural violence. This leaves intact the legitimating principle that
makes cultural violence possible
Koopman ’11 (Sara, Assistant prof of Geography at York University, “Let’s Take Peace to Pieces”, Political
Geography Volume 30 Issue 4)
Megoran calls for political geographers to not simply to study but to build peace, and offers eight examples of ways that
geographers are already doing so – yet these seem limited to me. There is a great deal of work done in geography that is for peace
if we understand peace as more than not-war (e.g. geographies of responsibility, of solidarity, or of struggles for the right to the city).
But if peace is broad enough to encompass all of this, is the term useful? Geographers have not seemed to think so. Peace is not
one of the ‘Key Concepts in Geography’ (Holloway, Rice, & Valentine, 2003), nor even one of the ‘Key Concepts in Political
Geography’ (Gallaher, Dahlman, Gilmartin, Mountz, & Shirlow, 2008) – nor is it defined in the ‘Dictionary of Human Geography’
(Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts, Whatmore, 2009), nor the ‘International Encyclopedia of Human Geography’ (Thrift & Kitchin,
2009), nor the recent ‘SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge’ (Agnew & Livingstone, 2011). Peace is not to be found in the
index of most geography textbooks, even critical ones on geopolitics and political geography ( [Agnew et al., 2007] and [Ó Tuathail
et al., 2006] ). To be fair, there would not be much for review texts to cite, for little work has been done by geographers directly using
the word peace – though a great deal of critical geography is both about and for peace, understood more broadly. Is it worth
If the term peace is used but left undefined it is
attaching the term peace to that sort of work? Yes and no.
too often assumed as a universal across time and place, and sentimentally idealized as
either simply not-war, or all that is good. Megoran argues that peace is more than the antonym of war, but does
not speak to how the two are entangled. Life goes on in the midst of violent conflict. Children go to school, people fall in love – and
war is inside peace, that war is the motor of
they organize for justice. Foucault (2003, p. 50) argues that
institutions and order. But peace too is inside war. The two are intertwined, and we
cannot understand one without the other. If ever there was a clear line between war and
peace, it is all the more blurred, Gregory (2010) argues, by ‘late modern war’, which has no
clearly defined beginning or end in place or time. Seeing peace and war as all-or-nothing opposites is the
sort of thinking that either makes people give up on ever achieving peace or focus just on studying war, thinking that all it takes for
peace is to end war. To
unsettle ‘peace’ by exposing how it is both portrayed and visualized,
as well as practiced and materialized, is not just an intellectual exercise but an integral
part of creating peace itself. I fully agree then with Megoran that is important to question how peace is and has been
defined, though I am far more interested in how peacemakers have defined it than how geographers have. I am afraid that Megoran
himself leans to reproducing the idea that there is one right definition of peace out there if we just dig hard enough to find it, even as
he looks at how it has been defined differently. He gives more attention to Biblical Studies than to Peace Studies, and implies that
there is one overarching definition of peace in the bible. Of course religion and philosophy have been asking what peace is for
millennia, but after the Second World War the field of peace studies was formed to focus entirely on this issue. There are now
encyclopedias ( [Cuéllar and Cho, 1999] and [Kurtz, 2008] ) of the major concepts in the field. These include various sorts of peace,
from liberal to feminist to Gaia peace (Groff, 2010). Megoran gives the breadth of the field of peace studies short shrift. Megoran
does focus on the “father” of Peace Studies: Johan Galtung, who founded the Peace Research Institute of Oslo in 1958.
Galtung first argued that negative peace was the absence of direct violence, i.e. bodily
harm, and positive peace was the absence of structural violence, i.e. social structures with
life-shortening consequences. What Megoran fails to mention is that twenty years later Galtung added a
third type of violence, cultural violence, i.e. the ideas used to legitimize both direct and structural
violence. Positive peace, Galtung (1996) now argues, is the absence of both structural and cultural violence. Ironically though,
even in Galtung’s ‘positive peace’ peace is defined by what it is not. Other arguments about what peace means have been
advanced in peace studies. Goetschel and Hagmann (2009) argue that a ‘peacebuilding consensus’ has formed
in
diplomatic circles which uses technocratic interpretations of positive peace that impose a top-
down liberal peace as a benevolent response funded by Western countries. They call this
‘donor peace’ and argue that it is not only paternalistic but hides an economic
liberalization agenda that links peace to capitalist development . Not defining peace makes it
susceptible to these uses. They argue for re-politicizing the term by facing the “thorny question of
what peace means for different social groups in a particular place and time” (2009, p. 64).
Dietrich and Sützl (1997) put forward “A Call for Many Peaces” in which they argue that without being based in concrete places
peace is simply an abstraction, and that to argue for just ‘one peace’ is intellectual violence. They imply that peace can only be
conceived, and achieved, on a small scale. I disagree that peace can only be achieved on a small scale, but it seems clear that
Peace is not
peace means different things at different scales, as well as to different groups, and at different times and places.
the same everywhere anymore than war is. When peace is portrayed as a mythical
singular it becomes so abstract as to be unobtainable, an issue best left to
philosophers. Or perhaps it becomes so unspecified that it is open to manipulation by
politicians and attached to violent pacification. I want to argue for taking peace to
pieces, not just by place, but also space. Peace(s) are always shaped in and through
the spaces and times through which they are made. Peace is not a static thing, nor an
endpoint, but a socio-spatial relation that is always made and made again (Agnew, 2009). Is
peace made through a network, a hierarchy, or in rooms? If we imagine peace as
something delivered by men in suits in a negotiation room, what role can we play? If we
imagine space as simply a container, what can we do to, and in, it? To take peace to
pieces requires both understanding space as a doing, and grounded contextual
definitions of peace. This has become particularly clear to me in my own research on international protective
accompaniers in Colombia (Koopman, 2011). Accompaniers are generally people with citizenship privilege (i.e., from North America
and Europe) who, as they put it, ‘make space for peace’ by walking alongside Colombian peacemakers who are under threat. I have
been discussing with accompaniers their practices and productions of space, how these use privilege, and how they understand that
their work produces peace. Accompaniment is a very particular form of peacemaking, but I want to learn from different, as
They call for geographers to research
McConnell and Williams (in press) put it, situated knowledges of peace.
more “sites and scales, to show how peace is differentially constructed, materialized
and interpreted through space and time”. Geographers are particularly well placed to
connect the various experiences and experiments in peacemaking around the world in
‘non-innocent conversations’ (Haraway, 1992) that acknowledge that peace(s) are shaped by
the spaces they are made in. As geographers we can draw counter-topographical
contour lines (Katz, 2001) that see connections and weave the peace(s) together. But do these
experiments have to actually use the word ‘peace’? Williams and McConnell (in press) “propose a more expansive and critical focus
around ‘peace-full’ concepts such as tolerance, friendship, hope, reconciliation, justice, humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism,
The terms human rights,
resistance, solidarity, hospitality, care and empathy”. But do these words stand in for peace?
human security, and human development likewise are used instead of peace. Perhaps this is
because the term peace can be vague, broad, amorphous and mythical. So then is it worth using the term peace? I want to argue
that it is, if we define it as more than not-war, and always in grounded contextual ways. Rather than using it instead of other terms, I
want to argue for adding it to existing conversations. Though it overlaps, it is a wider concept than justice or security or solidarity –
Security is
one that can encompass these and more. Using the term peace also allows for a different sort of thinking.
traditionally understood to be kept at the national scale, and human security is
measured at the individual scale, but generally understood to be kept by nations, IGOs
and NGOs. Peace, meanwhile, can be experienced as both intimate and global. Peace
can be created at an individual, family, neighborhood, community, and other scales, and
using the term can foster seeing these scales as intertwined and mutually constitutive.
One of the best ways we can work for peace is to recognize that much of what critical
geographers are already looking at is about peacemaking, broadly understood. Using
the term peace, even with various definitions of the term, allows us to connect these
peacemaking projects around the world. As geographers we are well placed not only to
take peace to pieces, but also to connect the peace(s).
Link—Problem-Solution
Arms control is integrally linked to the military industrial complex through
its promotion of sovereign rule in its ability to manage force. Reject the
aff’s problem solving methodology that justifies technomanagerial logic
and the acceptability of war.
Krause ‘11 (Keith Krause (2011) Leashing the Dogs of War: Arms Control from Sovereignty to
Governmentality*, Contemporary Security Policy, 32:1, 20-39, DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2011.556823,
https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2011.556823)
So what remains is a set of formal arms control agreements, mostly bilateral, but also a few that were multilateral, designed to
They channeled the
manage the potentially most dangerous and destabilizing aspects of inter-state conflict dynamics.
confrontation between the superpowers into a technical and problem-solving logic that would
facilitate decision making about what kinds of weapons to produce and deploy, and under what
circumstances to use them. In addition, after some of the conceptual confusions of early nuclear strategy (such as
Massive Retaliation), arms control became part of the logic by which decisions over appropriate
(rational) strategies could be designed. In the 1960s and 1970s, in context of the East-West conflict and nuclear
proliferation, maintaining the conditions of stable deterrence and reducing the risk of war was perhaps a politically and normatively
But arms control was thus also linked to deterrence theory and practice, and to the
laudable goal.
entire functioning of the so-called military-industrial complex, and not something distinct and in
opposition to it. This vision would not necessarily be accepted by those – such as researchers at the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and other think-tanks – who saw themselves as growing out of the peace and anti-nuclear
weapons movements, but I ARMS CONTROL FROM SOVEREIGNTY TO GOVERNMENTALITY 25 think the policy acceptability of
SIPRI’s work (for example) came precisely from its progressive acceptance of the underlying rules of the game.19 What were these
rules of the game? There are four elements of the Cold War practice of arms control that warrant a deeper exploration in order to
The first element was the attempt by proponents of
illustrate the normalizing and sovereign logic of arms control.
arms control to distinguish it from advocacy of disarmament in any form. Disarmament was
associated with the failed attempts to negotiate reductions in armaments during the interwar
period. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was associated with the peace and anti-nuclear movements,
and was seen as the preserve of impractical idealist efforts – at best politically naı¨ve; at worst
politically suspect. As Jeffrey Larsen notes, ‘in the early 1960s international security specialists began using the term arms
control in place of the term disarmament, which they believed lacked precision and smacked of utopianism. The seminal books on
So arms control was presented by its
arms control published in that era all referred to this semantic problem’.20
practitioners as directed towards controlling or regulating the numbers, types, deployment or
use of certain types or quantities of arms, and disarmament was defined as involving the
reduction or the elimination of particular weapons and weapons systems, and/or foreswearing of
acquisition of new weapons.21 Although occasionally agreements were signed that did eliminate weapons systems or
particular classes of weapons, most notably the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty that eliminated an entire class of
restrictions were tilted more
nuclear weapons, when seen as part of the broader spectrum of nuclear capabilities, such
towards the control side of the equation.22 Overall, arms control reinforced, not undermined,
sovereign state power. The second, related, element was the technocratic or problem-solving
orientation of arms control practices. Its political acceptability came from its claim to operate
within the same policy frame as other forms of military-strategic thinking, including of course
deterrence theory and strategy, alliance-building, and the entire militaryindustrial logic that
shaped Western (and arguably Eastern) security policy. More importantly, however, it provided
legitimacy to a counter-intuitive set of policy prescriptions (such as leaving your own civilian
population vulnerable to nuclear attack, or revealing the equivalent of state secrets as part of
confidence-building measures). And finally, the technocratic approach also was, in its strongest version, opposed to the
irrational and uncontrollable prescriptions of what, as early as President Eisenhower, was called the military-industrial complex. High
level proponents of arms control (Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, for example, as well perhaps as Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger), regarded the defence establishment as unable to set limits on its threat assessment and concomitant arms
They wished to subject security policy to rational managerial techniques, including
acquisitions.
such ideas as diminishing marginal returns to investments in new weapons, cost-benefit
analysis for weapons systems, and trade offs between competing goals (the guns-versus-butter
debate).23 As Henry Kissinger is once purported to have said, ‘What in the name of God is strategic superiority? What is the
significance of it, politically, militarily, operationally, at these levels of numbers? What do you do with it?’ thus expressing his
Even
frustration with the inability of the nuclear defense establishment to provide a rationale for its weapons acquisition plans.24
more 26 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY hawkish arms controllers subscribed to the rational
calculus, with, for example, Paul Nitze arguing, with respect to ballistic missile defense (Star
Wars), that it had to be cost effective on the margin in order to make strategic sense.25 Arms
control was thus more rational – and promised to achieve the same national security goals
(including war-fighting dominance) at lower cost. But the actual achievements of arms control negotiations,
treaties and agreements are difficult to assess, even if we use some counter-factual analysis. As noted above, arms control
failed to stem the technological arms race, failed to reduce spending on weapons, and perhaps
played only a marginal role in preventing a violent superpower confrontation. In all of its forms,
arms control was not a transformative paradigm – but a technomanagerial project. The
transformation of inter-state relations via either nuclear disarmament or nuclear holocaust was to be avoided at all costs, and the
management of the superpower arms race was a sort of via media between these two
Manichean visions. Parenthetically, some prominent advocates, such as Robert McNamara, or President Barack Obama,
who have argued prominently for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons, claim implicitly or explicitly that there is a seamless
conceptual thread that goes from arms control to nuclear disarmament, and that all that distinguishes one from the other is the
if arms
relative time horizon or degree of pragmatism of the advocates.26 But this is both conceptually and practically unlikely –
control is a set of techno-managerial practices fully integrated into the Cold War logic of national
security strategy, then it is unable to make the leap to disarmament – which involves an entirely
different idea about the place of violence in social and political life. Recent debates around the ratification of
the New START treaty in late 2010 illustrated how it hardly represented a step towards deeper nuclear reductions. The third core
Weberian state’s monopoly over the use of lethal force
element of the arms control paradigm was that the
could not only be used to impose order domestically and to create social peace but that it could
also be projected outwards to create a form of international order that reduced the risk of
violence. Just as the domestic form of the Weberian monopoly renders the population
vulnerable to the predatory state (so much so that scholars such as Rudolph Rummel could argue that democide –
state-sanctioned killing of citizens – was a greater risk than war);27 the international form also involved rendering entire populations
totally vulnerable to nuclear holocaust. In the name of national security the very survival of the entire population could be put at risk,
through policies such as Mutual Assured Destruction or treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty .
It is difficult to
find a better example of techno-managerial logic, instrumental rationality and the assertion of
sovereign power at work. Although perhaps an extreme example, this faith in the ability of states
to exercise restraint over the use of force, also underlay the entire edifice of nuclear deterrence
policy and strategy. The final element was that the arms control paradigm, like the much older balance
of power system, was not a mechanism for maintaining order that eliminated war or the use of
force from the international system. It assumed that the main risk to be prevented was that of
large-scale inter-state war between great powers or the superpowers, and that a trade-off
between this risk, and the risk of (or fact of) small and large wars, especially in the postcolonial
world, was an acceptable one. The use of ARMS CONTROL FROM SOVEREIGNTY TO GOVERNMENTALITY 27
violence was either to be part of the logic of so-called limited (nuclear) war or to be confined to
the periphery, to such places as Indochina, Angola, and Afghanistan (although this was hardly peripheral
to the Soviet Union). This was analogous to the operation of the 19th century balance of power
system, which sanctioned the partitions of Poland, the Crimean War, and so forth in the name of
maintaining systemic stability. Similarly, the logic of limited nuclear war, as presented by
scholars such as Henry Kissinger, rested upon the assumption that the use of force could be
carefully calibrated and controlled.28 The neo-colonialist and political implications of pushing
the problem of war to the periphery are of course clear, and one could argue that the arms
control paradigm sketched above, especially the treaties that stabilized the nuclear confrontation between East and
West (SALT I and II), made certain kinds of proxy wars more possible or acceptable by creating
escalatory fire-breaks that facilitated the relatively risk-free provision of military assistance to
client states and movements. These fire breaks were easier to create in the global South, where
American and Russian troops managed to avoid confronting each other directly, but less easy to
create in Europe. The history of attempts to achieve mutual and balanced force reductions (the 1975 name for what in the late
1980s became the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty), and of debates over the necessity for intermediate range and
tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, and the problem of extended deterrence (or the nuclear umbrella) all point towards a set of
tensions or contradictions within the logic of arms control. It is not the place of this article to demonstrate in detail how these four
understandings or elements of the arms control paradigm were instantiated in particular Cold War arms control practices (treaties
It is reasonably clear, however, that such things as the nuclear non-proliferation
and negotiations).
treaty (NPT), which enshrined the nuclear supremacy of the permanent five members of the UN
Security Council, or the logic of the nuclear strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), or
the NATO doctrine of first use of nuclear weapons, or the lack of any meaningful restraint on
technological innovation for nuclear weapons and delivery systems, rested upon a deep faith in
the ability of the Weberian state to regulate and control the use of violence. Some scholars and
analysts went so far as to argue that the possession of nuclear weapons imposed – as a sort of
structural constraint – a strong form of rationality on state behaviour.29 Arms control efforts
were simply one part of this larger logic, and in any event were not designed to threaten or
undermine it. They were, in short, a clear expression of a Foucauldian form of sovereign rule
that reinforced the system of rule of the contemporary state system.
Link – Weapons Optimism
The plan resets the parameters of politically feasible action and obscures
structural criticism – that sustains and sanitizes the military industrial
complex
Stavrianakis ‘19 (Anna, Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex. “Controlling
weapons circulation in a postcolonial militarised world,” Review of International Studies, 45: 1, 57–76,
doi:10.1017/S0260210518000190, p. 75-76)
human
Advantage Links
Link – Afghanistan
The war in Afghanistan is an extension of the narrative of the Western
savior—the discursive construction of Afghani instability perpetuates a
political understanding that necessitates continued intervention
Crowe ‘07—Researcher, York Centre for International and Security Studies. PhD candidate in
pol sci, York U (Lori, The “Fuzzy Dream”: Discourse, Historical myths, and Militarized
(in)Security - Interrogating dangerous myths of Afghanistan and the ‘West’,
http://turin.sgir.eu/uploads/Crowe-loricrowe.pdf)
The medium for the dissemination of myth is not, however, limited to TV or radio news broadcasts, particularly in the technologically
infused new media culture where movies, cartoons, comics, music vidoes, and the internet have saturated pop culture so thoroughly
that it has become easier than ever to propagate myth to viewers/listeners around the globe. In contemporary culture, the media
have become central to the constitution of social identity. It is not just that media messages have become
important forms of influence on individuals. We also identify and construct ourselves as social beings through the mediation of
images. This is not simply a case of people being dominated by images, but of people seeking and obtaining pleasure through the
experience of the consumption of these images. An understanding of contemporary culture involves a focus both on the
phenomenology of watching and the cultural form of images. 52 Consider, for example, the increase in films infused with US
militarized patriotism or the recent obsession with Internet blogs and now videos posted on UTube from soldiers stationed in
Afghanistan. Hunt explores the political racist/sexist currency of a cartoon circulating on the internet post9/11 of five Taliban leaders
looking horrified after reading a document that states, “To the Taliban: Give us Osama bin Laden or we’ll send your women to
college”. 53 I similarly encountered an image via email of beloved cultural cartoon icon Homer Simpson in front of an American flag
In pop culture it appears that war has become back ‘in
holding a shotgun with Osama bin Laden in the target site.
style’ celebrating images that glorify heroic soldiers and valorize war while the aftereffects are often
invisible. Consider an article in Rolling Stone magazine which lists the results of a poll of some of the most popular songs
soldiers listen to in order to get ‘pumped up’ for a mission. Hard rock, heavy metal, and rap such as 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up” and
the
Drowning Pool’s “Bodies” apparently helps soldiers “get ready to kill” and “haul balls down the road”. 54 The problem is that
media and pop culture has the exceptional ability to generate myth through, for example, ambiguous wording,
military jargon, the severing of causal connections, banishment of bodies, and the cool
demeanor of third-person-reporter-speak 55 : We are faced with “pseudo concrete images” explains
Eisenstein, “Žizek’s “plague of fantasies” which blur our viewings. Because of the irrepresentability of
the ‘real’ there is just surplus-obedience; we obey rather than confront.” 56 Afghanistan The
historical production of particular myths of Afghanistan have relied on representations of the country in
the West that are largely simplistic, ahistorical, and politically motivated. Afghanistan is a sort of
“fuzzy dream” for most in the West: embodied in a series of fabricated images of war and poverty, de-
contextualized photos without names or places, numbers and graphs claiming statistical quantification,
and disjointed yet often repeated phrases and metaphors. A particular mythic representation of Afghanistan is being (and
has been) proliferated in the international community, through media, history books, foreign policy documents, political
commentators, academia, and virtually any other body of communication. The vigor with which particular discourses
have materialized since 9/11 are representative of their link to the Wests militarized ‘War on Terror’ and
more generally of the embedded relationship between political policies and militarized discourses which
legitimate the West’s military engagement and development policies. That is, Afghanistan serves as an
unfortunate example of the very real power of discourse and myth-making which affect the form
that international engagement takes; this in turn reproduces those myths in a cycle of
destructive imperial engagement. In trying to understand the current political situation in Afghanistan, and
in attempting to formulate international policy in the region, it is vital that we are aware of the dominant
narratives or ‘myths’ that are being produced, who it is that is producing them and for what purpose,
and what is at stake in failing to interrogate them. Any policy that does not take the role of
deliberately constructed narratives and the mediums throough which they are disseminated into
account will not only continue to replicate them, perhaps unknowingly, but any “securitizing”,
“peacebuilding” and “development” efforts built on these terms can never result in long-term
success. The emancipatory possibilities of such a critical project of discourse deconstruction lie in: 1)
understanding the raced/classed/gendered power hierarchies that are their foundation; 2) uncovering the nationalized
militarization and the hypermasculinized and hyperfeminized normativities that are are embedded within these
myths, and; 3) the recognition of the detrimental effect of the West’s ‘myths’ and configuring the
reconceptualisation of policy alternatives through its contestation. By looking critically at what has
become the common language of foreign engagement in Afghanistan, the foundation of historical
narratives or ‘myths’ that perpetuate a certain image of Afghanistan, and which in turn results in
very particular attitudes that imbue foreign policy, begin to be revealed. I will utilize two broad (and inextricably
linked) categorizations which most accurately encapsulate the dominant strains of discourse to help clarify how this relationship is
constructed and by thus identifying them as such attempt to de-bunk the myths they create. These ‘myths’ which have become
normalized and banal in foreign policy, media, and some academic discourse I define as the ‘heroism’ discourse/myth and the
‘militarization’ discourse/myth. Superman and G.I. Joe “When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all
The ‘heroism’ narrative can
starts with heroic adventure – there is no bloodshed – and Columbus Day is a celebration.” 57
be called by several names: the ‘saviour syndrome’, “mediatically generated” or “hybrid techno-medical”
humanitarianism 58 , “foreign aid”, “humanitarian intervention”, etc. This narrative constructs foreign
engagement in a region as spectacle and as prized commodities to be admired and ‘sold’ to the
public; it constructs the West as ‘saviours’ and the ‘Other’, in this case Afghanistan, as the victim
in need of saving, accomplished through images and tales of passion and fervour that often
pathologize the other and valorize the Western interveener. When the US, with the support of the UN, bombed
Afghanistan in 2001in response to the events of September 11 th , the mission was entitled “Operation Enduring Freedom”. Today,
as reconstruction and ‘peace-building’ efforts are underway in Afghanistan in tandem with military operations,
political conversations and media productions are saturated with calls to “win the hearts and minds” of the people of
Afghanistan and of the necessary and benevolent role the West must play in instilling ‘freedom’,
‘justice’ and ‘democracy’ in the war-torn and poverty stricken region. Debrix, offers an analysis of what he
calls “the global humanitarian spectacle” to demonstrate how medical and humanitarian NGO’s simulate “heroism,
sentiment, and compassion”; medical catastrophes and civil conflicts, he explains, have indeed
become prized commodities for globalizing neoliberal policies of Western states and international
organizations to sell to ‘myth readers’: “They give Western states and the UN the opportunity to put
their liberal humanistic policies into practice, while, for Western media, humanitarianism simply sells”. 59 There
are several repercusions of this myth, explains Debrix. First, this has resulted in real humanitarian
and moral issues being overlooked; Second, images are being purged of their content. Myth has
thus becoming the very real enemy of true humanitarianism; that is, we’ve become so inundates
with superhero mythologization of real world events that the embedded paternalism and
unrealistic goals go unnoticed. 60 Additionally, this narrative reinforces a victimology of the ‘Other’
and in fact capitalises on it, while simultaneously hiding the paternalistic and neo-colonialist
ideologies in humanitarian garb. The role of the media and consciously generated and disseminated images is
particularly pronounced here, as passion and spectacle are valued in the commodification of images over
content and history. Jean Baudrillard states “There is no possible distinction, at the level of images and information, between
the spectacular and the symbolic, no possible distinction between the ‘crime’ and the crackdown”. 61 The militarization narrative, in
contrast to the ‘objective benevolence’ of the heroism myth, utilizes constructed and one-dimensional conceptions of militaries,
security, and defense. This narrative relies on the myth that militarization is always a useful tool in securitization. For example:
Following the NATO air strikes in October of this year that killed at least 50 civilians and an augmentation of Taliban suicide attacks,
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai called on the need for more military operations, an international air force, and an increase in
Words such as ‘freedom’,
Afghan soldiers and police as mechanisms necessary to “tackle the root causes of terrorism”. 62
‘democracy’, ‘justice’, and ‘women’s rights’ have become permanent variables in the mantra that
has been used liberally and repeatedly as part of the common and often un-stated, assumptions that
intervention by NATO, American, Canadian, and British forces will improve the lives of Afghanistan people
over ‘there’ and increase security for us over ‘here’. Thus, as the military continues to occupy the region, we in
the West are continually told that Afghan women and men have now been “liberated” from an
oppressive regime by the West. This is bolstered by the assumption that the Afghan people
support the US-backed government and want the military there for security (That is, that they are better off now than
before). There is a dominant assumption that the West can “win” the “war on terror” and that
military measures in the Middle East are necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks. If prospects
look dim in the region, this narrative implies the appropriate response is to increase combat troops and artillery. Finally,
embedded in these images is the assumption that reconstruction, delivery of humanitarian aid and
development can coesist alongside military efforts to fight off insurgents/terrorists and “pacify” the
opposition. Thus, reports on the increasing numbers of casualties of the war does not appear
incongruous with claims of ‘peace-making’ and ‘development’ - therefore we must protect it the puppet
government and fight the insurgents. 6
Link – African Instability
Securitization of Africa creates an “us” vs. “them” dichotomy that justifies
violence and myopic policies
Abrahamsen ‘05 (Rita Abrahamsen, Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Wales, December 2004,
“Review of African Political Economy” p. 682-683)
Even if securitisation could be said to facilitate increased aid, or to defend limited aid budgets in the face of
competing demands from various constituencies, there are numerous reasons to question the desirability of
approaching the continent’s problems in security terms. While the process of securitisation does not
necessarily or immediately give rise to radically different policies, it nevertheless has important political and ethical
implications. Most security discourses are underpinned by an ‘us vs. them’ distinction and a
logic of threat, and by conceptualising and representing Africa within such a framework, the
relationship to the continent is changed in subtle, yet significant ways. By approaching Africa as
a security concern, rather than as a developmental or humanitarian challenge, policy becomes
guided by the desire to ensure more and better security for ‘us’. While better security for Britain
is presented as simultaneously providing a better life for people in Africa, the securitisation of
the continent leads to policy responses informed by a desire to safeguard the ‘here’ against the
‘elsewhere’. This has potentially damaging consequences. Africa is given a negative image,
wrapped up in a politics of fear that may contribute towards suspicion and hostility towards
Africa’s peoples. In this way, securitisation may contribute both to deteriorating race relations in
Britain, and help justify strict immigration controls and asylum laws, as well as the erosion of
civil liberties in the face of perceived terrorist threats. At the same time, securitisation serves to
draw attention away from the West’s contribution to the problems of underdevelopment and
‘state failure’. Despite the attention to globalisation and interconnectedness in New Labour’s discourse,
underdevelopment, chaos and state failure become the expression of ‘otherness’, rather than an
outcome and reflection of certain deficiencies and shortcomings in contemporary international
relations between the north and the south. The way in which decades of development policies advocating economic
liberalisation and state curtailment have contributed to the weakening of the capacities and integrity of these states is overlooked,
and the West remains, in the vocabulary of the Foreign Secretary, the ‘doctor’ able to both ‘prevent’ and ‘cure’ state failure Straw,
2002. Policies
informed by this logic may perpetuate the underlying causes of ‘state failure’, rather
than contribute to their solution. It remains to be seen how far this logic is behind the so-called Blair Commission on
Africa (see Plaut in this issue).
Link – Air Power
The fiction of air power serves to construct a global police system that
blurs the line between civilian and target—a failure to strategically reverse
aerial power relations causes extinction
Neocleous ‘13 (Mark, Department of Politics and History, Brunel University, “Air power and police power”, Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space 2013, volume 31, pages 578 – 593l)
from the wider historical perspective of air power

Moreover, and more pressingly, we need to understand that
there are no civilian areas and there are no civilians; the only logic is a police logic. As soon as
air power was created the issue was: what does this do to civilian space? And, essentially, the
answer has been: ‘it destroys it’. Air power thus likewise destroys the concept of the civilian. This
was the major theme of the air power literature of the 1920s, found in the work of Mitchell, Seversky, Fuller, and all the others, but
the analysis provided in The Command of the Air by Giulio Douhet, first published in 1921, expanded in 1927, and perhaps the first
the art of aerial warfare, notes Douhet, is
definitive account of the influence of air power on world history, is representative:
the art of destroying cities, of attacking civilians, of terrorising the population. In the future, war “will
be waged essentially against the unarmed populations of the cities and great industrial centres”.
There are no longer soldiers and citizens, or combatants and noncombatants: “war is no longer
a clash between armies, but is a clash between nations, between whole populations.” Aerial
bombing means war is now “total war” (Douhet, 2003, pages 11; 158; 223). The major powers fought against
accepting this for some time. (Or at least, fought against accepting it in their classic doctrine of war as a battle between militarily
industrialised nation-states; the police bombing of colonies was entirely acceptable to them, as we have seen). But eventually, in the
course of World War 2 they conceded, and by July 1945 a US Army assessment of strategic air power could
openly state that “there are no civilians in Japan” (cited in Sherry, 1987, page 311). This view has been
maintained ever since: “There are no innocent civilians”, says US General Curtis LeMay (cited in
Sherry, 1987, page 287). Recent air power literature on ‘the enemy as a system’ continues this very
line.(4) Hence, and contrary to claims made at both ends of the political spectrum that the recent air attacks in Beirut
and Gaza reveal “the increasing meaninglessness of the word ‘civilian’ ” (Dershowitz, 2006) or mean that
we might be “witnessing … the death of the idea of the civilian” (Gregory, 2006, page 633), it has to be said
that any meaningful concept of ‘the civilian’ was destroyed with the very invention of air power
(Hartigan, 1982, page 119).(5)
seen from the perspective of air power as police power, the use of drone technology
The point is that
over what some would still like to call ‘civilian spaces’ was highly predictable. This allows us to
make a far more compelling argument about drones. For like air power technology in general, the
drone serves as both plane and possibility (Pandya, 2010, page 143). And what becomes possible with
the drone is permanent police presence across the territory. “Unmanned [unstaffed] aircraft have
just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy”, said a senior US military
official. “Using the all-seeing eye, you will find out who is important in a network, where they live,
where they get their support from, where their friends are” (cited in Barnes, 2009). Much as this might be
important geopolitically, with drones being capable of maintaining nonstop surveillance of vast swathes
of land and sea for so long as the technology and fuel supplies allow, it is also nothing less than
the state’s dream of a perpetual police presence across the territory (Neocleous, 2000). And it is a
police presence encapsulated by the process of colonisation, captured in the army document
“StrikeStar 2025” which speaks of the permanent presence of UAVs in the sky as a form of “air
occupation” (Carmichael et al, 1996, page viii).
Drones have been described as the perfect technology for democratic warfare, combining as they
do a certain utilitarian character with an appealing ‘risk-transfer’ (Sauer and Schoring, 2012), but perhaps
we need to think of them equally as the perfect technology of liberal police. When in 1943 Disney sought
to popularise the idea of ‘victory through air power’, the company probably had little idea just quite what this victory might mean,
beyond the defeat of Japan. But if
there is a victory through air power to be had on the part of the state it
is surely not merely the defeat of a military enemy but the victory of perpetual police.
Link – Asia Security
The aff approach to Asia promotes a hegemonic form of peace premised on
globalization’s ability to eliminate conflict - that perpetuates decentralized
forms of intervention and environmental destruction
Muto 2k (Ichiyo, a writer on political and social affairs, and activist engaged in the anti-war movement,
international solidarity movement, and other social movements since the 1950s. Active in the anti-Vietnam war
Beheiren movement (1965-74) and founded English magazine AMPO in 1969, “Redefine and Practice Our Peace,
Our Security, If They Do Theirs”, pgs. 137-139)
Most of the peace movements’ premises have been invalidated by the postCold War hegemonic
regime. The crisis has not disappeared, it has become diffused. Issues of the past have not
been resolved, they have multiplied and became more complex. Old problems, like nuclear armament,
remain unresolved. Nuclear deterrence is still built into the core of the reasserted hegemony. The
nuclear monopoly by a few powers is challenged by large and small nations — new aspirants for membership in the nuclear club.
Yet neither the danger of nuclear annihilation of the whole human race, nor the likelihood of a major world war are perceived as the
central issue. Instead, freed from the stifling effects of the Cold War regime, violent regional and other conflicts have exploded in
numerous places. They involve elite selfinterests, ambitions, and identities, often expressed in various fundamentalisms, some
religious and others not, whereby élites seek people’s support with false claims to solutions for their problems, which have become
aggravated by processes of globalization. Nationalism has resurfaced precisely as the globalization process
undermines the basis of nation-states. The globalization process is rapidly widening
socioeconomic disparities between the powerful and rich and the powerless and poor; it is also
irreparably destroying the environment. Despite their differences, the Northern countries that dominate
this system use their power to protect their collective interests against the vast majority of the
world’s people. All this heightens the risks to the everyday lives of billions of people, even in the
absence of an apparent violent conflict. Chaotic situations have arisen in major regions, foretelling general chaos in
the human community. It is a mistake to lay the blame for this tendency solely on “bad guys,” “rogue
states,” or “fanatics.” Though their responsibility in specific cases should be clearly identified,
the globalization process is the major destabilizing factor. Instead of uprooting this destabilizing
force, U.S. strategy promotes destabilization as it seeks to “shape” the world in its interest and
fashion. The firefighter turns out to be the arsonist. What, then, should our stance be on the question of peace and social justice?
The United Nations Development Program’s 1994 Human Development Report introduced the concept of human security in an
effort to address the post-Cold War situation (UNDP, 1994). In an agenda item presented to the Social Summit, the UNDP proposed
a “new concept of human security in the decades ahead.” The report stated :
For too long, the concept of security
has been shaped by the potential for conflict between states. For too long, security has been
equated with the threats to a country’s border. For too long, nations have sought arms to protect
their security. For most people today, a feeling of insecurity arises more from worries about daily
life than from the dread of a cataclysmic world event. Job security, income security, health security,
environmental security, security from crime — these are the emerging concerns of human security all over the world. As the
Canadian government characterized it (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1999), the UNDP’s “human security”
represented a “shift in the angle of vision…an alternative way of seeing the world, taking the people as its point of reference, rather
than focusing exclusively on the security of territory or governments.” This shift in the angle of vision is necessary and appropriate in
the post-Cold War setting. As part of a new quest for “human development” and “sustainable development,” the UNDP human
security concept shifted the emphasis to personal, economic, and social security, which, given the destructive effects of the
globalization process, certainly addresses the issues and aspects of people’s everyday lives that are totally neglected in national
security discourse. This was a significant leap forward. However, I believe this approach overlooks crucial points and is
consequently inadequate for us to reposition ourselves vis-à-vis the current situation concerning peace, security, and justice. An
absolute limitation stems from the fact that the UNDP is a U.N. agency consisting of nation-states. The fatal weaknesses of the
UNDP’s human security seem apparent: (1) It
is uncritical of, and thus fails to come to grips with, the
dominant statemilitary structure as a possible and often major source of danger to people’s
security. If we approach the security of people in a series of countries and territories in Asia and
elsewhere, we immediately find that the violence of national armed forces has been directed
against their own people, particularly when the latter stood up for the fulfillment of legitimate
demands — freedom, land, labor rights, and democracy. Parastate organizations struggling to violently seize
state power frequently destroy the lives of the people whose interests they claim to protect. This is an extension of state
violence. People have had ongoing traumatic experiences with their own state military in Burma,
Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Thailand, to name a
few. The UNDP notion of “human security” is silent on this crucial issue. (2) Similarly, the UNDP’s definition of human security fails
to address the global exercise of violence that turns on the U.S. military’s policing role. It lacks any criteria whereby we
can pass judgment on the Persian Gulf War, NATO’s war against Yugoslavia, and other cases
of “humanitarian intervention.” Though the UNDP does not address this, the Canadian Foreign Ministry’s interpretation
(mentioned above) is worth quoting: “when conditions warrant, vigorous action in defense of human security objectives will be
necessary. Ensuringhuman security can involve the use of coercive measures, including sanctions
and military force, as in Bosnia and Kosovo” (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, 1999). Are
things so simple? (3) Though the primacy of people’s security in their everyday lives is declared,
the UNDP concept of human security does not tell us where the basic power to guarantee
human security lies. The assumption seems to be that the state protects human security. In
other words, the people themselves are not identified as the primary agents in ensuring their
own security. Overall, the UNDP’s concept of human security does not properly address the problematic of
military forces and societal militarization. Though the broadening of the definition of security to
cover social and economic aspects is a significant contribution, it also serves to separate the
military aspect from socioeconomic aspects of security. In reality, these aspects are integrated
into a whole system of domination.
Link – Asteroids
The threat of asteroids is a social construction used to justify militarization
of the skies
Mellor ‘07 (Felicity, Lecturer in Science Communication at Imperial College London, 8/8/7, “Asteroid Research and the
Legitimization of War in Space”, http://sss.sagepub.com/content/37/4/499.full.pdf)
Since the late 1980s, a small group of astronomers and planetary scientists has repeatedly
warned of the threat of an asteroid impacting with Earth and causing global destruction. They
foretell a large impact causing global fires, the failure of the world’s agriculture and the end of
human civilization. But, these scientists assure us, we live at a unique moment in history when
we have the technological means to avert disaster. They call for support for dedicated astronomical surveys of
near-Earth objects to provide early warning of an impactor and they have regularly met with defence scientists to discuss new
The scientists who have promoted the asteroid impact threat
technologies to deflect any incoming asteroids.
have done so by invoking narratives of technological salvation – stories which, like the Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI), promise security through a superweapon in space. The asteroid impact threat
can therefore be located within the broader cultural history of fantasies about security and
power, which, Bruce Franklin (1988) has argued, is inextricably linked to the century-old idea that a new superweapon could
deliver world peace. Howard McCurdy (1997 78–82), in his study of the ways in which the US space programme was shaped by
can be seen as the completion of Cold War
popular culture, has suggested that the promotion of the impact threat
fantasies, which had used a politics of fear to justify space exploration. McCurdy highlights the alignment
between the promotion of the impact threat and works of fiction. In this paper, I consider the reconceptualization of asteroid science
that this alignment entailed. It is beyond the scope of this paper to give a complete history of the science of planetary impacts. My
focus is on how a group of scientists moved from seeing impacts as significant events in Earth history to seeing them as threatening
events in the human future – a move from historical to futuro- logical narratives. Nor is there space to give a full account of the
empirical developments that were used to support the construal of asteroids as a threat. Rather, I wish to make the case that these
empirical developments were given meaning within a specific narrative context which drew civilian astronomers into contact with
defence scientists, especially those working on SDI. A number of studies (for example, McDougall, 1985; Forman, 1987; Kevles,
1990; DeVorkin, 1992; Leslie, 1993; Dennis, 1994) have revealed the ways in which US research programmes and nominally-
the boundary
civilian scientific institutions originated in military programmes. 1 One aim of this paper is to demonstrate how
between civilian and military science is blurred not just institutionally, but also at a fundamental
conceptual level. The civilian scientists discussed here followed different working practices and traded in different forms of
expertise than did the defence scientists. They were typically astronomers or planetary scientists who worked for NASA or on
NASA-funded research programmes at universities and private institutes. They saw themselves as distinct from the defence scien-
tists who were typically physicists and engineers working on new weapons systems or other technologies of national security at the
Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories or at armed services institutions. 2 Yet the two groups came to share
an interest in asteroids and with that a set of assumptions about the nature of human society, the role of technology and our place in
outer space. As they came into contact, their differing backgrounds meant they disagreed over a number of issues, yet both sides
pursued the collaboration despite the tensions.
Link – Biodiversity
Apocalyptic biodiversity narratives coopt environmental activism
Doremus 2k (Holly, Professor of Law, University of California at Davis, J.D., University of California at Berkeley, Ph.D.,
Cornell University, Winter, 2K, The Rhetoric and Reality of Nature Protection: Toward a New Discourse, 57 Wash & Lee L. Rev. 11)
In recent years, this discourse frequently has taken the form of the ecological horror story. That too is no
mystery. The ecological horror story is unquestionably an attention-getter, especially in the hands of skilled writers [*46] like Carson
and the Ehrlichs. The image of the airplane earth, its wings wobbling as rivet after rivet is carelessly popped out, is difficult to ignore.
The apocalyptic depiction of an impending crisis of potentially dire proportions is designed to
spur the political community to quick action. Furthermore, this story suggests a goal that appeals to many nature
lovers: that virtually everything must be protected. To reinforce this suggestion, tellers of the ecological horror
story often imply that the relative importance of various rivets to the ecological plane cannot be
determined. They offer reams of data and dozens of anecdotes demonstrating the unexpected value of apparently useless
parts of nature. The moth that saved Australia from prickly pear invasion, the scrubby Pacific yew, and the downright unattractive
leech are among the uncharismatic flora and fauna who star in these anecdotes. n211 The moral is obvious: because we cannot be
Notwithstanding its
sure which rivets are holding the plane together, saving them all is the only sensible course.
attractions, the material discourse in general, and the ecological horror story in particular, are
not likely to generate policies that will satisfy nature lovers. The ecological horror story implies
that there is no reason to protect nature until catastrophe looms. The Ehrlichs' rivet-popper account,
for example, presents species simply as the (fungible) hardware holding together the ecosystem. If
we could be reasonably certain that a particular rivet was not needed to prevent a crash, the
rivet-popper story suggests that we would lose very little by pulling it out. Many environmentalists,
though, would disagree. n212 Reluctant to concede such losses, tellers of the ecological horror story highlight how close a
catastrophe might be, and how little we know about what actions might trigger one. But the apocalyptic vision is less credible today
Although it is clear that the earth is experiencing a mass wave of
than it seemed in the 1970s.
extinctions, n213 the complete elimination of life on earth seems unlikely. n214 Life is remarkably
robust. Nor is human extinction probable any time soon. Homo sapiens is adaptable to nearly
any environment. Even if the world of the future includes far fewer species, it likely will hold
people. n215 [*47] One response to this credibility problem tones the story down a bit, arguing not that humans will go extinct but
that ecological disruption will bring economies, and consequently civilizations, to their knees. n216 But this too may be overstating
the case.
Most ecosystem functions are performed by multiple species. This functional
redundancy means that a high proportion of species can be lost without precipitating a collapse.
n217 Another response drops the horrific ending and returns to a more measured discourse of the many material benefits nature
Even these more plausible tales, though, suffer from an important limitation. They
provides humanity.
call for nature protection only at a high level of generality. For example, human-induced increases in
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels may cause rapid changes in global temperatures in the near future, with drastic consequences for
sea levels, weather patterns, and ecosystem services. n218 Similarly, the loss of large numbers of species undoubtedly reduces the
genetic library from which we might in the future draw useful resources. n219 But it is difficult to translate these insights into
convincing arguments against any one of the small local decisions that contribute to the problems of global warming or biodiversity
loss. n220 It is easy to argue that the material impact of any individual decision to increase carbon emissions slightly or to destroy a
small amount of habitat will be small. It
is difficult to identify the specific straw that will break the camel's
back. Furthermore, no unilateral action at the local or even national level can solve these global
problems. Local decisionmakers may feel paralyzed by the scope of the problems, or may
conclude that any sacrifices they might make will go unrewarded if others do not restrain their
actions. In sum, at the local level at which most decisions affecting nature are made, the material discourse provides
little reason to save nature. Short of the ultimate catastrophe, the material benefits of destructive decisions frequently will
exceed their identifiable material costs. n221
Link - Bioterrorism
Bioterror threat discourse is a self-fulfilling prophecy---degrades structural
violence in an incessant atmosphere of paranoia
Leitenberg ‘09 Senior research scholar, Center for Int. and Security Studies, School of Public Policy, U Maryland. Original
academic training in Bio and Chem; researched at Albert Einstein Medical School, Department of Neurology; Vassar College;
Northeastern University; and Washington University, St. Louis (Milton, The Self Fulfilling Prophecy of Bioterrorism,
http://www.cissm.umd.edu/papers/files/leitenberg_prophecy.pdf)
The meat of the book arrives in its final fifty pages. In the penultimate chapter, Clark turns to the book’s subtitle to examine ‘‘the
politics of bioterrorism in America’’ and asks, ‘‘How
did we arrive at our current national posture regarding
bioterrorism?’’ Answering this question should have been given significantly more pages than the eleven Clark dedicates to it.
The answer is provided by a too-brief survey of developments between 1985 and 2001. (Presumably because it is targeted at a
general reader, the book also contains only a short reference section. If the book appears in a second edition, it should expand the
sources provided and correct a small number of technical errors. For example, the destruction of the U.S. BW stockpile took place in
1970 and 1971, before the 1972 signature of the BWC, not between signature in 1972 and ratification in 1975.) To explain the
[Bioterrorism] was where the funding was, and
situation after 2001, Clark quotes terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman:
people were sticking their hands in the pot. It was the sexiest of all the terrorism threats and it was
becoming a cash cow. So the threat of bioterrorism became a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. It was
archetypical Washington politics in the sense that you generate an issue and it takes on a life of its own. 29
The depiction is valid, although a bit expressionistic, but much more substantive detail should have been provided, such as the
instrumental role of Vice President Dick Cheney, described briefly below. Clark’s final chapter, ‘‘Assessing the Threat,’’ examines
the lessons of the Rajneeshshee, Aum Shinrikyo, and Amerithrax events and why these respectively failed or succeeded. He again
reviews the specific pathogens usually considered likely candidates for illegitimate use and considers who might carry out a
bioterrorist attack. He compares the potential consequences of such an event to natural disease mortality (specifically HIV/AIDS
mortality in the United States). Clark concludes: It’s time . . . to refocus our attention*and our resources and creative energies*more
specifically toward some of nature’s own threats, rather than depending on spin-offs from our concern about bioterrorism. . . . The
social and economic disruptions accompanying a bioterrorist attack do not even show up as a single pixel on the screen of what will
happen when the world’s glaciers are gone and sea levels have risen by twenty feet. This even-keeled assessment is a very far cry
from that reached in another 2008 book, Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime, which author Barry Kellman of DePaul
University says is based on ‘‘the realization that no other problem facing humanity is so potentially cataclysmic and has been so
inadequately addressed.’’ 30 The intellectual history of touting the bioterrorist threat is a dubious one. It began in 1986 with an
attack on the validity of the BWC by Douglas Feith, then an assistant to Richard Perle in President Ronald Reagan’s Defense
Department and more recently undersecretary of defense for policy until August 2005. Feith introduced the idea that advances in the
microbiological sciences and the global diffusion of the relevant technology heighten the threat of BW use. Though advances in
molecular genetics and globalization increased drastically by 2008 in comparison to 1986, the number of states that maintain
offensive BW programs has not. And despite the global diffusion of knowledge and technology, the threat of terrorist networks
creating BW is low. But the invocation of overly alarmist themes continues. In 2005, Tara O’Toole, chief executive officer and
director of the Center for Biosecurity at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, said, ‘‘This is not science fiction. The age of
Bioterror is now.’’ 31 It hardly comes as a surprise to learn that the office of Vice President Cheney was the driving force behind the
Bush administration’s emphasis on bioterrorism. 32 But one vital point missed by Clark is that Cheney was influenced by, among
other things, the very same ‘‘Dark Winter’’ scenario with which Clark opens his book. The other influences on Cheney were a
veritable hysteria of fears and phantoms in the White House following the 9/11 and the Amerithrax attacks, several of which
concerned the potential of terrorist use of BW and which reportedly led Cheney to believe he might soon become a victim. 33 What
must be noted is that although Al Qaeda’s interest in BW failed, the group’s efforts were specifically
provoked by the severely overheated discussion in the United States about the imminent dangers of
bioterrorism. A message from Ayman al-Zawahiri to his deputy on April 15, 1999, noted that ‘‘we only became
aware of them [BW] when the enemy drew our attention to them by repeatedly expressing
concerns that they can be produced simply with easily available materials.’’ 34 (In a similar vein, terrorism expert
Brian Jenkins of the RAND Corporation has been at pains to point out that, ‘‘We invented nuclear terror.’’) 35 If in the coming
decades we do see a successful attempt by a terrorist organization to use BW, blame for it can be in large
part pinned on the incessant scaremongering about bioterrorism in the United States, which has emphasized
and reinforced its desirability to terrorist organizations. In a recent book written by former national security advisers Brent
Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Scowcroft refers to the propagation of an ‘‘environment of fear’’ in the United States,
which Brzezinski adds has made us ‘‘more susceptible to demagogy’’ which ‘‘distorts your sense of
reality’’ and ‘‘channels your resources into areas which perhaps are not of first importance.’’ He
continues: We have succumbed to a fearful paranoia that the outside world is conspiring through its massive
terrorist forces to destroy us. Is that a real picture of the world, or is it a classic paranoia that’s become rampant and has been
officially abetted? If I fault our high officials for anything, it is for the deliberate propagation of fear. 3 I know of no statistical survey,
but warnings regarding the bioterrorist threat have certainly been one of the major components in producing that ‘‘environment of
fear.’’ A major contribution to that has been the work of a few, very determined, and very vocal nongovernmental purveyors of the
bioterrorism threat, backed by one or two private foundations. The Sloan Foundation has also funded at least fourteen conferences
in the United States and overseas; four of these were held by Interpol and three by the Department of Homeland Security. 37
Building on the fear emerging from the 9/11 and the Amerithrax attacks, this movement has generated
$57 billion in federal budget authority to date, a large federal bureaucracy, strong congressional
advocates, multiple research institutes and journals, and a thriving contractor industry*the same
‘‘stakeholders’’ who now call for the continuation of efforts to fight and prevent bioterrorism. In October
2008, David Koplow, professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center and a former deputy legal counsel in the Department of
Defense, wrote: It’s bad enough when an important federal government program designed to deal with a pressing national security
threat turns out to be mostly a waste of money; it’s worse when that program also turns out to distract people and agencies from the
more serious and fruitful approaches to the problem; it’s worst of all if that program actually contributes to making the problem even
[F]ar too
worse than it otherwise would be. The current bioterrorism program, tragically, accomplishes all three of these. . . .
little has been done to address the genuine biological threats to Americans and to suffering
people around the world*the quotidian scourges of AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, measles, and cholera*that not
just ‘‘threaten’’ us in the abstract, but that actually kill and incapacitate millions of people annually. The
most pressing public health threat to our national well-being might be the annual surge of ordinary influenza, but it has not benefited
from the same sort of political anguish, emergency funding, and public attention that the national security entrepreneurs have
discovered in the ever-looming fear of international bioterrorism. . . . Bioterrorism is a serious, important danger, one that deserves
serious, focused attention. But empowering a bioterrorism-industrial complex, and fostering a needless
climate of fear, paranoia, and helplessness cannot lead to fashioning reliable, long-term solutions.
Rational policy requires a genuine, level-headed risk assessment, and a sustained, balanced approach, not
a knee-jerk public relations drama. 38 That same month, a World Health Organization report noted that, ‘‘Disproportionate
investment in a limited number of disease programmes considered as global priorities in countries that are dependent on external
support has diverted the limited energies of ministries of health away from their primary role.’’ 39 Attempting to convince ministries
of health in African countries to make bioterrorism a primary concern, as Barry Kellman has advocated, can only divert them further
Even as the United States authorized $57
from their primary role. Nor is this a concern only in the developing world.
billion since 2001 to defend against select agents, U.S. life expectancy stood at forty-second in the
world, and child mortality ranked twenty-ninth*despite the fact that the United States spends more on health care
per person than any other country. 40
Link – China
The aff perpetuates discourse of the imagined threatening identity of China
leading to an American national identity of neorealist and neoliberal
dominance while legitimizing US security policy.
Turner ‘13 (Oliver, lecturer of International Relations @ University of Edinburgh, “'Threatening' China and US security: the
international politics of identity,” Cambridge University Press, 39:4, 903-924)
What protagonists of bothsides of the argument demonstrate in equal measure, however, is the tendency to
assume that a single physical reality about China can be determined. This aim of classifying
China as a threat (or indeed a non-threat) is a legacy of the historical dominance within IR of the overtly
positivist neorealist and neoliberal schools.8 Positivist approaches to the discipline rely upon testable theory and empirical
analysis with the expectation that the world can be definitively understood. The traditional influence of these approaches has
precluded a more widespread appreciation of how, in fact, a single authoritative understanding about China is unachievable. The
inherent contestability and subjectivity of judgments about that country was once noted by John King Fairbank who argued that ‘[a]t
the existence (or absence) of a China
any given time the ‘‘truth’’ about China is in our heads’.9 From this understanding
threat cannot be satisfactorily explained with reference to material forces alone. The ‘threat’
described by Director Clapper can never be dispassionately observed through assessments of an
external world, as he seemingly claimed to be able to do. The purpose of this article is not to speculate as to
whether China ‘is’ or ‘is not’ a threat to the United States. It does not concern itself with China’s nuclear arsenal nor dispute the
existence and expansion of its capabilities, or the possibility of there being a cause of future violence. It argues that while the
material realities of China are important, the nature and extent of their importance is, and has always been, regulated by ideas. Of
course, the understanding that international affairs are guided by more than the distribution of state capabilities is not original; it has
long been a primary contestation of the ‘critical’, or post-positivist, IR movement that the world is mutually
constitutive of material and ideational forces.10 Moreover, authors including Evelyn Goh emphasise the centrality of
ideas within Sino-US relations and to the formulation of US China policy at key moments.11 Chengxin Pan specifically examines
the China ‘threat’ as a discursive construction and its importance to Washington’s relations with
Beijing.12 Beyond these important works the discipline remains relatively quiet on the salience of ideational forces in
producing a fantasised China ‘threat’ and in enabling US policies in response.13 It also broadly fails to
explain how those policies themselves reinforce the understandings which make them possible in the first place. This is the arena
of enquiry towards which the article is directed. It contributes to a small but growing literature which challenges the contours of the
modern day China Threat Theory, exposing it as fundamentally flawed and even potentially dangerous. It does this by
today’s China ‘threat’ to US security conforms to those which have
demonstrating that, in many respects,
emerged before. It shows how, across the duration of Sino-US relations, China ‘threats’ have always emerged in
part from representation and interpretation and thus how fears about that country today continue to
be manufactured and engineered in a way not unique from those of the (sometimes distant) past. In late
2011 the Obama administration shifted its foreign policy focus from Afghanistan and Iraq to the Asia Pacific.14 To a significant
extent this ‘pivot’, as it is commonly described, is motivated by the growth of China. Accordingly, as increasing concentrations of US
political, economic, and military recourses are diverted to the Asian region, American perceptions of China and their significance to
the enactment of Washington’s foreign policies there have once more become increasingly pertinent. The first part of the article has
the China ‘threat’ to US security is a subjective
two purposes. First, it explicates how it can be argued that
representation of American society. It is explained that while the ‘dangers’ have an undeniable material base,
China’s capabilities are attributed ideas which produce a threatening identity regardless of
Beijing’s intentions. Second, it examines the significance of American representations to US China policy. It is asserted that
particular discourses have always made true a threatening China and enabled and legitimised
policy performances in response. It is also argued that those performances themselves have reaffirmed the
identities of both China and the United States. As such, it is shown that US China policies function to
protect the (equally imagined and socially constructed) American identity from which the ‘threat’ is
produced. The second part of the article applies these arguments to three case studies: the mid-to-late nineteenth century when
an influx of Chinese immigrants entered the United States; the early Cold War period following the establishment of the People’s
Republic of China (PRC); and the modern day period when a ‘rising’ China is increasingly powerful and influential. These are the
temporal moments at which ‘dangers’ from China to American security have been interpreted as the
most immediate and acute. The article concludes with an overview of the findings and their implications for our
understandings of, and potential approaches towards, the modern day China ‘threat’ to the United States. Imagining China: the
Chengxin Pan argues that the
construction of threat and political possibility In his analysis of the China Threat Theory
‘threat’ is an imagined construction of American observers.15 Pan does not deny the importance
of the PRC’s capabilities but asserts that they appear threatening from understandings about
the United States itself. ‘[T]here is no such thing as ‘‘Chinese reality’’ that can automatically speak for itself’, Pan argues.
‘[T]o fully understand the US ‘‘China threat’’ argument, it is essential to recognize its
autobiographical nature’.16 The geographical territory of China, then, is not separate from or external to,
American representations of it. Rather, it is actively constitutive of those representations.17 The
analysis which follows demonstrates that China ‘threats’ to the United States have to some extent always
been established and perpetuated through representation and discourse. Michel Foucault described discourse
as ‘the general domain of all statements’, constituting either a group of individual statements or a regulated practice which accounts
for a number of statements.18 American discourse of China can therefore be manifest as disparate and single
statements about that country or as collectives of related statements such as the China Threat
Theory. Ultimately, American representations of China are discursive constructions of truths or realities about its existence. The
article draws in part from the work of David Campbell who suggests that dangers in the international realm are invariably threats to
understandings about the self. ‘The
mere existence of an alternative mode of being’, argues Campbell, ‘the
presence of which exemplifies
that different identities are possible ... is sometimes enough to produce
the understanding of a threat.’19 As a result, interpretations of global danger can be traced to the processes by which
states are made foreign from one another through discourses of separation and difference.20 In this analysis it is demonstrated that
particular American discourses have historically made the US foreign from China. Case study one for example demonstrates that
nineteenth- century racial discourses of non-white immigrant Chinese separated China from a United States largely defined by its
presumed Caucasian foundations. In case study two we see that Cold War ideological discourses of communism distanced the PRC
from the democratic-capitalist US. These types of discourses are shown to have constituted a ‘specific sort of boundary producing
Across the history of Sino-US relations then when ‘dangers’ from China have
political performance’.21
emerged, they have always been perceived through the lens of American identity. In
consequence, they have always existed as dangers to that identity. In this analysis it is argued that a key
purpose of depicting China as a threat has been to protect components of American identity (primarily racial and ideological)
representations of a threatening China have most commonly
deemed most fundamental to its being. As such,
been advanced by, and served the interests of, those who support actions to defend that identity. The case study
analyses which follow reveal that this has included politicians and policymaking circles, such as those within the administration of
President Harry Truman which implemented the Cold War containment of the PRC. It also exposes the complicity of other societal
individuals and institutions including elements of the late nineteenth-century American media which supported restrictions against
Chinese immigration to the western United States.
Link – China Epistemology
Furthermore, traditional China studies are epistemologically bankrupt –
they rely on a neoliberal “with us or against us” mentality which shuts
down debate and ensures an academic cloister – reject their scenarios
Vukovich ‘13 (Daniel F Vukovich, associate professor of the humanities at the University of Hong Kong, PhD in English
from the University of Illinois, 2013, “China and Orientalism: Western Knowledge Production and the P.R.C.”, pp 13-17, ableist
language modified)
The
These two different texts, then, help illustrate the dynamic content of Sinological-orientalism as well as its dispersion.
critique of orientalism has, however, met with great resistance within the China field, and almost
invariably takes the form of either flat-out dismissal or an uncomprehending caricature of Said's
project that renders it an “exaggerated” critique of ethnocentric bias. An essay by historian Philip C. C.
Huang will serve to illustrate the non-debate and the history of the logic of sameness within China studies. He notes that
traditional thought invariably positioned China as the “Other,” in that it was entirely different from the West.27
In response to this, Huang and some others in his generation - those in the wake of the 1949 revolution and the Cold War - took it
as their task to prove that China was just like the West after all: [Our] well-intentioned efforts were perhaps motivated above all by
the desire to assert China's equivalence to the West.... [The] only way to counter the denigration of China as “the other” seemed to
be to maintain that it was just like the West.28 (“Theory” par. 24) Thus Huang evinces a tacit desire and theme in past
scholarship: for equivalence or sameness. He implies this dynamic is no longer dominant in China studies, but it is the
argument of the present study that it is so. Yet this sameness has shifted in political terms. Whereas for this
earlier period the point (now seen by Huang as an “emotional dictate”) was to counter a denigrating essential
difference imputed to China, in the current phase it reflects an often explicitly neo-lib-eral and
pro-Western politics (par. 27). Here the worst thing that could happen would be for China to “turn
back” and away from capitalism. No one mentions that this might mean cutting off one's access to the field. Huang
perceptively notes that this old approach remained as “Western-centric” as its alternative (China as a
copy of the West). But he follows this up with a call for “social history” and a return to the facts; these will show us what
theories are valid. The status of the lying-in-wait “facts” is not addressed, and Said's challenges to conventional
historicism and epistemology are ignored. Huang accuses Said of denying that “facts” exist prior to or beyond
representations. But Orientalism's project was to present the constructed but real discourse on its
own terms, and to show that it indexes the West more than any “Islam” or “Orient.” And
representations and knowledges, orientalist or otherwise, are not fake but are social facts
themselves. My retorts here will seem familiar to scholars in cultural and literary studies, and this in itself is instructive. As Ravi
Palat aptly summarizes the situation: “‘Crisis’ in Asian Studies denotes shortages of funds rather than an epistemo-logical
Palat diagnoses the basic dichotomy (extreme specialization/extreme
questioning of the field” (Palat 110).
generalization) and the cult of expertise underpinning Asian studies (110). This last is based in “field time”
and native language-proficiency.29 These in turn provide “perfect-transparent knowledge as the only condition for gaining access to
the real” (Harootunian, History 40). For China especially, language fluency is the sacred skeleton key, though to be fair this is itself
part of nativist Chinese thinking. One could pile on here. There are the attacks on engaged, political scholarship from Simon Leys to
One tactic is to decide that orientalism is just self-delusional bias,
Geremie Barme and Steven Mosher.30
and then to turn this back onto un-named scholars who “supported” - whatever that means -
Chinese communism. Such were blind to [ignorant of] the true reality of China's complete repression and totalitarianism.31
To be “in the true” of China studies and reportage, one has to be critical of the past and current regime because it has not yet
broken free. Philosophical acumen, comparative and textual/interpretive skills, or self-reflexivity are not needed. Language training
and field-time stand in for (adequate, rigorous) disciplinary and theoretical grounding. In a presidential address to the American
Association of Asian Studies in 1980, Benjamin Schwartz responded to Said's book. He defended the “objective validity” of
knowledge that can be used for “understanding in the Weberian sense.”32 More to the point here is his defensiveness about area
studies and the “anti-Western” nature of Said's argument. He notes that the human and natural sciences are just as capable of
being politically manipulated as orientalism and area studies. That is correct, but misses the point that Said would agree, and was
moreover talking specifically about colonial forms of power and intellectual culture. Note, too, that Schwarz concedes Said's
argument that the field of orientalism (and area studies) are “defined canonically, imperially and geographically” and not “disciplines
defined intellectually” (Orientalism 326).33 Schwartz, however, thinks this enables the area specialist, through comparative analysis,
to see through and steer beyond a “spurious universality... derived from the West” and the trap of an “ahistorical culturalism” (or
relativism).34 But surely this a false choice: comparative historicism or ahistorical relativism. And the former
would need anyway to deal with the argument that comparativism smuggles in universal/Western norms and standards of
comparison.35 In the end, Schwarz recommends minor house cleaning. We should “rid ourselves of stale categories” and seek new
“nomenclatures, some of them perhaps derived from the cultures we are studying.”36Perhaps we can use some of their terms, but
The basic Saidian question is elided: Who gets to write the
let us not go too far in a subjective direction.
Other, and how? The response to Said and postcolonialism was from the very beginning one of
incomprehension. But there was Paul Cohen's appeal for a “China-centered” method. He not only criticizes the Eurocentrism
of past approaches (where poor China was always responding to the West), but also claims that Said's basic insight applies to
all intellectual
China studies: One need hardly agree with all of Said's strictures to accept the more general insight that
inquiry partakes of a kind of ‘imperialism’ and that the dangers of misrepresentation are
greatest, the imperialism especially virulent, when the inquirer - or more precisely the cultural,
social, or political world of which he or she is a member - has also had some part, historically, in
shaping the object of inquiry. (Discovering 150) This admirably concise distillation of Said's argument is followed by a
conventional alternative: “China-centered analysis” seems a plain historicism that simply seeks to be less chauvinist and more
sensitive to the Chinese context. A decent and humane suggestion, but how? Harootunian argues that Cohen's model “rejects
theory out of hand for the ‘facts’ and thus the authority of native knowledge and experience” (“Postcoloniality” 138). The discipline is
still not defined intellectually, but linguistically and geographically. However much we might center ourselves in China, this
nonetheless begs a lot of questions (and endless “facts”) about which China. And then there are the irreversibly global and cross-
cultural dimensions of both “China” and “the West.” Orientalism and the postcolonial turn, then, have made little impact on the
production of knowledge within the China field. That field thus stands in sharp contrast not only to, say, anthropology or literature,
but also South Asian, African, and Latin American studies. But it is instructive to further see how this turn has been avoided. In a
series of essays, Zhang Longxi argued that “Western theory” - he often singles out the Palestinian Said's work in particular - has
had a pernicious effect within Chinese intellectual culture. Said himself noted that his work had at times - in the Middle East - been
taken up by some in narrowly nationalist and nativist terms.37 Zhang's complaint is the same, seeing the uses of Said and
‘postmodern’ theory as anti-Western, politically conservative and supportive of the dreaded Communist regime. Zhang thus equates
nationalist and fundamentalist uses of Orientalism in Arabic countries to leftist or ‘anti-Western’ critical intellectuals in China. But it is
hard to say what in principle is nationalist, ‘nativist’, or otherwise dangerous to such appropriations of Said. He singles out Rey
Chow - as anti-communist a critic as they come - for criticizing the representation and whiteness of the Tiananmen event as
broadcast to the world from CNN. Chow's use of Western theory is “misapplied” and unaware of the proper Chinese “context” in
which criticisms of democracy are by definition conservative and beyond the pale (Zhang, 1992, 121). This appeal to the “Chinese
context” and to “Chinese reality” surfaces in other essays by Zhang Longxi, including his criticisms of Zhang Kuan's influential
essays on orientalism and Western hegemony in China studies and in the mainland 1980s.38 The critique is again based on how
Chinese reality - defined entirely by gestures to a repressive state - is by definition different than
the Western one: such critical theory may be radical in the latter case, but not in China. Yet the question of which China - that
of the middle class, the variegated intelligentsia, the urban workers, the migrant laborers, the peasants, the national minorities, and
“China” is represented by a sheer dichotomy between anti-imperialists who
so on -cannot be asked.
turn out to be conservatives, and pro-capitalist/Western liberals who turn out to be the true, cosmopolitan
voice of the people. What we have, then, are clear battle grounds underlying the use of theory and orientalism, especially amongst
the diaspora or Western-based writers (i.e. the majority). “Pomo”
theory is either misplaced or, if it is to be used,
must be directed against the Party-state and not in the name of anti-imperialism, nationalism, or
some other form of “pro-China” politics. (From within China this often plays out in the opposite direction.) Zhang
Longxi's work introduced the issue of cross-cultural analysis into Chinese literary studies, but it also is clearly over-determined by a
political agenda, even more than by its empiricism. That is, a strident anti-communist liberalism, a project shared by many others.39
“Leftism” does not fit Chinese reality. Critiques of Western hegemony on the part of mainland Chinese
intellectuals must be dismissed as nativist, nationalist, and so on. Thus it is the anti- anti-orientalists who seem
far too confident about what the local, mainland context means and what it does to theory. For such intellectuals
committed in the first instance to a largely imaginary battle with the Chinese state, it is at best
premature to inveigh against Western imperialism and colonial discourse when what China
needs first is good old (capitalist) democracy as found in the West. This type of reason reaches
its apex in the Charter 08 group composed of mainland liberal and neo-liberal intellectuals, and their Euro-American
scholarly cohort. The chief architect of the Charter is Liu Xiaobo, a currently imprisoned intellectual who won the 2010
Nobel Peace Prize. His stakes are far different. There is something inspiring, or at least seductive, about the classical liberal,
universalist language of the Charter (calls for freedom of speech, protest, and so forth in the context of the current Party-state) and
in Liu's great personal courage. But what is most striking for my purposes is Liu's unrepentant stance on China needing “three
hundred years of foreign colonization” so that it may politically, intellectually, and culturally catch up. Moreover, there is the
Charter's insistence on privatizing the remaining public dimensions of the economy and
instituting a complete system of private property.40 Its substantive economic views are neo-
liberal. Colonialism and more capitalism will bring forth “individual freedom” and human rights in
China. At the risk of criticizing an unfairly imprisoned “dissident” this is an Occidentalism, an internalized orientalism writ large. It
also follows the logic of becoming-sameness outlined here. It is no accident that Liu is close to
several experts in the China field. When we recall the colonial roots of liberal thinking, from Locke to Liu, it is
unsurprising that Zhang Longxi wants to ground cross-cultural analysis on humanistic and explicitly depoliticized grounds (“the
variety of our world and the totality of what we may proudly call the heritage of human culture”) (“Myth” 131). One sees this same
gesture in a recent boundary2 paper extolling individualism and generic humanism as the way forward for China and the U.S.41
Later, I map a similar, de-politicizing logic within “Sinography” - a far more “theoretical” venture - and its disavowal of orientalism and
postcolonialism. What
these diverse figures share, then, is not simply an anti-regime stance, but a
politicized valorization of depoliticization.
Link – China Realism
Their application of realism to China is not just false but colonial – their
theory relies on a western drive for certainty and integration which causes
mass violence
Pan ‘12 (Chengxin Pan, PhD, senior lecturer in international relations at Deakin University, November 2012, “Knowledge,
Desire and Power in Global Politics: Western Representations of China’s Rise,” pp 46-8, gender modified)
No doubt, some would protest that the ‘China threat’ conclusion stands on the firm ground of
realism, and has nothing to do with the way the West identifies itself. For example, according to
Mearsheimer, in a world of anarchy, ‘states can never be certain about the intentions of other
states’,20 and therefore have to treat each other as a potential threat. Yet, I would argue that such an
insatiable demand for transparency from others is itself a telltale sign of the Western quest for
certainty, security, and identity as the modern knowing subject. Similarly, the realist first-image of
human nature, which is often implicitly invoked in the explanation of the China threat, has less to
do with human nature per se than with the Western quest for scientific truth about human
society. The Hobbesian ‘discovery’ of the first [hu]man and human nature, as C. B. Macpherson
argues, was not the objective knowledge of man per se, but rather a conscious or unconscious
autobiographical reflection of Western modern [hu]man and his living condition in a ‘bourgeois
market society’.21 Insofar as the ‘China threat’ paradigm has been informed partly by the
Hobbesian fear of every [hu]man against every [hu]man, this China threat representation is best
seen as a mirror image of some historically specific and selective self-experience of the West.
Two specific arguments in the ‘China threat’ discourse are illustrative of this point. The first is the
widely-invoked Germany analogy. Former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who was instrumental in
the formation of Washington’s official view of China as a ‘strategic competitor’, 22 was convinced by the ‘obvious and disturbing
analogy’ between Wilhelmine Germany and today’s China. Though briefly acknowledging the differences between the two powers,
he insisted on their many ‘similarities’. For him, just
as Germany’s transition from the statesmanship of
Bismarck to the incompetence of his successors contributed to the tragedy of World War I, so
too China, which is in the process of a similar transition ‘from two decades of extremely skilful
management of its international relationships to a new leadership of uncertain quality’, poses a
serious threat to the international order.23 In an influential piece published in The National Interest, Richard Betts and
Thomas Christensen similarly argue that Like Germany a century ago, China is a late-blooming great power emerging into a world
already ordered strategically by earlier arrivals; a continental power surrounded by other powers who are collectively stronger but
individually weaker (with the exception of the United States and, perhaps, Japan); a bustling country with great expectations,
dissatisfied with its place in the international pecking order, if only with regard to international prestige and respect. The quest for a
What this
rightful “place in the sun” will… inevitably foster growing friction with Japan, Russia, India or the United States.24
Germany analogy can tell us is that the Western knowledge of the China threat is based, more
than anything else, on a fear of repetition of a European nightmare scenario. Its fear of China,
situated in the broader sense of paranoia that Europe’s past may become Asia’s future,25 is
derived less from China’s rise or its uncertain intentions than from the self-righteous certainty
about the universality of Western historical trajectory. The America analogy tells a similar story.
Kagan argues that ‘if Americans want to understand Chinese power and ambition today, they
could start by looking in the mirror’.. 26 This is exactly what Mearsheimer has done. After
extrapolating American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to a status of the
unchangeable ‘tragedy’ of great power politics in general, Mearsheimer insists that China will
have to, almost slavishly, follow the same path: for sound strategic reasons, [China] would surely pursue regional
hegemony, just as the United States did in the Western Hemisphere during the nineteenth century. So we would expect China to
attempt to dominate Japan and Korea, as well as other regional actors, by building military forces that are so powerful that those
other states would not dare challenge it. We would also expect China to develop its own version of the Monroe Doctrine, directed at
the United States. Just as the United States made it clear to distant great powers that they were not allowed to meddle in the
Clearly, Mearsheimer’s
Western Hemisphere, China will make it clear that American interference in Asia is unacceptable.27
‘China threat’ assessment is based not so much on what China does in the present as it is on
what the US itself did in the past.28 His repeated anxious ‘expectations’ of China testify to a
paranoia of both China’s Otherness and its emerging sameness. His fear reflects, in the final
analysis, the lingering ambivalence of colonial desire towards the mimicry of the American self-
experience by an Oriental Other. The autobiographical nature of the ‘China threat’ discourse is
so obvious that many references to the ‘China menace’ (such as the ‘Beijing Consensus’ and
‘Chinese Lake’) are directly modelled on the Western/American self. Little wonder that Mel
Gurtov, while reading a 2005 US Defense Department report on China’s military threat, found
the report’s comments on China ironically more fitting to describe US power and intention than
China’s.29
Link – China Rhetoric
The deployment of the aff’s rhetoric actualizes the China threat
Pan ‘12 (Chengxin Pan, PhD, senior lecturer in international relations at Deakin University, November 2012, “Knowledge,
Desire and Power in Global Politics: Western Representations of China’s Rise,” pp 105-7, ableist language modified)
If changing Chinese public opinion and Beijing’s growing assertiveness in foreign policy are
better understood in the context of mutual responsiveness, then threatening as they may
appear, they at least partly reflect the self- fulfilling effect of the China threat theory as practice.
That is, they are to some extent socially constructed by Western representations of the China
threat. At this juncture, we may return to the question raised earlier—What’s the cost of having an enemy? The cost, simply put, is
that perceiving China as a threat and acting upon that perception help bring that feared China
threat closer to reality. Though not an objective description of China, the ‘China threat’ paradigm
is no mere fantasy, as it has the constitutive power to make its prediction come true. If this
China paradigm ends up bearing some resemblance to Chinese reality, it is because the reality
is itself partly constituted by it. With US strategic planners continuing to operate on the basis of
the China threat, this self-fulfilling process has persisted to the present day. For example, in July
2010, when China objected to the joint US- South Korean navy exercise in the Yellow Sea to no
avail, it announced that its navy would conduct live fire drills in the East China Sea for the
duration of the US-South Korean manoeuvres. 129 Meanwhile, a Global Times (a Chinese daily tabloid
affiliated with the official People’s Daily) editorial opines that ‘Whatever harm the US military manoeuvre
may have inflicted upon the mind of the Chinese, the United States will have to pay for it, sooner
or later’.130 All such Chinese ‘belligerence’ seems to have provided fresh evidence to the ‘China
threat’ paradigm, whose image of China has now been vindicated.131 Without acknowledging
their own role in the production of the ‘China threat’, ‘China threat’ analysts thus play a key part
in a spiral model of tit-for-tat in Sino-US relations. Mindful of this danger, some cool-headed observers
have warned that a US attempt to build a missile defence shield could be reciprocated by China
deploying more missiles.132 Even the highly classified US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report Foreign Responses
to U.S. National Missile Defense Deployment has hinted at this possibility.133 In early 2006, Mike Moore, contributing
editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, predicted that if the US continues to weaponise
space by deploying a comprehensive space-control system, ‘China will surely respond’.134 And
respond it did. In early 2007, it launched a ballistic missile to destroy an inoperational weather
satellite in orbit. That test immediately caused a stir in the international press, even though it came after Washington’s
repeated refusal to negotiate with China and Russia over their proposed ban on space weapons and the use of force against
satellites. A Financial Times article noted that ‘What is surprising about the Chinese test is that anyone was
surprised’.135 In a similar vein but commenting on the broader pattern of US strategy on China over the years, Lampton notes
that ‘Washington cannot simply seek to strengthen ties with India, Japan, the Republic of Korea,
and central Asian states as an explicit offset to rising Chinese power and then be surprised when
Beijing plays the same game’.136 Nevertheless, such surprise is commonplace in the China
watching community, reflecting an intellectual blindness [ignorance] to the self-fulfilling nature of
one of its time-honoured paradigms. This blindness [ignorance], in turn, allows the justification of
more containment or hedging. In this way, the ‘China threat’ paradigm is not only self-fulfilling in
practice, but also self-productive and self-perpetuating as a powerful mode of representation. One
might take comfort in the fact that neither Beijing nor Washington actually wants a direct military confrontation. But that is beside the
point, for the
lack of aggressive intention alone is no proven safe barrier to war. As in the cases of
the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the outbreak of war does not necessarily require the
intention to go to war.137 Mutual suspicion, as US President Theodore Roosevelt once observed
of the Kaiser and the English, is often all that is needed to set in motion a downward spiral.138
And thanks to the ‘China threat’ paradigm and its mirror image and practice from China, mutual
suspicion and distrust has not been in short supply.139 A war between these two great powers is not inevitable
or even probable; the door for mutual engagement and cooperation remains wide open. Nevertheless, blind [ignorant] to its
own self-fulfilling consequences, the ‘China threat’ paradigm, if left unexamined and unchecked,
would make cooperation more difficult and conflict more likely. It is worth adding that my treatment of
Chinese nationalism and realpolitik thinking is not to downplay their potentially dangerous consequences, much less to justify them.
Chinese mimicry is
Quite the contrary, for all the apparent legitimacy of reciprocal counter-violence or counter-hedging,
dangerous, as it would feed into this tit-for-tat vicious cycle and play its part in the escalation of a
security dilemma between the US and China. Thus, to emphasise Chinese responsiveness is not to deny Chinese
agency or exonerate its responsibility. While the general nature of Chinese foreign policy may be responsive with regard to the US,
its ‘contents’ are not simply passive, innocent mimicry of US thinking and behaviour, but inevitably come with some ‘Chinese
there is no pregiven China threat both
characteristics’. That said, those ‘Chinese characteristics’ notwithstanding,
unresponsive to and immune from any external stimulus. To argue otherwise is to deny an important dimension
of Chinese agency, namely, their response-ability. By examining the self-fulfilling tendency of the ‘China
threat’ paradigm, we can better understand that Sino-American relations, like international
relations in general, are mutually responsive and constitutive. Thus, both China and the US should
be held accountable to the bilateral relationship of their mutual making. To the extent that this ‘China
threat’ knowledge often denies such mutuality, and by extension, US responsibility in the rise of the China threat, it is all the more
imperative to lay bare its intrinsic link with power practice.
Link – Climate Refugees
Disaster has been transformed into development – the 1ac’s framing of
uncertainty and conflict fuels a larger discourse that has been refashioned
by the national security state to justify its liberal projects globally – that
creates endless feedback loops that make conflict inevitable
Duffield ‘12 (Mark Duffield, Global Insecurities Centre, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of
Bristol, UK, “Challenging environments: Danger, resilience and the aid industry: from protection to resilience” Security Dialogue,
43(5) 475–492)
The perception of an increasingly hostile operational environment is not confined to aid agencies working in
the global south. It resonates with government views of what national security now means for liberal
states. In comparison with the supposed predictability of superpower rivalry during the Cold War, security experts now
tell us that the world is more unknown and volatile (Rasmussen, 2001). National security has been
refashioned around the principle of radical uncertainty (Cabinet Office, 2008; Department of Homeland Security,
2005). Building on complexity and network theory, national security imagines its exogenous risk environment
as a potentially borderless social-ecological terrain shaped by the emergent properties of
radically interconnected contingent events. As Michael Dillon (2007: 46) has argued, ‘the contingent has
now become the primary strategic principle of formation for the generic security of life which
liberal governmental rule now purses globally’. Security occupies a networked terrain of
feedback loops and multiplier effects that are made dangerous by the immanent possibility of
synchronous failure (Pelosky, 2002). It occupies a magical space of flows where butterflies can flap
their wings in Australia and cause hurricanes in America.
Such radical interconnectedness allows us to imagine, for example, how a drought in Africa, or a similar zone
of imagined indwelling social-ecological breakdown, might increase rural poverty and augment environmental
stress. In turn, the resulting scarcity exacerbates local conflict and further entrenches poverty (Collier
et al., 2003; International Development Committee, 1999). Poverty, scarcity and conflict are also drivers of
population displacement, refugee flows, international shadow economies and even terrorism, all
of which threaten international security (World Bank, 2011). Our current understanding of dangerous
climate change merges effortlessly with this global security imaginary (Busby, 2007). Climate
change has become a force multiplier for all the various social, economic and political factors that exacerbate poverty
and thus, through the radical interconnectivity of contingent events, global insecurity (Mitchell and Van Aalst, 2008; Oxfam, 2009).
This complexity-based view of the coming age of catastrophe has, in turn, been seamlessly absorbed
across the socio-economic and environmental policy spectrum (World Economic Forum, 2010). Not only
does it shape national security, it also informs donor governments’ humanitarian and
development thinking (UNDP, 2004). A recent review of the UK Department for International Development’s humanitarian
assistance, for example, has predicted that more people in the underdeveloped world ‘will be affected by humanitarian emergencies
in the coming decades. Not only will they become more frequent, they will also be increasingly unpredictable and complex’
such vulnerability defines what
(Humanitarian Emergency Response Review, 2011: 9). Indeed,
underdevelopment has become in the post-Cold War era.
While complexity thinking is the new conventional wisdom, as recently as the 1970s such views would have appeared fanciful to the
disaster experts of the day. The dominant approach to disaster was then shaped by modernist assumptions and concerns.
Emergencies were not regarded, as now, as being integral to the human–environment relationship. They were unscheduled events,
discrete accidents or unusual occurrences lying outside of society that ‘destabilise or violate ordinary life and relations to the habitat’
(Hewitt, 1983: 6, emphasis in original). The aim of emergency response was to place some form of protective barrier or quarantine
between the site of the disaster, its victims and normal society. In his important critique from 1983, Kenneth Hewitt argues that the
modernist approach to emergency had three interconnected components or belief systems: first, that geophysical processes, and
their human impacts, could be predicted; second, that one could plan comprehensively and respond managerially to either contain
such processes or, where impossible, relocate the human activities or populations concerned; and finally, including the logistical
capacities of military and quasi-military forces, that one could create a centralized emergency response capacity based on a
hierarchy of relief organizations. Modernist responses to emergency situations typically involved things
like flood-control works, cloud seeding, urban zoning, buildingcode enforcement, avalanche
defence, sealing off affected areas, refugee camps or civil-defencestyle relocations of
threatened populations.
As Hewitt argues, such acts of separation and quarantine tended to reinforce the otherness of
emergency. Rather than radically interconnected events, disasters were more or less random and
isolated misfortunes. An important consequence of this walling-off of disaster was that modernism found it difficult
to contemplate human activity itself as creating emergency conditions . Actions that invited
catastrophe could arise only by accident, negligence or deliberate sabotage. To argue that
‘government, business, science or other institutions create disaster has been outlawed from
rational discourse’ (Hewitt, 1983: 17). Such possibilities could exist only as so-called conspiracy theories. Emergency
was not, as it has once more become, a moral judgement on human actions: it was more an unplanned
side-effect. Rather than being drivers of catastrophe, things like poverty, scarcity and conflict, for example, were
the unfinished business of progress. To be sure, uncertainty occupies a central place in both modernist and
postmodernist conceptions of disaster. Importantly, however, each accords it a different significance. For modernism, it was the
inexact and incomplete knowledge of when, where and upon whom emergency might fall that provided ‘scientific credibility for the
treatment of natural disasters as “accidents”’ (Hewitt, 1983: 20). However, despite the best of efforts, the accurate prediction of
disasters has remained, in large measure, uncertain. Continuing uncertainty is essential to the postmodernist
critique. Rather than justifying the walling-off of emergency, today’s conventional wisdom pulls
in the opposite direction. As Pat O’Malley has argued, however, this is not simply a conceptual difference; it reflects a
longstanding political struggle between two rationalities of security. Modernist society was to be
managed through scientific knowledge operating according to quasi-natural laws revealed in
probability and risk. In opposition, a countervailing neoliberal rationality exists where ‘security and
freedom are founded (and morally founded) in techniques of individual foresight and agency’ (O’Malley, 2009:
33). The neoliberal counter-revolution broke out on multiple fronts during the 1970s. For this liberal imaginary, ‘freedom was
registered precisely by the uncertainty of the future, a future that could not be predicted
accurately if indeed subjects were (liberally) free to invent it anew’ (O’Malley, 2009: 33). From this
perspective, the challenge of radical interconnectivity is not to protect against it, especially since it cannot
be wholly predicted, but to consciously embrace the reality of its immanence (Peters, 1987). Instead of fearing
disasters per se, we are urged to learn the new life-skills of preparedness and resilience and so
exploit the emergent opportunities that disorder invariably creates (Bahadur et al., 2010; Folke, 2006).4
While resilience thinking and neoliberalism are different, they are intertwined in terms of their
emergence (O’Malley, 2009; Walker and Cooper, 2011). Since the 1990s, resilience has quickly become an
expansive lingua franca of preparedness, adaptation and survivability. Distinguished by its effortless ability
to move across the natural, social and psychological sciences, it is multidisciplinary in a radical sense of the term, while also
enjoying epic scalability. It can be invoked at the level of organisms and individual psychology, is found in natural habitats and social
institutions, and forms a vital property of the built environment. One can use the same conceptual framework to talk, for example,
about the resilience of freshwater aquatic systems (Holling, 1973), how cities maintain or lose essential functions (Coaffee and
If emergency,
Wood, 2006) or, for that matter, how aid workers cope with stress (Blanchetiere, 2006; Comoretto et al., 2011).
through the interconnectivity it reveals, constitutes a new ontology of life, then resilience has
become a monotonous characteristic of everything. Commonly understood as the capacity to absorb shocks and
bounce back, resilience is also the important ability to move between different states of temporary
equilibrium, like those characterizing periods of prolonged disturbance and crisis, while at the
same time maintaining system functionality (Folke, 2006). Indeed, the acolytes of resilience would go further. It is
not simply a question of bouncing back; in embracing uncertainty as opportunity, the aim is to
bounce back better (DFID, 2011: 9). Disaster – or, at least, the possibilities that its immanence creates – is now the
new development (Bahadur et al., 2010; Schipper and Pelling, 2006; UNDP, 2004).
As a condition of its possibility, this new development depends upon its client communities and populations being free of modernist
technologies of certainty and autonomy. To have a chance of working, communities have to be exposed, opened
up or, in some way, abandoned to the possibility of risk and uncertainty. Only then is there a real
opportunity that foresight, enterprise and responsibility can take root.
Compared to modernist forms of protection, such processes of ‘freeing up’ suggest the emergence of a new
biopolitics. While resilience has strengthened its hold in the present climate of austerity and
neoliberal consolidation, since the 1970s, in order to create this possibility, a biopolitical opening up has been
taking place on numerous levels and sites across the development–underdevelopment divide.
Some of this neoliberal stripping away has been imposed, especially in the economic and social welfare fields.
Other aspects have been embraced in the name of freedom itself, particularly with regard to
consumption, debt and self-identity. In this multileveled, wide-ranging and ambiguous process, modernist
technologies of society-wide protection, regulation and social insurance have been
progressively exchanged for more self-oriented skills of self-management, preparedness and
resilience (Dean, 1999; Rose, 2000). Before I critically revisit the perception that aid work has become more dangerous, the
postmodern reinterpretation of disaster will be examined as an example of this broad shift.
Internalizing emergency
This section provides a genealogical sketch of the transition from the modernist view of disaster as something external to society to
seeing it as intrinsic to the internal functioning of society itself, and thus requiring urgent governance. By the end of the Cold War,
the disaster zone had been reworked as a morally conflicted space of predatory winners and hapless losers. Working through such
categories, the internalization of emergency provided a powerful moral justification for liberal
interventionism and the post-Cold War expansion of the aid industry into challenging
environments. It rationalized aid workers own ‘freeing up’ or exposure to new risk environments
and the willingness of many to embrace this opportunity. Modernism banished God from disasters; rather than
a divine punishment for human failings, they were reworked as accidents or unusual occurrences. The postmodernist turn,
however, has brought an eschatology of human folly back into the equation (Duffield and Evans, 2011).
Since the 1970s, the modernist conception of disasters as more or less random events outside of
normal society has been progressively abandoned. Emergency has been internalized and
normalized as integral to the functioning of society. Human agency and choice have once again
become important– hence the need to govern their outcomes. While the present climate-change
debate epitomizes this shift (Grove, 2010), earlier changes in the interpretation of famine anticipate
this move. During the 1970s, it was still common for policymakers to regard famine as resulting from absolute and externally
induced food shortages. The work of Amartya Sen (1981) has been influential in shifting our understanding of famine from outside to
inside society. Rather than absolute shortages, famine now resides in the unequal social capital and
degrees of market exclusion that befall individuals and define their different abilities to access that food which is available
in the marketplace. Rather than socio-economic reform and income redistribution, Sen’s entitlement
approach emphasizes ‘individual inclusion and choice-making capacities’ (Chandler, forthcoming).
Link – Climate Refugees
The apocalyptic framing of climate refugees necessitates the redefining of
the “human” worthy of protection – that mobilizes violent humanitarian
projects that converts local suffering into national gain
Methmann and Oels ‘15 (Chris Methmann, Independent Researcher, Angela Oels, Distance Teaching University in
Hagen, “From ‘fearing’ to ‘empowering’ climate refugees: Governing climate-induced migration in the name of resilience” Germany
Security Dialogue, 2015, Vol. 46(1) 51–68)
This articulation of climate refugees as a threat to national security is in line with the
longstanding xenophobia and securitization of migration in Western liberal democracies in
general (Huysmans, 2006). All too often these liberal democracies enable the use of sovereign power in
the name of a threat to national security (Bigo, 2008).
Saving climate refugees
The dominant discourse shifted during the 1990s (Morrissey, 2009). This was due to three interrelated developments. First, a
growing number of scholars questioned the theoretical, methodological and empirical foundations of the discourse linking
environmental change to violent conflict and migration. Migration and conflict were understood as multi-causal, depending on the
adaptive capacity of affected populations, so that large-scale projections were judged to be implausible (Suhrke, 1994; Barnett,
the
2001; Peluso and Watts, 2001). Second, the 1990s was a decade of ‘humanitarian’ military interventions. In such cases,
international community refused to be a witness to ‘crimes against humanity’ and declared itself
responsible for the protection of victims of civil war. Consequently, ‘sovereignty had to give way to
intervention in order for a new world of global rights and global security to be enforced’ (Chandler,
2012: 214).
A third important influence was political campaigning for a redefinition of security in terms of
human security. The motivation behind this move was the hope of freeing up substantial resources
for development (which at that time were used for defense). In 1994, the United Nations Development
Programme published a report entitled New Dimensions of Human Security (UNDP, 1994) which redefined security
from the security of states to that of people. Human security successfully became the dominant
discourse in development policy and was influential within the UN system, though often without
the explicit use of the term (Chandler, 2012). Environmental change soon became reconceptualized
as a threat to human security (Barnett, 2001; Dalby, 2002). The growing importance of the concept of
vulnerability was characteristic of this shift (Methmann and Oels, 2014).
For proponents of a human security approach to environmental change, the main goal is to ‘peacefully reduc[e]
human vulnerability to human-induced environmental degradation by addressing the root
causes of environmental degradation and human insecurity’ (Barnett, 2001: 229). Some more radical
proponents of this approach relate vulnerability to Northern consumption, economic globalization, human rights and ecological
interdependence (Dalby, 2009). In any case, the concept allows for the precise location and mapping of
those people who are most vulnerable to environmental change, and the initiation of
interventions and management based on these predictions (O’Brien et al., 2004). In addition, vulnerability
defines the umbrella under which environmentally and climate-induced migration are often
discussed (Thow and de Blois, 2008; Renaud et al., 2011).
Against this backdrop, climate change induced migration is represented as a threat to human security.
As Duffield and Waddell have argued, human security defines ‘the “humans” requiring securing and, at the
same time, call[s] forth the state/non-state networks of aid, subjectivity and political practice
necessary for that undertaking’ (Duffield and Waddell, 2006: 2). In doing so, a space for intervention is
created that Western governments may fill. A good case in point with regard to this discourse is the UN Secretary-
General’s 2009 report on climate change and its possible security implications (UN GA, 2009). Foucault describes
biopolitics as the identification and top-down intervention into pathogenic parts of the population:
in line with this, the UN report suggests that ‘[a]dequately planning for and managing
environmentally-induced migration will be critical’ (UN GA, 2009: 17). The report mobilizes a legal
discourse which focuses on the rights of affected populations:
Islands becoming uninhabitable or disappearing as a result of sea-level rise raise the issue of
the legal status of the citizens and legal rights of these States, including over fisheries. […] Legal
and political arrangements may be necessary for the protection of affected populations. (UN GA,
2009: 21)
This biopolitical discourse results in a call for a new legal climate refugee status that would grant
protection to climate change induced migrants, including the right to non-refoulement and
access to humanitarian aid. Most people displaced by climate change cannot be granted these rights under the Refugee
Convention because the Convention requires political persecution as the basis for offering protection. Moreover, most of those
displaced by climate change are internally displaced and will not cross a national border. Nevertheless, they are conceptualized as
the Refugee Convention be extended to recognize
in need of international support. It has been suggested that
‘environmental persecution’ (Conisbee and Simms, 2003: 33), or to create a new legal instrument either
as a stand-alone convention (Docherty and Giannini, 2009; Environmental Justice Foundation, 2008) or as a
protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (WBGU, 2007; Biermann and Boas, 2010).
Because it is difficult to make individual decisions regarding eligibility for climate refugee status,
Biermann and Boas propose declaring entire regions to be threatened by climate change and
suggest resettling their populations collectively in advance. When orderly management fails or
comes too late, such discourse could mobilize humanitarian aid and humanitarian military
intervention in the name of the human rights of affected populations. However, the use of such
violent measures is not framed as overriding the sovereignty of affected states but as
empowering partnerships with these governments (Chandler, 2012: 225). This demonstrates how a
sovereign economy of power can be mobilized in the name of human rights within a government
based on liberal biopower.
A case in point is the response to Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans in 2005. The media have often
described the ‘victims’ of this hurricane as the first ‘climate refugees’ in industrialized countries (Oels and Carvalho, 2012). The use
The US media portrayed
of this label is remarkable, because the vast majority were US citizens displaced within the USA.
New Orleans after Katrina as a ‘snake-pit of anarchy’ (Tierney et al., 2006: 68). In response to this and other
influences, Governor Kathleen Blanco called on the thousands of armed forces deployed to New
Orleans to restore public order. As a result, the pursuit of ‘looters’ took priority over saving lives
(Tierney et al., 2006: 75). Because all survivors were treated as potential looters or criminals, the US
military’s approach to rescue was one of body-searching and arresting survivors to make sure
that they did not remain in unsafe buildings (Tierney et al., 2006: 70). Hurricane Katrina thus represents a case in
point of the use of sovereign power in a regime of liberal biopower.
Link – Cyber War
Securitizing creations of cyberwar are constructed and create conditions
for permanent war
Lawson ‘12 (Sean Lawson is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah. His essays
on science, technology, and security have appeared in the journals Social Studies of Science, Security Dialogue, Cold War History
and Journal of Information Technology & Politics. "Putting the "war" in cyberwar: Metaphor, analogy, and cybersecurity discourse in
the United States"; First Monday, http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3848/3270)
Although in the case of the law of war, cyber war proponents have too quickly abandoned definitions, rules, and norms of war that are and should still
be relevant to cyber conflict, in the case of cyber deterrence, many of these same individuals have too quickly adopted a framework that is “deeply
flawed and largely unworkable” (Lewis, 2009b). First and foremost, this is the case because, as Martin Libicki of RAND notes, “Cyberspace is its own
medium with its own rules. [...] Thus, deterrence and warfighting tenets established in other media do not necessarily translate reliably into cyberspace”
[30]. Not
only does the nuclear deterrence analogy tend to lead its users to “exaggerate the
destructive capacity of cyber weapons,” it also results in a tendency to focus on hypothetical
worst cases while ignoring actual threats (Lewis, 2009b). For example, while Raduege admitted that “low–level” attacks are
predominant, he nonetheless advocated that national policy should focus on “strategic attacks” that “could one day” occur (Raduege, 2011). This
tendency presents several problems. First, if cyber weapon capabilities have been exaggerated, then it is unlikely that strategic cyber attacks, if they
without the potential for
did occur, could be decisive in the way that nuclear weapons could be [31]. Ironically, however,
decisiveness, the threat of cyber retaliation alone would likely have little deterrent value, meaning
that one would have to rely upon threats of physical retaliation to deter cyber attacks. In turn, this
could encourage an escalation to physical confrontation — that is, assuming the defender follows through on his threat
of retaliation, without which any future threats would lose credibility. Second, the threat of massive retaliation, either cyber or
physical, has not and will not deter the actual and pervasive “low–level” cyber attacks experienced
on a daily basis. It is important to remember that during the Cold War, the threat of massive retaliation did not deter all war. It only deterred
all–out nuclear war. As Raduege (2011) notes, the Cold War ended up taking the form of numerous proxy wars fought around the globe, from
Southeast Asia to Latin America. Similarly, not only will U.S. capabilities for and threats of massive retaliation in response to
cyber attacks not deter the daily occurrence of low–level attacks, it will likely encourage potential adversaries to
constantly seek to pose challenges that fall below the threshold that would trigger massive
retaliation, either cyber or kinetic. Finally, all of this points to another problem: a simplification of nuclear deterrence and Cold War history.
Nuclear strategists confronted these same problems in the 1960s as it became increasingly clear that Eisenhower era threats of “massive retaliation”
had lost their credibility and value. This resulted in a robust debate about “flexible response,” escalation, the role of conventional forces in promoting
nuclear deterrence, and much more. In short, there was no one nuclear deterrence strategy during the Cold War. Nuclear strategy evolved over time
(Freedman, 1989). Unfortunately, current notions of cyber deterrence are more akin to the 1950s strategy of massive retaliation that was ultimately
deemed incredible and dangerous in comparison to the later, more nuanced variants of deterrence. Finally, a number of other
differences between nuclear weapons and cyber weapons render the quest for cyber deterrence
inappropriate at best and even potentially counterproductive. Cyber attacks generally suffer from a crisis of cause
and effect. In one variant, this is what cyber war experts call the “attribution problem” — i.e., it is difficult to know who the attacker
is because of online anonymity. As Mike McConnell and others have noted, deterrence is impossible without the ability to credibly
threaten the attacker. But deterrence is also difficult if one cannot reliably know in advance the effects of one’s response. In cyberspace, the
“collateral damage” caused by cyber attacks can be unpredictable, which could reduce “the
willingness of political leaders to incur the risk of a retaliatory response that goes awry, widening
a conflict or creating unfavorable political consequences” (Lewis, 2009a). The unpredictable results of a cyber
response could encourage the use of a more predictable but more deadly physical response. It is for all of these reasons that Myriam Dunn Cavelty
language of deterrence and aggression with respect to cyber threats. Such
warns against the use of the
language is
counterproductive because it results in a self–fulfilling prophecy: actions taken by one
state to increase its security can make others feel less secure, resulting in their taking similar
actions, which confirms to the first state that it is insecure, and so on (Dunn Cavelty, 2010).
Link – Deterrence
Deterrence is a lethal and tautological ideology that enables unchecked
violence
Barash ’18 (David Ph.D., professor of psychology emeritus at University of Washington, 1-14-2018, "Nuclear
deterrence is a myth. And a lethal one at that," https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/14/nuclear-deterrence-
myth-lethal-david-barash)
In his classic The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (1989), Lawrence Freedman, the dean of British military historians and strategists,
concluded: ‘The Emperor Deterrence may have no clothes, but he is still Emperor.’ Despite his nakedness, this emperor continues
to strut about, receiving deference he doesn’t deserve, while endangering the entire world.Nuclear deterrence is an
idea that became a potentially lethal ideology, one that remains influential despite having
been increasingly discredited. After the United States’ nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945, war changed. Until then, the overriding purpose of military forces had ostensibly been to win wars. But according to the
influential US strategist Bernard Brodie writing in 1978: ‘From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It
can have almost no other useful purpose.’ Thus, nuclear deterrence was born, a seemingly rational
arrangement by which peace and stability were to arise by the threat of mutually assured
destruction (MAD, appropriately enough). Winston Churchill described it in 1955 with characteristic vigour: ‘Safety will be the
sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.’ Importantly, deterrence became not only a
purported strategy, but the very grounds on which governments justified nuclear weapons
themselves. Every government that now possesses nuclear weapons claims that they deter
attacks by their threat of catastrophic retaliation. Even a brief examination, however, reveals that deterrence is
not remotely as compelling a principle as its reputation suggests. In his novel The Ambassadors (1903), Henry James
described a certain beauty as ‘a jewel brilliant and hard’, at once twinkling and trembling, adding that ‘what seemed all surface one
moment seemed all depth the next’. The public has been bamboozled by the shiny surface appearance of
deterrence, with its promise of strength, security and safety. But what has been touted as profound strategic
depth crumbles with surprising ease when subjected to critical scrutiny. Let’s start by
considering the core of deterrence theory: that it has worked. Advocates of nuclear deterrence insist that we
should thank it for the fact that a third world war has been avoided, even when tensions between the two superpowers – the US and
the USSR – ran high. Advocates of nuclear deterrence insist that we should thank it for the fact that a third world war has been
avoided, even when tensions between the two superpowers – the US and the USSR – ran high. Some supporters even maintain
that deterrence set the stage for the fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of Communism. In this telling, the West’s nuclear
deterrent prevented the USSR from invading western Europe, and delivered the world from the threat of Communist tyranny. There
are, however, compelling arguments suggesting that the US and the former Soviet Union avoided world war
for several possible reasons, most notably because neither side wanted to go to war. Indeed, the US
and Russia never fought a war prior to the nuclear age. Singling out nuclear weapons as the reason why the Cold War
never became hot is somewhat like saying that a junkyard car, without an engine or wheels, never sped
off the lot only because no one turned the key. Logically speaking, there is no way to demonstrate
that nuclear weapons kept the peace during the Cold War, or that they do so now. Perhaps
peace prevailed between the two superpowers simply because they had no quarrel that justified fighting a terribly destructive war,
even a conventional one. There is no evidence, for example, that the Soviet leadership ever contemplated trying to conquer western
Europe, much less that it was restrained by the West’s nuclear arsenal. Post facto arguments – especially negative ones – might be
the currency of pundits, but are impossible to prove, and offer no solid ground for evaluating a counterfactual claim, conjecturing
why something has not happened. In colloquial terms, if a dog does not bark in the night, can we say with certainty that no one
walked by the house? Deterrence enthusiasts are like the woman who sprayed perfume on her lawn every morning. When a
perplexed neighbour asked about this strange behaviour, she replied: ‘I do it to keep the elephants away.’ The neighbour protested:
We
‘But there aren’t any elephants within 10,000 miles of here,’ whereupon the perfume-sprayer replied: ‘You see, it works!’
should not congratulate our leaders, or deterrence theory, much less nuclear weapons, for
keeping the peace. What we can say is that, as of this morning, those with the power to exterminate life have not done so.
But this is not altogether comforting, and history is no more reassuring. The duration of ‘nuclear peace’, from the Second World War
to the end of the Cold War, lasted less than five decades. More than 20 years separated the First and Second World Wars; before
that, there had been more than 40 years of relative peace between the end of the Franco-Prussian War (1871) and the First World
Even in war-prone
War (1914), and 55 years between the Franco-Prussian War and Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (1815).
Europe, decades of peace have not been so rare. Each time, when peace ended and the next
war began, the war involved weapons available at the time – which, for the next big one, would likely include
nuclear weapons. The only way to make sure that nuclear weapons are not used is to make sure that
there are no such weapons. There is certainly no reason to think that the presence of nuclear
weapons will prevent their use. The first step to ensuring that humans do not unleash nuclear holocaust might be to
show that the Emperor Deterrence has no clothes – which would then open the possibility of replacing the illusion with something
more suitable. It is possible that the post-1945 US-Soviet peace came ‘through strength’, but that need not imply nuclear deterrence.
It is also undeniable that the presence of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert capable of reaching each other’s homeland in
minutes has made both sides edgy.
Link – Deterrence
The pursuit of deterrence is the collapse of war and peace into a form of
social life that maintains its coherence through destruction. The image of
the bomb becomes the stimulant for the modern political economy and
converts the world into a target – results in the neoliberal destruction of
politics and the environment
Chow ‘06 (Rey, Professor in Comparative Lit at Brown, “The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality
in War, Theory, and Comparative Work” pgs. 31-33)
If the dropping of the atomic bomb created "deterrence," as many continue to believe to this day, what is
the nature of deterrence? (We can ask the same question about "defense," "protection," "security," and other similar
concepts.) The atomic bomb did not simply stop the war; it also stopped the war by escalating and
intensifying violence to a hitherto unheard of scale. What succeeded in "deterring" the war was
an ultimate (am)munition; destruction was now outdone by destruction itself. The elimination of
the actual physical warring activities had the effect not of bringing war to an end but instead of
promoting and accelerating terrorism, and importantly, the terrorism of so-called "deterrent"
weaponry. The mushroom cloud, therefore, is also the image of this semiotic transfer, this
blurring of the boundary between war and peace. The transfer ushered in the new age of
relativity and virtuality, an age in which powers of terror are indistinguishable from powers of
"deterrence," and technologies of war indissociable from practices of peace. These new forces of
relativity and virtuality are summarized in the following passages from Virilio: There is no war, then, without representation, no
Weapons are tools not just of destruc· tion but also
sophisticated weaponry without psychological mystification.
of perception-that is to say, stimulants that make themselves felt through chemical,
neurological processes in the sense organs and the central nervous system, affecting
human reactions and even the perceptual identification and differentiation of object ... . . . By
demonstrating that they would not recoil from a civilian holocaust, the Americans triggered in the minds of the enemy that
information explo· sion which Einstein, towards the end of his life, thought to be as formidable as the atomic blast itself. ... Even
when weapons are not employed, they are active elements of ideological conquest. 24 This fuzzing of the line between
war and representation, between war technology and peacetime technology, has brought about
a number of consequences. First, the visual rules and boundaries of war altered. While battles
for· merly tended to be fought with a clear demarcation of battlefronts versus civilian spaces, the
aerial bomb, by its positionings in the skies, its intrusion into spaces that used to be off·limits to
soldiers, and its distance from the enemies (a distance which made it impossible for the enemies to fight back) ,
destroyed once and for all those classic visual boundaries that used to define battle. Second, with the transformation of
the skies into war zones from which to attack, war was no longer a matter simply of armament
or of competing projectile weaponry; rather, it became redefined as a matter of the logistics of
perception, with seeing as its foremost function, its fore· most means of preemptive combat.
Third, in yet a different way, the preemptiveness of seeing as a means of destruction
continues to operate as such even after the war. Insofar as the image of the atomic blast
serves as a peacetime weapon to mobilize against war, it tends to preclude other types of
representation. For a long time nuclear danger remained the predominant target against which peace coali· tions aimed their
efforts, while the equally disastrous effects caused by chemical and biological weapons (nerve gases such as sarin and bacteria
The
such as anthrax) seldom received the same kind of extended public consideration until the Gulf War of 1991.
overwhelming effect of the continual imaging of the mushroom cloud means that the world has
been responding to the nuclear blast as if by mimicry, by making the nuclear horror its point
of identification and attack, and by being oblivious (until fairly recently) to other forms of damage
to the ecosphere that have not attained the same level of visibility.
Link – Deterrence
Deterrence is the perfection of the disappearance of warfare into a global
collaboration over logistical perception that normalizes the control of all
life.
Chow ‘06 (Rey, Professor in Comparative Lit at Brown, “The Age of the World Target: Self-Referentiality
in War, Theory, and Comparative Work” pgs. 33-35)
The dropping of the atomic bombs effected what Michel Foucault would call a major shift in epistemes, a
fundamental change in the organization, production, and circulation of knowledge_25 War after
the atomic bomb would no longer be the physical, mechanical struggles between
combative oppositional groups, but would increasingly come to resemble collaborations in the
logistics of perception between partners who occupy relative, but always mutually
implicated, positions.26 As in the case of the competition between the United States and the Soviet
Union for several decades, war was more and more to be fought in virtuality, as an exchange of defensive positionings,
a tacitly coordinated routine of upping the potential for war, a race for the deterrent. Warring in
virtuality meant competing with the enemy for the stockpiling, rather than actual use, of
preclusively horrifying weaponry. To terrorize the other, one specializes in representation, in
the means of display and exhibition. As Virilio writes, "A war of pictures and sounds is replacing
the war of objects (projectiles and missiles) ."27 In the name of arms reduction and limitation,
the SALT and START agreements served to promote, improve, and multiply armament between
the United States and the Soviet Union, which were, strictly speaking, allies rather than adversaries
in the so-called "Star Wars" or SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative) .28 Moreover, war would exist from now on
as an agenda that is infinitely self-referential: war represents not other types of struggles and
conflicts what in history classes are studied as "causes"-but war itself. From its previous
conventional, negative signification as a blockade, an inevitable but regretted interruption of the
continuity that is "normal life," war shifts to a new level of force. It has become not the
cessation of normality, but rather, the very definition of normality itself. The space and
time of war are no longer segregated in the form of an other; instead, they operate from within the here and
now, as the internal logic of the here and now. From being negative blockade to being normal routine, war
becomes the positive mechanism, momentum, and condition of possibility of society, creating a
hegemonic space of global communication through powers of visibility and control. It is important to
note that the normativization of war and war technology takes place as well among-perhaps
especially among-the defeated. As Dower writes, in Japan, deficiency in science and technology
was singled out as the chief reason for defeat, and the atomic bomb was seen simultaneously
as "a symbol of the terror of nuclear war and the promise of science."29 Because it was
forbidden to advance in militarism, postwar Japan specialized in the promotion of science and
technology for "peace" and for the consolidation of a "democratic" society. Instead of bombs
and missiles, Japan became one of the world's leading producers of cars, cameras, computers,
and other kinds of "high tech" equipment.3o With Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Hitachi, Toshiba, Sony, Sanyo, Nikon,
Mitsubishi, and their like becoming household names throughout the world, the defeated "victim" of the war rises
again and rejoins the "victor" in a new competition, the competition in bombarding the world with
a different type of implosion-information.3 1 With the preemptiveness of seeing-as-destruction
and the normativization of technology-as-information, thus, comes the great epistemic shift,
which has been gradually occurring with the onset of speed technologies and which finally
virtualizes the world. As a condition that is no longer separable from civilian life, war is
thoroughly absorbed into the fabric of our daily communications-our information channels, our
entertainment media, our machinery for speech and expression. We participate in war's
virtualization of the world as we use-without thinking-television monitors, remote controls, mobile phones, digital
cameras, PalmPilots, and other electronic devices that fill the spaces of everyday life. We do not usually notice the strangeness of,
say, listening to news on the radio about different calamities while preparing lunch or dinner, nor are we shocked by the
Our consumption of war,
juxtaposition on television of commercials with reports of rapes, tor- tures, or genocides.
bloodshed, and violence through our communication technologies is on a par with our
consumption of various forms of merchandise. There is, furthermore, another side to the virtualization of the world
which most of us do not experience but which is even more alarming: when a war does occur, such as the Gulf Wars that began in
1991 and 2003, the ubiquitous virtualization of everyday life means that war can no longer be fought without the skills of playing
video games. In the aerial bombings of Iraq, the world was divided into an above and a below in accordance with the privilege of
access to the virtual world. Up above in the sky, war was a matter of maneuvers across the video screen by U.S. soldiers who had
been accustomed as teenagers to playing video games at home; down below, war remained tied to the body, to manual labor, to the
random disasters falling from the heavens. For the U.S. men and women of combat, the elitism and aggressiveness of panoramic
vision went hand in hand with distant control and the instant destruction of others; for the ordinary men, women, and children of Iraq
(as for the ordinary people of Korea and Vietnam in the 1950S and 1960s) , life became more and more precarious-immaterial in the
sense of a readiness for total demolition at any moment.32 Even as we speak, the Pentagon is reported to be building its own
Internet for the wars of the future, with the goal "to give all American commanders and troops [including those on the ground] a
moving picture of all foreign enemies and threats-'a God's-eye view' ofbattle."33
Link – Disease
The call to securitize against disease creates individuals to be surveilled
and disciplined. The AFFs vision and fear of a catastrophic disease
outbreak necessitates the diffusion of biopolitical violence
Debrix and Barder ‘09 (Francois, Professor and Director of the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural
Thought (ASPECT) Program @ Virginia Tech, Ph.D., Purdue University and Alexander D., Department of Political Studies & Public
Administration, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon, PhD in Political Theory from John Hopkins, ”Nothing to Fear but
Fear: Governmentality and the Biopolitical Production of Terror,” International Political Sociology (2009) 3, 398–413)
A telling example of this self-mobilization and self-anticipation against one’s own conduct can be
found in the way Western states (or, rather, their governmental agencies) along with some transnational organizations
(the World Health Organization, the United Nations) have asked populations to preemptively take care of
their health, hygiene, and everyday routines in the context of the ongoing A⁄H1N1 or ‘‘swine flu’’
pandemic. In this recent case of popular health scare, as with many other instances of
spreading epidemics over the past decade (SARS, the H5N1 ‘‘bird flu,’’ but also AIDS before),
individuals and groups are asked to be the first layers of securitization by turning their bodies (or
those of family members, neighbors, coworkers, etc.) into primordial sites of analysis and scrutiny from where not only the disease
but, just as importantly, thefear about what might happen with the disease will be monitored. With the
‘‘swine flu,’’ a
constant questioning of one’s body movements and symptomatic features, but also of
one’s daily habits, becomes an automatic (and autoimmune) measure against the endemic fear.
Individual and collective bodies become the most vital dispositifs of containment of the pandemic and
of the terror that inevitably will spread. This management or governance of the ‘‘swine flu’’ and
its scare (the disease and its terror are inseparable from the moment a pandemic discourse is launched) is said to require
constant self-checking (Do I have a fever? Is my cough a sign that I have been infected? Did I remember to wash my
hands after riding the bus or the subway?). But it also demands what can be called selfcarceralization measures (we
must stay home for several days if we feel sick; we must wear protective masks if we venture outside and have a runny nose; we
it is a
must close entire schools for as long as necessary if we suspect that children in the community have the flu). In the end,
full-blown biopolitics of selfterror that sets in whereby people must allow themselves to be
quarantined, must accept being placed in hospital isolation, and must even be willing not to be treated if pharmaceutical
companies fail to produce enough vaccines for everyone. As the A⁄H1N1 pandemic preemption regime reveals,
individual and collective bodies must always be prepared to immerse themselves into
disciplinary and regulatory procedures, into security mechanisms, and into governmental
tactics. In fact, they must act as dispositifs of fear governance themselves. This means that bodies
become the required lines of forces that connect the possible localized symptoms to the global
pandemic and its terror. From this perspective on how bodies in societies of unease enable regimes of
biopolitical terror and are themselves the product of operations of governmentalized fear, no
return to a centralized model of power is necessary to make sense of the terror embedded in contemporary regimes of government.
Rather, as the ‘‘swine flu’’ case shows, it is the horizontality, the capillarity, and the propagation of
carceral effects across space and through time that authenticates this (self) imposition of
governmental power and force. But what this system of reproduction of self-governmentalized
scare tactics and biopolitical (in)security calls for, however, is the beginning of a different
understanding of life, or of what life means. Indeed, it is not enough anymore to think of life as
docile or regulated. It may also not be sufficient to think of today’s living bodies as abandoned
beings (Agamben 1998) caught in a state of sovereign exception. Rather, the self-rationalizing, self-
securitizing, and self-terrorizing bodies that act, react, and interact in coordination with agents ⁄
agencies of government and are found at the heart of societies of fear production are more
likely to represent what Mick Dillon has called ‘‘emergent life’’ (Dillon 2007).
Link – Disease
The affirmative’s discourse of disease securitizes the alien body of the
infected – justifies ethnic cleansing in pursuit of the “perfect human”
Gomel 2k (Elana Gomel, English department head at Tel Aviv University, Winter 2000, published in Twentieth Century
Literature Volume 46, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0403/is_4_46/ai_75141042)
In the secular apocalyptic visions that have proliferated wildly in the last 200 years, the world
has been destroyed by nuclear wars, alien invasions, climatic changes, social upheavals,
meteor strikes, and technological shutdowns. These baroque scenarios are shaped by the
eroticism of disaster. The apocalyptic desire that finds satisfaction in elaborating fictions of the
End is double-edged. On the one hand, its ultimate object is some version of the crystalline New
Jerusalem, an image of purity so absolute that it denies the organic messiness of life. [1] On the
other hand, apocalyptic fictions typically linger on pain and suffering. The end result of
apocalyptic purification often seems of less importance than the narrative pleasure derived from
the bizarre and opulent tribulations of the bodies being burnt by fire and brimstone, tormented
by scorpion stings, trodden like grapes in the winepress. In this interplay between the incorporeal purity of
the ends and the violent corporeality of the means the apocalyptic body is born. It is a body whose mortal
sickness is a precondition of ultimate health, whose grotesque and excessive sexuality issues in
angelic sexlessness, and whose torture underpins a painless--and lifeless--millennium.The
apocalyptic body is perverse, points out Tina Pippin, unstable and mutating from maleness to femaleness and back again, purified
by the sadomasochistic "bloodletting on the cross," trembling in abject terror while awaiting an unearthly consummation (122). But
Any apocalypse strikes
most of all it is a suffering body, a text written in the script of stigmata, scars, wounds, and sores.
the body politic like a disease, progressing from the first symptoms of a large-scale disaster
through the crisis of the tribulation to the recovery of the millennium. But of all the Four
Horsemen, the one whose ride begins most intimately, in the private travails of individual flesh,
and ends in the devastation of the entire community, is the last one, Pestilence. The contagious
body is the most characteristic modality of apocalyptic corporeality. At the same time, I will argue, it
contains a counterapocalyptic potential, resisting the dangerous lure of Endism, the ideologically potent combination of "apocalyptic
terror", a nd "millennial perfection" (Quinby 2). This essay, a brief sketch of the poetics and politics of the contagious body, does not
attempt a comprehensive overview of the historical development of the trope of pestilence. Nor does it limit itself to a particular
disease, along the lines of Susan Sontag's classic delineation of the poetics of TB and many subsequent
attempts to develop a poetics of AIDS. Rather, my focus is on the general narrativity of contagion
and on the way the plague-stricken body is manipulated within the overall plot of apocalyptic
millennialism, which is a powerful ideological current in twentieth-century political history,
embracing such diverse manifestations as religious fundamentalism, Nazism, and other forms of
"radical desperation" (Quinby 4--5). Thus, I consider both real and imaginary diseases, focusing on the narrative
construction of the contagious body rather than on the precise epidemiology of the contagion. All apocalyptic and
millenarian ideologies ultimately converge on the utopian transformation of the body (and the
body politic) through suffering. But pestilence offers a uniquely ambivalent modality of corporeal apocalypse. On the one
hand, it may be appropriated to the standard plot of apocalyptic purification as a singularly
atrocious technique of separating the damned from the saved. Thus, the plague becomes a
metaphor for genocide, functioning as such both in Mein Kampf and in Camus's The Plague.[2]
On the other hand, the experience of a pandemic undermines the giddy hopefulness of Endism.
Since everybody is a potential victim, the line between the pure and the impure can never be
drawn with any precision. Instead of delivering the climactic moment of the Last Judgment, pestilence lingers on,
generating a limbo of common suffering in which a tenuous and moribund but all-embracing body politic springs into being. The end
is indefinitely postponed and the disease becomes a metaphor for the process of livi ng. The finality of mortality clashes with the
duration of morbidity. Pestilence is poised on the cusp between divine punishment and manmade disaster. On the one hand, unlike
nuclear war or ecological catastrophe, pandemic has a venerable historical pedigree that leads back from current bestsellers such
as Pierre Quellette's The Third Pandemic (1996) to the medieval horrors of the Black Death and indeed to the Book of Revelation
itself. On the other hand, disease is one of the central tropes of biopolitics, shaping much of the twentieth-century discourse of
Contemporary plague narratives, including the burgeoning discourse of
power, domination, and the body.
AIDS, are caught between two contrary textual impulses: acquiescence in a (super) natural
judgment and political activism. Their impossible combination produces a clash of two distinct
plot modalities. In his contemporary incarnations the Fourth Horseman vacillates between the
voluptuous entropy of indiscriminate killing and the genocidal energy directed at specific
categories of victims. As Richard Dellamora points out in his gloss on Derrida, apocalypse in
general may be used "in order to validate violence done to others" while it may also function as a modality of
total resistance to the existing order (3). But my concern here is not so much with the difference between "good" and "bad"
apocalypses (is total extinction "better" than selective genocide?) as with the interplay of eschatology and politics in the construction
of the apocalyptic body.
Link – Economic Collapse
Economic disaster serves as the quilting point for modern virtualized
preemption; the transformation of economics into a risk factory – this
operative logic of speculative mastery ensures cycles of death-making and
self-actualization
Calkivik ‘10 (Emine Asli Calkivik, PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota, October 2010, “Dismantling
Security,” https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/99479/Calkivik_umn_0130E_11576.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y)
the contemporary politics of security is additionally characterized by

In addition to its enduring religiosity,
its futurity and virtuality. The politics of security no longer merely revolve around the question of being, of securing a life as
it is. Reaching beyond the question of the actual, the realm of security has now expanded to
include “the potential to become dangerous”—a phenomenon that the notion of “virtual security”
aims to capture.79 As opposed to the actual, “virtual” here does not denote the non-existent. Virtual is real,
concretely present to the extent that it exists potentially immanent in every object. The non-
existence of what has not yet happened becomes more real than what has observably taken
place.
Massumi explores the concept of the virtual in his discussion of preemption as the primary operative logic of the contemporary
politics of security.80 Operative
logic designates an abstract matrix of power that combines its own
ontology and epistemology. In other words, it brings together a mode of being and ways of
knowing. It is at the level of this operative logic that preemption as definitive of the present age
is differentiated from its Cold War predecessor—the logic of deterrence. Like deterrence, where mutually
assured destruction assures the present stockpiling of nuclear bombs so as to defer the potential of global annihilation, preemption
also entails action in the present against a future threat. Yet, unlike its predecessor that relies on epistemological certainty that
assumes knowable, objective measurability, epistemology of preemption is one of contingency and
uncertainty; the danger in question is still potential, and not yet fully formed. What this means
ontologically is that neither the nature of the threat nor the enemy can be specified. For the
preemptive episteme that this logic brings into being, nothing is perceived to be safe. Consequently,
the global situation becomes not threatening, but threat-generating; the enemy is no longer “a who, where, when
or even what. The enemy is a whatnot.”81
While Massumi focuses on U.S. foreign policy under the Bush administration within the context of the so-called Global War on
this logic is not limited to a specific military doctrine of a specific
Terror in his discussion of preemption,
administration. Rather, the field of operation of preemption has become much more extensive
under the contemporary global security project. Taking as its ground a potential, preemption makes up for its
absent cause by putting to work an actual affect in its fight against enemies of “global humanity”, whether it be fundamentalist
terrorists or infected birds. As I elaborated in the prelude to the first chapter, in the case of the avian flu, states, international
organizations, philanthropic actors, and media mobilized across local, national, regional, and global networks and rendered the flu
an emergency before it became an emergency.82 The future threat of a pandemic is held in the present in a perpetual state of
potential emergency. Hence, the fact that the pandemic has not yet happened does not mean that it is no less present and real.
Preemption is also the point where security meets capital in a world interlocked by webs of life,
death, and debt. As Randy Martin notes, preemption (i.e., bringing future into the present) has been
the guiding principle for U.S. fiscal policy since the late 1970s.83 Before it becomes a blueprint for action
against terrorists, preemption is put to work as the operational logic in tandem with the rise of finance
and speculative capitalism. Martin argues that the new financial service industries that emerged after
the demise of Bretton Woods made a virtue out of risk while speculation was being installed as
a productive force for a globally circulating economy of credit and debt. Ruled by risk
management and harvesting volatility for gain, finance, as Martin explains, creates the environment
wherein all investments are made on the basis of anticipated price movements in the future.
Investment by taking risks today requires a new belief in the future: a belief that the future will
not be unpredictably different, but that it will be calculably the same.84 In this context, inflation is treated as
a distortion to the economic environment that renders loss unpredictable. Monetarism, which emphasizes regulating the amount of
money in circulation, is the form preemptive action takes in the realm of political economy. It becomes the predominant policy tool to
guarantee that the worth of investment portfolios would not be undermined. What makes the fight against inflation resemble
contemporary wars against undefined enemies is that, like terror, Martin notes, inflation needs only to be present in prospect for its
menacing effects to be felt. In both cases, preemption
converts potential threats into actual conflicts making
“contingencies of the future to be lived out in present, blurring the distinction between the not-
yet and the now.”85 It transforms future uncertainty into present risk—where risk denotes the
expected outcomes that can be quantified in terms of likelihood and value.
In her account of biotechnology and capitalism under contemporary neoliberal rule, Melinda Cooper provides a similar account to
Martin’s and explores the way in which governing through contingency by rendering uncertainty productive
for power and profit becomes the defining feature of contemporary politics of security and
capital accumulation.86 Distinguishing neoliberalism from Keynesian understanding of growth, Cooper suggests that unlike
the latter—where the neoclassical presumption of market equilibrium is treated as a law of nature— neoliberalism is
premised on non-equilibrium models. As she explains
Where welfare state biopolitics speaks the language of Gaussian curves and normalizable risk, neoliberal theories of
economic growth are more likely to be interested in the concepts of the non-normalizable
accident and the fractal curve. Where Keynesian economics attempts to safeguard the productive economy against
fluctuations of financial capital, neoliberalism installs speculation at the very core of production. 87
What is striking in these analyses of risk and government through contingency is the temporal framework that is enacted through the
hegemonic articulation of preemption as the meeting point of accumulation strategies and global governance of in/securities.
Security entails a relation to the future, but the nature of this relation does not remain the same because the way in which the future
is assessed, calculated, and mastered can take different forms.88 As Massumi usefully notes, “[p]reemption is not prevention.” 89
Preemption entails bringing the future into the present rather than acting in the present to avoid
an occurrence in the future. In the preemptive framework, the consequences precede the actualization
of the event: potential threats —the specter of future inflation that would shake the confidence in
the value of investment portfolios or the specter of a terrorist strike—are rendered with a
tangible presence that call for preemptive strikes. Preemption, hence, puts in place a specific
form of relation to the future: contingency, uncertainty entailed by the notion of future—future as
what is yet to come—arrives in its coded form as an already written future. Future as present
risk gets integrated within the realm of the calculable, measurable, and the profitable. Codified
as risk, uncertainty becomes an opportunity to be cashed in the market place of global values.90
Link – Failed States
The affirmative’s discourse of “failed states” legitimizes an interventionist
epistemology that effaces difference, makes north-south inequality
inevitable, and is self-fulfilling
Eisenträger ‘12 (Stian Eisenträger, MA student in IR, board member at International Reporter, a Norwegian
NGO, 3-27-12, “Failed State or Failed Label?: The Concealing Concept and the Case of Somalia,” http://www.e-
ir.info/2012/03/27/failed-state-or-failed-label-the-concealing-concept-and-the-case-of-somalia/)
The end of the Cold War shaped a new international political context where the issues of democracy and human rights were brought
out from the internal to the external scene. The weakened role of the Soviet Union gave the United States the possibility to increase
its global influence. In this context the absence of effective government emerged on the world political agenda together with the
concept of the “failed state” (Akpinarli 2009). Boutros Boutros-Gali and Kofi Annan, the former Secretaries-General of the UN, used
the “failed state” term as early as in 1990, although the General Assembly or the Security Council never used it. Somalia, which was
a typical case of the absence of effective government, was described by the UN without the use of the term “failed state”. The
concept was then applied for the first time in the article “Saving Failed States” published in the winter edition of Foreign Policy
Magazine in 1992-1993 (Helman & Ratner). This article, which was written in the post-Cold War context with its high aspirations for
democracy, human rights, the more active role of the United Nations in safeguarding collective security and the emergence of the
Although some have
United States’ as the leading agenda-setting actor, established the basic concept and the paradigm.
tried to incorporate “failed states” in international law, the term is highly debated because of the
neo-colonial notion attached to it (Akpinarli 2009, 87-89). According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word
“fail” can have a range of different meanings: “to lose strength”, “to fade or die away”, “to stop
functioning normally”, “to fall short”, “to be or become absent or inadequate”, “to be
unsuccessful” and “to become bankrupt or insolvent” (Merriam-Webster 2011). Thus, I would argue that the
word is too imprecise to be meaningful in our attempt to broaden our understanding of the
world. In addition, the word is heavily value-laden and has loads of negative connotations
attached to it, and therefore I find it unsuitable to use in science. That journalists and politicians still use the
term, which is both catchy and tabloid, is understandable when we take into consideration the rather brutal limitations of time and
space these two occupational groups have in their struggle to reach their audiences. Nevertheless, numbers of scholars have used
and still use the failed state label, many even without engaging critically with the term (Bates 2008; Ghani & Lockhart 2008;
The failed state
Holzgrefe & Keohane 2003, just to mention a few). The urge to “fix”: Securitization and intervention
paradigm implies that there is something that needs to be “fixed” or “saved” – of course by
“good” liberal democratic external forces. “Preventing states from failing, and rescuing those that do fail, are (…)
strategic and moral imperatives”, Robert I. Rotberg (2002) proclaims in an article with the dramatic title “Failed States in a World of
One
Terror” (the argument is elaborated in his book, bearing the same title). One can feel the notion of “the white mans burden”.
of the most neoliberal contributions in the failed states debate is probably that of Ashraf Ghani &
Clare Lockhart (2008, 124) who in their book “Fixing failed states” boldly declare that “today
states must fulfil their citizens’ aspirations for inclusion and development and also carry out a
constellation of interrelated functions”. They conclude that states “in the world today” should perform ten key
functions, which are: 1) Rule of law; 2) A monopoly of the legitimate means of violence; 3) Administrative control; 4) Sound
management of public finances; 5) Investments in human capital; 6) Creation of citizenship rights through social policy; 7) Provision
of infrastructure services; 8) Formation of a market; 9) Management of public assets; 10) Effective public borrowing. So now when
Fixing “failed states” is a dangerous exercise:
we have the list, can we just go out in the world and start “fixing”?
For many policymakers the failed state label contributes to open up for and make a good
excuse for military and other interventions. Petra Minnerop shows how the US throughout the second half of the 20th
century developed several terms, for example “rogue states”, for “states to which it ascribed a high threat potential as regards the
United States and international security” (2003). Inthe years to follow after the 1992 article in Foreign Policy
Magazine the international community, with the US in the leading role, carried out military
interventions in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq on the basis that the chaotic situation in these
states poses a threat to the US and international security in general. The terms “failed state”, “rogue state”
and “war on terror” have all been given prominent roles in the public debate. As Akpinarli also remarks, these concepts have
been invented by the North to “solve” problems in the South, as well as to advocate for and
justify military interventions to protect international peace and security (Akpinarli 2009). I would argue that
the concept rather causes more trouble than it solves – not only in terms of military intervention, but also by keeping “failed” states in
the labelling of “failed states” is a
the margins of international relations. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that
prime example of what the Copenhagen School of Security has dubbed securitization. The founding
fathers of this concept point out that “a discourse that takes form of presenting something to an existential threat to the referent
object does not by itself create securitization – this is a securitizing move, but the issue is securitized only if and when the audience
accepts it as such.” (Buzan et al. 1998, 25). The audience – in this instance, ordinary citizens in the North – has to a large extent
accepted the “failed state” paradigm, especially with reference to Somalia. Both the media and the large organizations working
with/in/for the “failed state” are acting as agents for the securitizing actors – that is the governments in the North, especially the
United States’ government. Somalia has been among the top five on the list since the first Failed States Index was published in
2005, and since 2008 Somalia has had the dubious honour of being the world’s “most failed state”. Whether it is possible to
measure a state’s “failure” is a question that probably requires a book to be answered. Since 2005 the magazine and Fund for
Peace have ranked the world’s countries after measuring the following variables: Demographic pressures, refugees/IDPs, group
grievance, human flight, uneven development, economic decline, delegitimization of the state, public services, human rights,
security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention (Fund for Peace 2011). No doubt that all these measurements may
the index fails in
give a good indicator of how the situation is in a number of countries. However, my point and critique is that
grasping the vast empirical variations within the research object itself in the case of Somalia. Using the
juridical state of Somalia as the object of analysis without looking under the surface becomes a serious hindrance of capturing the
full picture. Somalia’s image problem As Michael C. Williams (2003, 527) excellently points out, “Security
policies today
are constructed not only with the question of their linguistic legitimation in mind; they now are
increasingly decided upon in relation to acceptable image-rhetorics”. In this context we can
identify the visualization of the verbal rhetoric of the failed state paradigm. The presentation of
”failed states” is often accompanied with depictions of a war-torn hell-hole, and the Foreign
Policy Magazine takes the lead by presenting the Failed States Index together with a collection
of photos appearing under the splash heading: “Postcards from Hell” (Foreign Policy Magazine 2011).
When the Failed States Index is referred to by other news outlets, this kind of presentation is reproduced (for a recent example, see:
BBC 2011a). I have yet to see an example of any media organization to examine the Index more closely. Only telling one side of the
story is a serious problem. We can compare the use of the “failed state” label with how Somalia is depicted in the daily media
coverage. Howmany times can you remember to have seen the pictures from Somalia, the
disaster zone, with starving children, heavily armed Islamist fighters and dead people being
dragged through the streets by a cheering mob? Quite a few times, I suppose. On the other hand, how many
times have you seen pictures from Somalia showing farmers working in their fields, smiling and playful children, or the beach in
Mogadishu crowded with both men, women and children? Probably not at all. Of course, the pictures of the disaster zone of Somalia
are real and by every journalistic standard it is right to publish such pictures. The practice becomes a problem when these are the
only pictures that are being shown, when the stories about starving children and dangerous terrorists are the only stories that are
being told about Somalia outside Somalia. This
misrepresentation in the media can for a large part be
attributed to the “failed state” label that is burn-marked on the country, and which pay so little
attention to the variations within the geographical area that makes up the state of Somalia.
When a statement is repeated enough times, it becomes a “truth”. Politicians and scholars, as well as the
media itself are responsible for this brand marking, and the process is self-reinforcing. The situation has reached the point where
members of the Somali diaspora community in Norway has established an organization with one of its main goals to adjust the
picture that has been made of Somalia and the Somali people (Iftiin – somalisk-norsk kunnskapssenter 2011). Somalia has a
serious image-problem – literally. Not
only does this put the country in risk of external intervention, it also
contributes to keep Somalia and much of its population in the margins of international relations.
There is a lack of representation of the people inhabiting the territory of the Somali Republic, both because the TFG lacks authority,
but also because of the non-recognition of the de facto states of Somaliland and Puntland. Here we have to functional geopolitical
foreign investors and
entities that are not represented in the UN nor in other global or regional institutions. Furthermore
tourists stay away because of the perception and understanding of the whole of Somalia being a
”failed state”. Africa and the Knowledge of Non-Being In his classic work Orientalism, Edward Said (2003 [1978]) scrutinize the
history and nature of Western attitudes towards the East. He argues that orientalism is a powerful European
ideological creation and a way for dealing with the “otherness” of Eastern culture, customs and
beliefs. Achille Mbembe applies much of the same argumentation in his critique of Africanism. He says that historically, the
West has constructed its own civilization, enlightenment and progress through the “others”, thus
non-Western cultures, and especially Africa. Mbembe argues that: “Africa as an idea, a concept, has historically served, and still
continues to serve, as a polemical argument for the West’s desperate desire to assert its difference from the rest of the world”
if not even all,
(Mbembe 2001, 2). One of the challenges in grasping how things work outside the Western world is that many,
of the concepts we use when describing the universe of International Relations is based in
Western history and thinking. Max Weber’s famous definition of the state as “a human community that (successfully)
claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory (Weber et al. 1991, 78). In Western thinking,
Weber’s definition represents the idea of an “ideal state”, and it seems like many have the
perception that Western states fit into this idea or norm. When analyzing states in Africa, this is revealed when
African states are compared with the idea of an “ideal state”, which is believed to be a prototype of a Western state – leading to the
focus on African states’ absences, lacks and incompleteness, as weak or failed. In this way Mbembe’s analysis is straight to the
point when he states that “while we feel we know nearly everything that African states, societies, and economies are not, we still
know absolutely nothing about what they actually are”. Our
knowledge of Africa is to a large degree based on
the knowledge of non-being (Mbembe 2001, 9). But claiming that the “Western state” resembles the Weberian state, or
even that the “Western state” is the norm, is highly problematic. First of all, every state has its own specific features, and the higher
Weber’s state is an idea of a state that has
the degree of generalization, the more problematic it is. Secondly,
never existed in practice – even not in Europe or North America – for example when we take
into account the important fact that private violence and private security has existed through
modern history, and even today. Abrahamsen & Williams (2010), Colás & Mabee (2010) and Thomson (1994) are
among several scholars who have demonstrated how private violence and private security takes form in e.g. private companies,
criminal organizations and vigilante groups. If the states in Europe and North America are to be judged by the same standards as
the states in Africa, many of these could get the “failed” label as well. Noam Chomsky, for example, has turned the tables in his
book “Failed States”, where he shows that the US shares features with other “failed states” (2007). But does
the “failed
state” label provide us with more and better insight into how different states work; does it
enlighten us in any way? Definitely not. The label conceals more than it enlightens. Abrahamsen &
Williams (2010) argues that we must look beyond the state when analysing security issues in Africa. I would argue that we must look
both beyond and within the state also when we want to analyse states in Africa, and especially Somalia.
Link – Food Security
The 1ac’s apocalyptic famine discourse is a weapon of war – the
internalization of emergency has resulted in a bunkerization of aid, creating
a system of winners and losers that exacerbate internal tensions – that
increases the probability of war
Duffield ‘12 (Mark Duffield, Global Insecurities Centre, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of
Bristol, UK, “Challenging environments: Danger, resilience and the aid industry From protection to resilience” Security Dialogue,
43(5) 475–492)
Internalizing emergency
This section provides a genealogical sketch of the transition from the modernist view of disaster as something external to society to
seeing it as intrinsic to the internal functioning of society itself, and thus requiring urgent governance. By the end of the Cold War,
the disaster zone had been reworked as a morally conflicted space of predatory winners and hapless losers. Working through such
categories, the internalization of emergency provided a powerful moral justification for liberal
interventionism and the post-Cold War expansion of the aid industry into challenging
environments. It rationalized aid workers own ‘freeing up’ or exposure to new risk environments
and the willingness of many to embrace this opportunity. Modernism banished God from disasters; rather than
a divine punishment for human failings, they were reworked as accidents or unusual occurrences. The postmodernist turn,
however, has brought an eschatology of human folly back into the equation (Duffield and Evans, 2011).
Since the 1970s, the modernist conception of disasters as more or less random events outside of
normal society has been progressively abandoned. Emergency has been internalized and
normalized as integral to the functioning of society. Human agency and choice have once again
become important– hence the need to govern their outcomes. While the present climate-change
debate epitomizes this shift (Grove, 2010), earlier changes in the interpretation of famine anticipate
this move. During the 1970s, it was still common for policymakers to regard famine as resulting from absolute and externally
induced food shortages. The work of Amartya Sen (1981) has been influential in shifting our understanding of famine from outside to
inside society. Rather than absolute shortages, famine now resides in the unequal social capital and
degrees of market exclusion that befall individuals and define their different abilities to access that food which is available
in the marketplace. Rather than socio-economic reform and income redistribution, Sen’s entitlement
approach emphasizes ‘individual inclusion and choice-making capacities’ (Chandler, forthcoming).
The behaviour and choices made by famine victims, together with the social and educational assets they can call
upon, have also become important for disaster management. Alex de Waal’s (1989) influential study of the 1984–
5 famine in Darfur, for example, revealed that humanitarian aid only supplied around 12% of the total food
consumed. What the affected communities did for themselves, their coping strategies, was
shown to be more important than the efforts of the international aid industry. These strategies
ranged from gathering famine foods – that is, wild plants and roots not normally consumed – through livestock
sales, to selective labour migration. This shift in focus from lives to livelihoods in relation to
famine was part of a wider reorientation of development generally towards the centrality of the
choices made by individuals (Chambers, 1987; Solesbury, 2003). Development became less about
material advancement and, as reflected in the establishment of the UNDP’s Human Development Index, more
focused on creating supporting market environments and programmes to help poor people
make the right choices (Booth, 1993). Since individuals can make the wrong choices, with the postmodernist turn
moral judgement now infuses relief and development.
The ability to make bad choices, however, is not confined to famine victims. By the end of the 1980s, it had
been recognized that market failure and lack of social capital did not exhaust possibilities. Famines
could also be deliberately created (De Waal, 1990). In Sudan, for example, it was discovered that famines had
winners and losers, and that the former were capable of maintaining famine conditions, if not
creating them. David Keen’s (1994) important study of famine in southwestern Sudan during the 1980s, for example, showed
how local elites, who benefitted from the asset sales and cheap labour of famine victims, worked to sustain famine
conditions. Thus, while famine victims could make good choices regarding how to cope, disaster zones
were also home to predators who, on the basis of conscious economic and political calculation, could both gain from
famine and, indeed, use it as a weapon of war (Duffield, 1991). By the end of the 1980s, in Africa at least,
emergency had been internalized within the socio-economic fabric of society and the disaster
zone reworked as a complex and conflicted moral terrain of winners and losers (Duffield, 1993).
Helped by Band Aid and the public anger regarding international inaction over the mid-1980s famine in Ethiopia, by the closing
years of the Cold War the internalization of emergency and revelation of predatory human agency had
created a powerful moral incentive for humanitarian intervention in the internal wars of the
global south. In opposition to modernist conservatism, aid agencies were widely encouraged to put the saving
of life ‘above any political consideration or bureaucratic constraint’ (Duffield, 2001: xx). However, while
widely supported, the subsequent post-1989 surge in liberal interventionism effectively downgraded
erstwhile third-world sovereignty over a wider front (Tamás, 2000). At the same time, oppositional groups
that had been courted as liberation movements during the period of superpower rivalry quickly lost political legitimacy
with its passing (Anderson, 1996). Within the New World Order, save that sanctioned by the UN or leading liberal
states, political violence was no longer acceptable. Changing attitudes to sovereignty,
international law and political violence created the terrain for a marked expansion of the aid
industry. As Antonio Donini (1996: 6) remarked, ‘recent years have witnessed a kind of double lifting of inhibitions that had been
largely suppressed by the Cold War’s rules of the game: the inhibition to wage war and the inhibition to intervene’. At the same time,
however, the
dissolving of modernist constraints was coterminous with the normalization of
working in ongoing conflict and chronic insecurity. The post-Cold War era would expose aid
workers to a new systemic risk terrain, the implications of which are still unfolding.
Reflecting the postmodernist turn, the idea of a complex emergency first entered UN usage towards the end of the 1980s in
Mozambique (Duffield, 1994: 9). In 1989 it was extended to South Sudan and, following the first Gulf War and the creation of the
a
UN’s Department of Humanitarian Affairs in 1992, subsequently gained wider circulation. While lacking an agreed definition,
complex emergency is usually regarded as a chronic, multicausal humanitarian crisis involving
varying combinations of political, economic, environmental, conflict and peacekeeping factors
(United Nations, 1994: 23). As such, complex emergencies require a system-wide response on the part
of the aid industry. However, as Hugo Slim has pointed out, ‘complexity’ in this case does not refer to any
new misery inflicted on their victims. The strategies involved were essentially the same as those
that had killed millions during the civil wars of the 20th century. Complexity ‘refers to an increase
in the difficulties experienced by outsiders in the international community who seek to respond
to such wars as essentially non-combatant, humanitarian and peace-promoting third parties’
(Slim, quoted in Collinson and Elhawary, 2012: 11). As a logistical metaphor, a complex emergency speaks to the difficulty of
coordinating system-wide aid responses in the new threat environment produced by the demise of modernist institutions and
the complex emergency has undergone a
restraints. As a constantly updated and ‘improved’ logistical diagram,
continuous process of change and adaptation, from negotiated access to stabilization, through
to the War on Terror and the advent of drone warfare. Against this backdrop of organizational change, the
increasing bunkerization of the aid industry has been a constant feature.
Link – Food Security
Justifying food policies through catastrophic geopolitical consequences
naturalizes a liberal world order that’s the root cause of industrial
agriculture and environment collapse
Le Billon et al ‘14 (Melanie Sommerville, doctoral student in the Department of Geography at the University of British
Columbia, Jamey Essex, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Windsor, & Philippe Le Billon, Professor at the
University of British Columbia with the Department of Geography, “The ‘Global Food Crisis’ and the Geopolitics of Food Security,”
Geopolitics 19:2, 2014)
Since 2007, rising prices and pronounced volatility in international food markets have combined to
dramatically refigure global food security and produce what many have termed a ‘global food crisis’.
Driven by a variety of factors including demand for agrofuels, the intersection of food with oil and financial
markets, the steady erosion of agroecological systems and social safety nets, and pronounced
inequalities in global agro-food systems, these food price shifts have had profound social and
political effects. In many poorer countries, price spikes led to domestic unrest and widespread
food riots, prompting emergency market-control measures by several governments. Increased unrest and rising food bills
led many governments to reconsider their agricultural and food policies, with exporting states shutting down
food surplus shipments, and several import-dependent countries further investing in offshore food
production, a practice linked to a broader ‘global land grab’ with severe repercussions for small-
scale farmers and the rural poor. For many observers, these combined social, economic, and political
features have been read as the markers of a new ‘global food crisis’, which has continued into
2013, and shows few signs of imminent resolution. Internationally, concerns about a new global food
crisis resulted in new funding streams, combining overseas development assistance with philanthropic capital, and
emphasising the development opportunities associated with agriculture as the seat of rural economic
growth. These new capital flows, in combination with strengthened activism by agrarian social movements, have
reshuffled the global governance architecture around agriculture and food security, creating new political actors
and allegiances and strengthening others. Yet with almost 870 million people continuing to suffer from chronic and acute hunger,
there are genuine questions about whether the root causes of global food insecurity have been
addressed, and indeed whether a solution to the crisis is within grasp.1 Price shocks and the broader ‘food crisis’ have
brought considerable attention to the geopolitical dimensions of food security and the shifting
political geographies of agro-food systems more generally. In both popular and policy forums, food security
increasingly appears as a matter of urgent geopolitical calculation and strategy, and as an issue
central to discussions of national and human security, climate change, development and global inequality.
Leveraging neo-Malthusian predictions of an imminent descent into socio-political chaos amidst growing
global food supply-demand imbalances, such narratives call forth liberal humanitarian interventions
promising development for the hungry and security for the (privileged) rest of us in one tidy package. These
doubly securitised framings are now being used to press forward technological and market-driven solutions to food insecurity with
new urgency. Even as the global food crisis has offered a potent opportunity to challenge dominant
agro-food political paradigms, then, it has also tended to reinstall them. Political geographic
knowledges and geopolitical framings are not neutral in this process, but rather are deeply
inscribed within it. This re-prioritisation of food security within political discussions and the geopolitical
agenda appears to have gone largely unnoticed by political geographers. Indeed, agriculture and
food issues have long occupied a somewhat marginal position within the subdiscipline, a curious situation
given the growing attention they have garnered from scholars elsewhere in geography in recent decades.2 Our aim in this
paper is to begin reversing this pattern of neglect and filling the gap that has resulted. Our paper proceeds in two
main parts. In the first section, we examine the geopolitical framings of food security that have come to
dominate popular and policy narratives in the last few years, and demonstrate the importance of
critical political geography approaches for unseating these dominant narratives. We argue that these
framings promulgate a neo-Malthusian and securitised reading of food security that privileges
technological and market-extending responses deployed through further liberal humanitarian
interventions. Rather than interrupting the structural conditions underpinning the current food crisis, such instances of
‘neoliberal geopolitics’ obscure both the continuing relevance of questions regarding inequality
and domination within the global agro-food system, and the role of crisis narratives in
depoliticising recent interventions into this system. We call for critical political geography
perspectives to attend to the central role of geopolitical discourses in constituting the political
economy of agro-food production and consumption, and to highlight counter- and alter-geopolitics readings of food security. In
the second section, we take up this challenge by examining four key areas where such approaches can help question the status
we hope to inspire
quo, while also finding common ground with contemporary research in agro-food studies. In so doing,
political geographers to direct more attention to food and agriculture as important areas of
geopolitical inquiry.
Link – Hegemony
The concept of benign hegemony is whitewashing of brutal imperial
violence and coercive social Darwinism
Jalbert ‘13 (Elie Jalbert, BA honors in anthropology at Concordia University, “Emergency as Security: Liberal
Empire at Home and Abroad,” pp 31-2, GENDER MODIFIED)
U.S. history is fraught with contradiction. There seems to have been a persistent divide between
its represented self-image and its actions in the world. It has viewed itself as a land of the free, where individuals
have free reign to maximize their wealth and pursue happiness without the constraints of government inhibiting their freedom, while
ignoring the way in which government typically enforced the rights of one group over another (McCaull, 1976) and provided the
It has promoted its
infrastructure and investments that made development possible (Novak, 2008; Limerick, 2012).
exceptional nature and asserted its difference from all previous empires, advocating
fundamental human rights and opportunity for all, though its society has been one of profound
segregation (Perlstein, 2006), with a foreign policy more often than not brutal, repressive, and indeed
essentially imperialistic (Chomsky, 1998; McCoy, 2009)—a foreign policy that then in turn transformed
domestic policy by importing its policing practices back home (McCoy & Scarano, 2009; Chomsky, 1999; De
Genova, 2010; Steinmetz, 2005, pp. 357–361). Founded on the genocide of its Indigenous population, the
U.S. has defined its brave and free persona by glorifying its revolution that shook off the
empire’s grip, yet has been leading a global counterinsurgent “War on Terrorism” that defines
resistance as a threat that must be eliminated. One such contradiction—the contrast of a projected
benign history of the quest for freedom and rights with the reality of American ascent to global
domination—is discussed by Novak (2008). In addressing what he calls the “myth of the ‘weak’ American state”, he shows how
there is “an almost pathological tendency to confuse American ideal with historical political
reality,” and a constant tension between “liberty and power, freedom and authority, contract and
coercion, and law and violence” (Novak, 2008, p. 754). In the author’s view, the myth of an American weak state has its
roots in an exceptionalist view of the U.S as being a new world exempted from previous political histories by a “so-called ‘natural’
development of individualism, private rights, civil society, free labour, and a free economy” (Novak, 2008, pp. 754–755). McCaull
(1976) considers this sense of exceptionalism to be underpinned by a Spencerian theory of social
evolution that presents American industry as the pinnacle of man’s [humanity’s] ever ascending
rise to perfection. This “social Darwinism” that applied biological notions of survival of the fittest
to human society provided legitimacy for rapacious and competitive social and economic
practices by presenting them as a natural and normal continuation of evolution toward
complexity. Spencer’s theory was thus co-opted by American industrialists as a powerful “scientific” tool of laissez faire
capitalism legitimation, reminiscent of the Malthusian arguments discussed earlier, that rooted their
reasoning in the laws of nature so as to give them an air of inevitability.
Link – HIV/AIDS
The aff’s seemingly liberal move to combat HIV only furthers global
securitization – turns the case
Ailio ‘13 (Jaako Ailio, doctoral student in management, international relations, and political science at the University of
Tampere, 2013, “Liberal Thanatopolitics and the HIV/AIDS Pandemic,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political Volume 38 Issue 3)
Despite the exceptional triumph of the liberal response within the HIV/AIDS pandemic,
especially when compared to responses to other infectious diseases, there have been some
‘‘illiberal’’ exclusions. These exclusions have been concentrated around the disparity of life
chances resulting from the fact that successful treatment, which in prosperous Western liberal
realms has made HIV infection more a chronic condition than an immediate threat to life, has
not been as widely accessible in the Global South. While commitment to universal treatment has been affirmed
for a long time, the concurrent protection of patent rights by pharmaceutical companies and the protection of Western health care
systems from a flood of HIV-positive immigrants through various travel restrictions and immigration requirements has frequently
HIV-positive people who have found themselves
produced contrary consequences.30 As a result, at least those
excluded from access to treatment can be considered, from a biopolitical perspective, to be
embodiments of life abandoned to death in an Agambenian sense. These people have been
subjected to the sovereign exception and thus excluded from all the positive content of the
global HIV/AIDS community by being captured in the ‘‘zone of indistinction between outside and
inside, exclusion and inclusion.’’31
On the other hand, as many now suggest, in the recent years the relevance of the biopolitical production of
abandonment through sovereign exception in the case of HIV/AIDS pandemic has decreased.32
This indeed seems to be the case as on more and more occasions the campaigning and lobbying of the global AIDS activist and
influential international organizations, such as the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), has been able to
change how things are done. For instance, through campaigning and lobbying, the access to treatment was framed as a human
right, which made it possible to impose certain limitations on the implementation of intellectual property rights regarding ARVs.
Consequently, a space was opened for the production and purchase of much cheaper generic drugs. This has been capitalized on
by states outside the prosperous West, most notably Brazil, which has become a model of efficiency in providing nearly universal
ARVs by cooperating with activists, development agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry itself. As people grow more resistant,
questions about the future availability of newer drug therapies remain. Nevertheless, Brazil’s model has become celebrated not only
within the Global South but also gradually accepted, at least to a certain extent, among the governments of the West, who now
mostly prefer generic drugs within their global health initiatives, as well as among the pharmaceutical companies themselves.33
the activists and the
In addition, in the case of the HIV/AIDS-related travel restrictions and immigration requirements,
international expert organizations seem to have attained many of their goals. This is true especially
regarding the liberal democracies of the Western world: in these countries, at present there is a strong compliance with individual
rights when dealing with foreign HIV-positive people whose condition is no longer considered to be worth special attention. As has
been recommended by expert organizations and demanded by activists, in
these countries HIV infection of a
foreigner does not bring on the suspension of one’s basic right to mobility, as the foreigner is treated in
the same way as any other visitor/immigrant regardless of HIV status.34 Recently, also the United States, the most notable
exception to the rule in this regard within the liberal realm, eliminated its travel restrictions based on HIV status and thus finalized
the process that was already launched by the George Bush administration.35
What should we, then, make of the prospects of the increased extension of rights even into the traditional zones of abandonment in
Does the penetration of rights into these zones have the potential to
the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic?
prevent the rendering of people as embodiments of life abandoned to death? The answer,
unfortunately, is no. In an aporetic fashion, the penetration of rights to these traditional abandonment
producing zones only changes the form in which life abandoned to death is produced within the
pandemic. As a consequence, the foundational abandonment is no longer produced through the
Agambenian type of exception but becomes an inherent quality of the liberal policies
themselves, making it possible to speak about a liberal thanatopolitics.
This becomes evident when the consequences of the penetration of rights into the abandonment-producing zones are viewed from
the perspective of how the dispositif of the person clashes with the dehumanizing tendencies of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In order to
bring out this clash, it is necessary to emphasize three points.
AIDS ravages the subjectivity of an individual as ‘‘the disease destroys the
First, it must be stressed that
very idea of an identity-making border: the difference between self and other, internal and
external, inside and outside.’’36 This refers to the fact that an immune system’s CD4 T cells, in which the HIV virus
resides, have under normal conditions the task of activating and directing the immune defenses, but in the case of the HIV virus the
activation of these cells paradoxically makes them more hospitable to the virus and actually helps the virus to replicate. It is
therefore incorrect to say that the virus simply evades the immune system; rather, the virus uses the immune system’s own
mechanisms to harm it. What gets affected is not just health but the entire ontological scheme, as the
defense mechanism that is thought to guarantee individual’s integrity in the face of other
organisms reveals its deficiencies by itself assisting the progression of the virus which
eventually will undermine the system completely, exposing the body to every germ, and causing
the body to implode. Thus, functioning in the mode strictly opposed to that of immunity, which internalizes the external,
AIDS turns the body inside out by ‘‘externalization of the inside.’’37
Second, and against the first point, it is necessary to understand how the liberal framing of access to treatment as
a human right functions along the lines of the dispositif of the person. As a result, the logic of
intervention and the limit that would need to be transgressed in order to overcome AIDS once
and for all become fundamentally the same. This is a consequence of the foundational fracture
experienced by the idea of a strictly bordered individual, which, in a paradoxical manner,
becomes remedied by framing the access to treatment as a right of everyone as far as one is
this strictly bordered individual, that is, a person. The paradoxical consequences of the framing
become visible especially in the resource-poor settings of the Global South where this framing
inadequately pharmaceuticalizes health in an individualizing manner.38 As the pandemic has followed the
fault lines of the long-term economic processes, these are settings in which the health infrastructure does not exist and the
rolling out of HIV/AIDS drugs becomes a matter of innovative projects and people’s ability to
attach themselves to these projects.39 This is more easily said than done, as the treatment of HIV infection
with ARVs has a long-term therapeutic character requiring that patients fully adhere to their
treatment and that there is a medical apparatus in place that documents and monitors patients’
response to the drugs. This is essential as over time the HIV in patient’s body becomes resistant to certain ARVs, and thus
the drug cocktail that one is using has to be altered from time to time in order to keep one in shape and alive. Thus, what is
demanded from these poor and marginalized people, who form the majority of the HIV-positive
people in the world, is self-discipline and will to overcome their physical and social situation.
What is demanded is that they actively follow and keep attending the treatments and thus
maintain their personhood, their control over their body, their animal layer inside them. If they
are not able to do this, they fall outside the benefits of their right to treatment, their right to life,
and the virus will finalize their destiny by making their body take control over them. These
people, as João Biehl has written, ‘‘are trapped between two possible destinies: dying of AIDS like the
poor and marginalized do—that is, being animalized—and living pharmacologically into a future,
thereby letting the animal sleep and preventing it from consuming their flesh.’’40
Yet, third, the paradoxical consequences grow even more mind-twisting when the disappearance
of the state-imposed HIV/AIDS-related mobility restrictions from the Western liberal realm is
addressed. As the right of the HIV-positive people to be treated as individual persons even
beyond the old sovereign demarcation between the Global South and the prosperous liberal
realm of the West is respected, a space is opened inside this liberalized realm: a space in which
there is little room for those who are not ‘‘proper persons’’ but considerable scope for more
direct forms of violence against these same individuals. The absence of state-imposed mobility
restrictions does not simply mean enhanced life changes for everyone; for example, for failed
asylum seekers, illegal immigrants, and other foreigners without proper authorization, access to
the health services that HIV-positives need to stay alive is made difficult if they lack money or
other legitimate ways to cover their health expenses.41
Consequently, the possibility of living in a liberal realm is granted mainly to those HIV-positive
people who can be trusted to take responsibility for themselves and for the costs of their own
care. For others, access to adequate health services remains blocked. Respect for their right to
be treated in the same manner as any other individual person means making them liable human
subjects in spite of their dehumanized condition, pushing them even more certainly toward
abandonment. The more the global efforts to provide assistance have failed, the more ‘‘illegal’’
or ‘‘unauthorized’’ these people become in relation to their access to further assistance. This is
where, despite liberal attempts to keep it in check by emphasizing personal rights, sovereign
violence reappears through the opening created by this very same emphasis on personal rights.
HIV-positive people in their entirety can never be ensured protection through respect for their
rights because it is these rights that ensure that many of them inevitably fall into a zone of
indistinguishability between full human existence and merely being alive, a zone in which these
people are rendered as targets of violence.
It is ultimately here in the zone of indistinguishability between full human existence and merely
being alive that the thanatopolitical potential of liberalism is actualized. The emphasis on human
rights and non-discriminating policies ends up turning against, and even bringing death to, those
promised enhanced life changes. In the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in particular, life as a
whole simply cannot be immunized through efforts premised on the primacy of, and control by,
the personified human life over the body and the animal layer of life; the progression of the virus
has made it impossible to maintain this distinction. The insistence on the primacy of the
personified human life leads to HIV-positive people being pushed further from the designated
standards of living by placing these standards beyond their reach. Thus, the dynamics of the
HIV/AIDS pandemic are the same for the liberal immunitary dispositif of the person as the HIV
virus itself is for the immune system. The dynamics of the pandemic and the virus itself are both
something that these two immunization mechanisms cannot handle in the way they are
supposed to. In both cases, immunity is unable to fully protect life.
Furthermore, in both cases, the mechanisms of the immunization do not only fail but begin in
themselves to contribute to the gradual destruction of that which they should try to protect. In the
case of the HIV virus, the mechanisms of the immune system help the virus to replicate and thus destroy the body’s integrity in the
the immunitary mechanism of the person begins
face of harmful infections. In the case of the HIV/AIDS pandemic,
to produce paradoxical results as by including people under its projection it begins to abandon
those same people to the mercy of the HIV virus.
Conclusion
Despite Esposito’s reluctance to use the term ‘‘liberal thanatopolitics,’’ the term seems appropriate when describing and
conceptualizing liberal responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This is especially the case for recent liberal responses to the disparity
of life changes between the prosperous West and the Global South. When the extension of rights-based policies to
traditional abandonment producing zones is explored from the perspective of Esposito’s
immunitary reading of biopolitics and his elaboration of the dispositif of the person, it becomes
clear that liberal policies are unable to prevent producing abandonment themselves. This is a
result of the insistence on the primacy of personified human life over living matter as such in the
face of the dehumanizing pandemic, which ends up pushing many HIV-positive people into a
zone of indistinguishability between full human existence and merely being alive. The power of
thanatos is no longer expressed as an exception but has become an inherent quality of liberal
policies.
Given this inversion of liberal biopolitics into liberal thanatopolitics, it is clear that a new course
is needed. However, the persistence of the production of abandonment despite the extension of rights within abandonment-
producing zones means that innovation will be more difficult than many are willing to admit. Better policies will not come
from further extension or creation of new rights to people who are now abandoned. This is
because to be fully human is to be in a relational condition that derives its intelligibility from the
subjugation a person enjoys over the biological layer of life which connects one to other living
beings and things. As the HIV/AIDS pandemic places this subjugation in doubt, anything that tries to protect only
the human person is bound to push at least some HIV positives toward abandonment.
Consequently, innovation must move in the opposite direction, also set out by Esposito, a direction that tries to work with immunity’s
As the thanatopolitical inversion of immunity makes plain,
etymological and practical horizon, the community.
community is not only a contagious relationship with others, thereby representing a risk of self-
dissolution, but also something that, like immunity, protects us. Community protects us from the excess of
immunity that appears destined to have thanatopolitical consequences. From this perspective, community is not something that can
Thus,
be removed without destroying that which was sought to be protected from the excess of community in the first place.
contemporary global efforts to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS pandemic can only benefit from
reactivating the idea of community. What must be found is the way to place the communal, the
impersonal force of life, rather than the notion of the person, at the center of protection.
Link – Human Rights
Human rights are just an attempt to mystify and recuperate an
epistemology of domination which ensures mass violence and colonialism
Calkivik ‘10 (Emine Asli Calkivik, PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota, October 2010,
“Dismantling Security,”
https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/99479/Calkivik_umn_0130E_11576.pdf?
sequence=1&isAllowed=y)
Humanitarian interventions of the 1990s—most significantly the NATO action in response to the
Kosovo crisis in 1999, which was undertaken in complete defiance of the UN Charter—and the invasions of Iraq
and Afghanistan heightened the controversies surrounding the notion of human security. In the
face of rising concerns about the uses and abuses of “The Right of Intervention” to protect humanity, the principle of the
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was adopted unanimously at the 2005 UN World Summit. Placing emphasis on the primary
responsibility of the state to protect its citizens, the principle introduced “the novel idea that the international community should
assist states in this endeavor” and situated armed intervention within “a broader continuum of measures that the international
community might take to respond to genocide and mass atrocities.”55 While its advocates argue that the R2P shifts the terrain from
the rights of interveners to the rights of victims,56 that it is a useful “diplomatic tool, or prism, to guide efforts to stem the tide of
mass atrocities,”57 and that it is “not a new code for humanitarian intervention… [but] a more positive and affirmative concept of
sovereignty as responsibility,”58 critics continue to assert that human security “would be best divorced from the notion of
‘responsibility to protect’”59 so as not to become a basis for legitimizing Western militarism.
It is interesting to note that while its liberal advocates have been busy trying to find new ways to reformulate human security to
shield it from being corrupted by the not-so-benign international community, radical critics of global liberal governance have not
given up on human security and the project to relieve suffering and secure the life of the species. Apprehensive about its neo-
colonial implications and the way in which it has been articulated into liberal and statist projects, even the most ardent critics of
human security have nevertheless refrained from abandoning the concept altogether. The project to develop a “critical human
security paradigm” is an example.60 The central aim of the project is to investigate how the concept of human
security “can be ‘protected’ from the hegemonizing narratives of securitization and neo-
liberalism.”61 The contributors to the project examine various conceptions of human security in relation to the non-Western
world and try to develop a global, critical perspective on the concept of human security that would be attentive to the ways in which it
human security functions toward
gets entangled in power relations. Their articles paint a striking picture of how
reproducing capitalist relations of power and exploitation, gender hierarchies, and bio-political
forms of rule. Despite the deeply problematic nature of human security, however, the conclusion offered by the project is that
human security cannot and should not be abandoned. Such “radical” efforts beg the question of why thought
and action have to be confined to security in addressing violence. Put differently, if security itself
entails violence, why limit thought on violence to the framework of security?62
In short, through its multifarious articulations, security has emerged as the nodal point of a vast, materially
consequential discursive field. The desire for security is presented as a primary, unquestionable human need and the
overriding goal of politics—both domestic and international. It has become a commonsense category to such an extent that even
critical minds argue that the action of governments would deserve few questions when they act in the name of the security of their
citizens.63 Not only is security posited as a universal desire and a good that could be attained and
enjoyed by all, it is presented as a natural goal, an end that all human beings by nature seek.
Self-appointed spokespersons—a vast network composed of state representatives, international courts, human rights
and humanitarian organizations, diverse groups of NGOs, intellectuals, and other public figures— legitimate an array of
political interventions ostensibly undertaken to secure humanity by fulfilling that natural desire to
protect the species’ more vulnerable members.
Security has become an imperative that demands ever more attention and ever more obedience to its rituals. The realm within
which the machine of security operates has expanded exponentially to include all forms of life,
from the microbe upwards. Wherever one looks, one is faced with a security warning. Security has transmogrified into a
first principle that one has to heed as one eats, shops, works, or travels. “We are not a security guard company. We sell a concept
of security,”64 says the president of the U.S. security firm Westec. Perhaps this public relations catch phrase best summarizes the
sovereignty of security within the contemporary global context. We may not know what it means, what it entails; perhaps we don’t
even need to know as long as we know that we want it and are ready to pay the price to purchase it. We globally consume
security as we are being consumed by it.65
Link – International Law
International law is a blood-stained policing apparatus which cloaks its
domination through a myth of neutrality and universalism – the aff’s
upholding of global norms preserves colonialism
Mahmud ‘11 (Tayyab Mahmud, professor of law and Director at the Center for Global Justice at the Seattle University
School of Law, PhD in political science from the University of Hawaii, JD from the University of California at Hastings, 2011,
“Colonial Cartographies, Postcolonial Borders, and Enduring Failures of International Law: The Unending Wars Along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan Frontier,” Brooklyn Journal of International Law Volume 35 Issue 1)
Drawing boundaries is the inaugural gesture of the law, while policing boundaries is its routine
function. The genesis of law signals that "[t]he primordial scene of the nomos opens with a
drawing of a line in the soil ... to mark the space of one's own."28 Modem law's insistent claims of
its universality notwithstanding, lines of demarcation that separate legality from illegality often
create zones where bodies and spaces are placed on the other side of universality, a "moral
and legal no man 's land, where universality finds its spatial limit." 29 Material and discursive
orders that enjoy hegemony in any setting, fashion and enable instruments to draw these lines
and carve out such zones. The story of the Durand Line testifies to this phenomenon.
The Durand Line was drawn by a colonial power in the nineteenth century, which was a defining
phase in the consolidation of modem regimes of knowledge, along with the suturing of
epistemology with the state.30 Therefore, it is critical to identify the conceptual ensemble that
furnished the scaffolding for such a venture. It is the Author's position that the conceptual and discursive
apparatus of international law, modem geography, geopolitics, and borders are interwoven in
the enabling frame that made the drawing of this conflict-ridden dividing line possible.
A. International Law and Differentiated Sovereignty
No sooner was a new world "discovered," than a line, patition del mar oceano, was drawn by the
Treaty of Tordesillas on June 7, 1494." This line divided the world beyond Europe between Portugal and Spain, and supplemented
Pope Alexander VI's edict Inter caetera divinae of May 4, 1494, with an agreement between sovereigns. 32 The right of two royal
houses of Europe over the division of the non-European world as "lords with full, free, and every kind of power, authority and
This inaugural act of the
jurisdiction"33 now stood grounded both in divine sanction and sovereign will and consent.34
incipient global order injected colonialism into the genetic code of modem international law.35 The
"amity lines," initiated by a secret clause of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis of 1559, institutionalized a differentiation between the
These
European "sphere of peace and the law of nations from an overseas sphere in which there was neither peace nor law." 36
"amity lines," which mandated peaceful cooperation in the region within their bounds and gave
license to unbridled conflict without, gave rise to the maxim: "Beyond the equator there are no
sins."37 In the new global order, "[e]verything that occurred 'beyond the line' remained outside
the legal, moral, and political values recognized on this side of the line."38 In this zone, "beyond
the line" and "beyond the equator," doctrines of "discovery," "terra nullius," and "anima nullius"
flourished.39 The career of modem international law is the story of making, maintaining, and
managing this enduring line.
In the nineteenth century, colonialism animated a decisive turn in the evolution of modem international
law, even though "international law consistently attempts to obscure its colonial origins, [and] its
connections with the inequalities and exploitation inherent in the colonial encounter." 40 The
unquestioned universality of international law "was principally a consequence of the imperial
expansion.”41 The development of modem conceptions of sovereignty and the international
subject, which are bedrock constructs of modem international law, has little to do with the
professed foundational concern of international law, i.e., stability of the relations between
sovereign states.42 Rather, these constructs were fashioned to manage the colonial relations of
domination and racial difference. 43
Expansion of colonialism triggered a search for a legal framework that could legitimize the
securing of a range of rights and privileges from colonized and dominated polities. Recognition of
some measure of sovereignty of the dominated polities was warranted by the need to ensure that the terms of colonial treaties
This tension raised
would be honored, even though the terms of these treaties betrayed a lack of sovereignty and equality.44
anew the question of what entities were eligible to be regarded as proper subjects of
international law. 45 In response, international law jettisoned classical natural law constructs of
sovereign equality, now considered "pseudo-metaphysical notions of what the essential qualities of Statehood ought to
be,"46 and turned to positivism based on actual practice of states. Frames of jus gentium, or principles of law
common to all peoples, yielded to positivist ontology of law and sovereignty. 47 This sharp turn yielded quick results. By the mid-
nineteenth century, a
new construct of differential sovereignty was entrenched in international law-
sovereigns and international subjects were not alike in terms of rights, eligibilities, and
competencies. Sovereignty was now to be seen as a differentially distributed bundle of rights.48 Several classes of
sovereign states were constituted-some fully sovereign, others partly so; some part of the
"family of nations," some outside it; some entitled to domination, others with minimal legal
competence. 49 A sliding-scale of "layers of sovereignty"50 emerged, stretching from "Great
Powers" to colonies, with suzerains, protected states, and protectorates positioned in be-
tween.51 Given that "the founding conception of late nineteenth-century international law was not sovereignty but a collective
(European) conscience,” 52 it is no surprise that this sliding scale of sovereignty mirrored the
Eurocentric scale of "civilization" attendant to colonialism.53 "[P]ositivism's triumphant
suppression of the non-European world"54 rested on the premise that "of uncivilized natives
international law t[ook] no account."55 No wonder then that "[t]o characterize any conduct whatever towards a
barbarous people as a violation of the laws of nations, only shows that he who so speaks has never considered the subject." 56
This muscular and positive international law at the service of states "with good breeding"57
categorized a confluence of people and territory as "backward" and legitimated colonial
acquisition of "backward territory." 58 Note that in yet another deployment of the enduring civilized/
uncivilized binary, the constituent statute of the International Court of Justice ("ICJ") mandates
that judges be selected with due regard to "the main forms of civilizations . . . of the world," and
the Court is required to apply "the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations." 59
The ICJ has lived up to this mandate by, for example, reaching out to "geographical Hegelianism" to resolve territorial disputes in
Africa.60
While imperatives of colonialism shaped positivist doctrines of modern international law, by the
late nineteenth century they also ushered in a new global order where mutual rivalries among
colonial powers gave way when concerted action in the service of maintaining colonial
domination was warranted. The first concrete step in this direction was containment of the "scramble for Africa" at the
Berlin Conference on the Congo (1884-85), which aimed "to bring the natives of Africa within the pale of civilization by opening up
the interior of the continent to commerce." 61 This Conference, from which Africans were completely excluded, institutionalized the
"right" of "Great Powers" to colonial dominion. 62 It was determined that when faced with assertions of sovereignty over colonized
territories, "it is only the recognition of such sovereignty by the members of the international society which concerns us, [of] that of
uncivilised natives international law takes no account." 63 The logic of nineteenth century international law could not have had it any
other way:
International law has to treat such natives as uncivilised. It regulates, for the mutual benefit of the civilised
states, the claims which they make to sovereignty over the region and leaves the treatment of the natives to the conscience of the
state to which sovereignty is awarded. 64
Consider that the Berlin Conference took place in the midst of Europe's agrarian crisis and the Great Depression of 1873-86, which
had "shaken confidence in economic self-healing" and gave colonial expansion further impetus. This was also the time when a
With the Great
"specter of 'overcivilization' was breeding "militarism" and a longing for "imperial adventure" in the U.S. 66
Powers' right to colonize now secure, collective military interventions to protect colonial orders
were the next step in this progression. The coordinated military action in China by Western powers to put down the
Boxer Uprising of 1900 was "the dramatic beginning of the contemporary phase of international history." 67 It was also in 1885, the
year of the Berlin Conference, that British foreign policy and intelligence officials first developed blueprints for a "pan- Islamic
alliance [between] Egypt, Turkey, Persia, and Afghanistan against czarist Russia."68 This sowed a poison seed, the bitter fruits of
which sour many a palate today. The Durand Line was drawn in this milieu.
This global framework animated instrumental deployment of the law to reorder colonized spaces
and bodies.69 Law in the colony aimed to "reduce them to civility," those who had "no skill of
submission."70 Violence was deemed a vital instrument of colonial progress,71 with law furnishing
"the cutting edge of colonialism."72 Violence, in general, and the violence of law, in particular,
played "the leading part in the creation of civilization."73 Colonial rule deemed "[o]ur law . .. a
compulsory gospel which admits of no dissent and no disobedience." 74 This overt concert of law
and violence has been aptly characterized "lawfare[:] the effort to conquer and control
indigenous peoples by the coercive use of legal means."75 The geo-legal space of colonialism
brings into sharp relief "the blood that has dried on the codes of law."76
In the colony, law congealed epistemic, structural, and physical violence. The colonized other,
deemed an error of arrested evolution, was prescribed corrective norms of a higher rational
order. This "soul making" 77 colonial project entailed entrenchment of a layered legal order. First,
the colony was inserted into the global legal system of hierarchically differentiated
sovereignties.78 Second, metropolitan law was transplanted in the colony supplemented by
exceptions that ensured that coercion displaced hegemony as its animating force, thereby
ordering a "rule of difference" that mandated performance of nonidentity between the colonizer
and the colonized.80 Third, through selective recognition, malleable norms of the colonized were
truncated and reconstituted as fixed "customary law."81 In the career of the Durand Line all these legal
machinations of the colonial project came into play
Link – Japan Alliance
The plan’s end to Japanese freeriding follows the narrative of transcendent
humanity where the defeated nation rises from the ashes of war to an agent
of global peacebuilding. This is only contributes to a global matrix of
violence and racism that mobilizes knowledge for the preemption of all
otherness
Chow ’12 (Rey, Anne Firor Scott Professor and Director of the Duke Program in Literature,
“Entanglements, or Transmedial Thinking about Capture”, Chapter 6, ‘American Studies in Japan, Japan
in American Studies: Challenges of the Heterolingual Address’ pgs. 137-150)
On a previous visit to Japan, in the summer of 2005, when I spoke at an international conference on Japanese cinema, I discussed
Akira Kurosawa’s No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), a film based on the controversy of the dismissal, in 1933, of a Kyoto University
law professor, Takigawa Yukitoki, on grounds of his pro-communist views by the Education Minister Hatoyama. Kurosawa’s film
interested me because its narrative structure provides a discursive opening for rethinking political issues such as fascism,
imperialism, and militarism with a transnational awareness. Kurosawa achieved this by a noticeable transition in the story, whereby
the main female character, Yukie, undergoes a personal transformation from being a Westernized, bourgeois university student to
being a sympathizer with the peasants’ and women’s movements in Japan’s postwar countryside.6 Despite what seems to be its
realism, the narrative transition in No Regrets for Our Youth is, I argued, Kurosawa’s means of articulating Japan to America in ways
Although, because of censorship during the
that would become increasingly acute in the postwar world.
Occupation led by the U.S. (1945– 52), there are no explicit representations of the Second
World War in the diegesis (except for the announcement, in 1941, of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and then eventually
of Japan’s loss of the war), this narrative mechanism bridges the world of the 1930s and 1940s, in which
Japan was dominated by the furor over war (both in the form of pro-war and antiwar
sentiments), and the postwar world that apparently embraces the “peace-loving” ways of
Japanese agrarian life. In her function as the narrative hinge, Yukie objectifies this transition by turning herself into a dutiful
widow and daughter-in-law, a hardworking peasant woman who is determined to vindicate her husband’s (misunderstood) patriotism
in the eyes of the community. Yukie’s feminine hands and fingers, which once produced the tunes of Western music on the piano,
are now shown to labor steadily in the soil, cultivating rice for the village. In this simple temporal movement— what
appears to be a series of successive chronological happenings in a moral fable— emerges a
stark sense of what I would call epistemic uncertainty. If narrative transition is not a natural order of things but
an event in itself, I asked, what are we to make of the shift between the early and final parts of the story? As mentioned, the early
part of the story takes place in contemporary, urban Japan in what might be called a
progressive time (the 1930s): all the trappings of Westernization, including the activist, antifascist
sentiments, are there, propelling Japan toward a future in which it can become not only a mimic
of but also an equal to the West. The later part of the story (first near the end of the war and then after it, in the mid-
1940s), by contrast, returns us to a rural environment in which the most important activity is the cultivation of rice. Rather than
the progressive time already encountered in the earlier part, we find here a time that seems
backwardand inward-looking, as though the process of national soulsearching in the
aftermath of political and military defeat must involve a (re)turn, literally, to roots and
working through those roots by hand. (At one point Yukie says, “I have found my roots in that village.”) The politics
of temporality set up in the narrative transition thus evokes the classic opposition between
Westernized modernity and non-Western native tradition, with the paradox that the seemingly
backward and inward, spiritual (re)turn to Japan’s roots is at the same time shown as a forward
advancement (including a proto-feminist awareness of women’s liberation). That is to say, the
rehabilitation of tradition is now given to us, the audience, as the viable way of moving on to the
future. Is the later part of the story really a logical follow-up to the earlier one, then? Who exactly is making this claim, and to
whom is it directed? If the film is taken as a kind of heterolingual address in Sakai’s terms, the perspectives being implicitly or
explicitly invoked are mind-boggling. Was Kurosawa primarily addressing the national Japanese audience, who, to all appearances,
belonged to the same community as he? Was he at the same time calling forth— constructing through the medium of film— another
kind of community, one that is not uniformly or necessarily predisposed to hearing the same message? When the film is interpreted
as a heterolingual, rather than simply monolingual (or mononational and monocultural), address, its fantastical narrative
transition, with its puzzling juxtaposition of the two apparently incommensurable parts, the
“before” and “after,” merits interrogation. If the stigmatization and ostracization faced by Yukie’s
husband’s (Noge’s) family is an allegory of the stigmatization and ostracization faced by Japan in the community of
nations at the end of the war, it is through unconditional submission and dedication to the
goal of renewed, collective self-fashioning—exactly the kind of aggressive affect that
bolstered both Japan’s militarism and the violence of its antimilitarist activism before and during
the war— that Noge’s family, led by Yukie, now tries to extricate itself from its predicament. Albeit a peaceful
corrective, the return to the soil seems in tune with patterns of obsessive mental and physical
behavior that were inscribed in Japan’s wartime catastrophe in the first place. In both cases,
it is about persisting in (re)gaining footing in and recognition by a hostile world, with a
stubborn investment in Japan’s exceptionalism, as is typically justified in what came to be
known as Nihonjinron (the discourse on the Japanese). Viewed as an attempt at heterolingual
address, directed not only at a uniform or predictable Japanese audience but also at a
postwar international public occupied in multiple senses by the United States, the narrative
transition that happens between the first and second part of this “Japanese” movie may therefore be grasped as the
enunciation of a certain redefined geotemporal politics in relation to America. Made very soon
after the war, the film hails the audience as members of a new global configuration— a kind of
“us”—dominated by America and its own version of expansionism and Orientalism in the Pacific.
Ironically, too, this was the period in which the official, U.S.-led Occupation forbade the representation of Occupation forces in
Japanese films: “The American censors tried not only to suppress criticism of it [the Occupation], but also to hide the very fact that
This active
Japan was being occupied at all and that foreign officials were closely supervising the Japanese media.”7
prohibition of reference to a political and military presence meant that (for a filmmaker such as Kurosawa)
the historicity of Japan’s so-called second chance of the postwar years had to be dealt with by
indirect means. To this extent, the strikingly incongruent temporalities of Kurosawa’s film narrative can
be read— irrespective of Kurosawa’s personal convictions and intentions— as a kind of response to this
prohibition, a response that takes the form of a silent decoding of the destinies scripted for the
Pacific in its postwar transactions with the United States and the rest of the capitalist Western
world. First among these postwar transactions (between Japan and the West) is the inducement
of discipline that takes the form of a rationalistic submission and dedication to the work ethic.
From the ashes of the war, Japan was to rise to the status of a global economic power
through quantifiable capitalist productivity (in the form of industry and manufacture). This
phenomenon of a hyperproductionism, encouraged and supported by the United States in its
attempt to arrest the spread of communism in East Asia, was to replicate itself in the emergence
of the so-called Asian Tigers (Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong) in the 1970s and
1980s, and finally, since the 1990s, in the rise in world status of an ideologically capitulating and complicit
People’s Republic of China. Second, even though this magical capacity for work is an indispensable
ingredient in the postindustrial capitalist vision of economic growth, in No Regrets for Our Youth it is
enigmatically associated with another kind of time: the time of the peasant, of agriculture, and of
country life. As has become clear in the case of contemporary China, the demands and rewards
of capitalism always mean the uprooting of countryside populations and massive migrations to
urban areas where work opportunities are more abundant. To valorize the work ethic through an
affirmation of a return to the soil is thus, as Kurosawa’s narrative suggests, to place Japan in an impossible bind: if
Japan and the rest of Asia are given recognition as participants in the global present through
dedication to work, such dedication is granted intelligibility only as the attribute of a nonpresent
time (that is, the attribute of a continuous tradition, an essential Asian-ness).8 The schematization of the
story into two kinds of temporalities, a mere technicality of the plot for some audiences, turns in this manner into a heterolingual and
heterocultural manner of addressing— both in the sense of speaking about and in the sense of speaking to— America. To the
postwar international public, the address enunciates America, as Spanos suggests in his essay on
American studies, as a kind of thinking or language (rather than as a bounded object) whose effects
are felt in the form of an ontological rupture— the enigmatic splitting of Japanese society
between the two temporalities just described. Enigmatic because it is, within the film diegesis, unclear
from where such a splitting could arise: What causes the rupture in the first place? Can the problems of modernity
and urbanization be resolved by a return to agriculture and country life? Can Japan abandon its fascism and
militarism and simply start over again by growing rice? In retrospect, what is being foregrounded in the
narrative transition is the problematic nature of an imaginary effort at cultural recommencement,
or cultural reorigination, under the American-centric circumstances after the war. Considered in this
manner, the supposedly forwardbut slightly awkward-looking image of Yukie on her final return to the village (as she climbs onto the
truck with the help of other villagers) gives us a good clue to Kurosawa’s conception of the problems at hand. As the leader of the
democratic culture movement— a symbol of hopefulness, willpower, and emancipation— Yukie seems rather out of sync with the
villagers, who represent the future yet who are also quite capable of being stuck in bigotry and malice. It is in this complex series of
significations, shuttling throughout the film among personal, communal, national, and international levels of intensity, and
superimposed on one another to produce Yukie’s face itself as a time-image, that we should come to terms with Kurosawa’s
statement “This woman I wanted to show as the new Japan.”9 To sum up, my point about No Regrets for My Youth is that it may be
considered a cinematically mediated heterolingual address, in which the epistemic contradictions and
incommensurabilities of imagining Japan’s contemporaneity in the postwar world in terms of its rice-
growing ritual, its return to a pure, rustic Japaneseness, are plainly acknowledged and staged rather than being
suppressed. How would we respond as the recipients of or interlocutors with such an address,
especially from the point of view of American studies? In the second to last film he made in his career,
Rhapsody in August (1991), Kurosawa dramatizes the problematic of the Japan-U.S. relationship through another, much older
female character, Kane, a grandmother of four teenagers who are spending their summer vacation in her farmhouse outside
Nagasaki, while their parents (Kane’s son, Tadao, and daughter, Yoshie) are in Hawaii visiting an elder brother of Kane’s, Suzujiro
Haruno, who had emigrated to the United States in 1920. The old woman, we soon learn, is a widow whose husband, a
schoolteacher, was among the civilians killed in Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, when the United States dropped the second atomic
bomb on Japan. While enjoying their time together with Granny (even though they do not like her cooking) and recalling what
happened in Nagasaki at the end of the war, the young people receive a letter from their parents with pictures of their relatives on
the other side of the Pacific. Suzujiro, who married a white American woman who is now deceased, is quite ill, and his son, Clark, is
managing the family’s sizable pineapple business. From the pictures, it is clear that Kane’s extended family live the enviable life of
the well-to-do in America. Tadao, Yoshie, and Clark all urge Kane to go to Hawaii and see her dying brother. In an attempt to
persuade their mother, Tadao and Yoshie fly back to Japan, only to find on their arrival that Kane has, with the help of the
grandchildren, already sent off a telegram to the Hawaii relatives, indicating her willingness to visit after she has attended the annual
memorial service for her husband. Anxious that this embarrassing mention of the past might upset the Hawaii relatives and thus
spoil their own business prospects in the United States, Tadao and Yoshie become rather agitated, especially when they hear that
Clark, on receiving Kane’s telegram, has decided to come for a visit himself. The rest of the film shows the three generations of the
family playing host to Clark after he arrives, fussing over making him comfortable, answering his questions about the family and their
grandfather (his uncle), and taking him to visit various sites, including the elementary school playground in Nagasaki where
schoolchildren were killed by the atomic blast, the commemoration ceremony in the village honoring Grandfather and other victims,
and the pond by the waterfall where the children like to spend their time playing (and where Clark receives the news that his father
has just died). We also see Clark having a conversation with Kane in which he apologizes for not knowing what had happened to
her in the past and she repeatedly responds, “It’s all right.” After Clark’s departure, Tadao and Yoshie are about to take off again,
only to notice that something seems to have overtaken Kane’s mind, causing her to act as though she were back in 1945. She
mistakes Tadao for her elder brother and, at the light and sound of a thunderstorm, hastens to cover the sleeping children’s bodies
with white sheets so as to shield them from the glare of what she thinks is the atomic blast. The next morning, a neighbor comes
with the news that Kane, probably seeing how that day’s cloud patterns resemble the cloud patterns on 9 August 1945, has headed
off for Nagasaki to look for her husband. The last series of scenes shows the family members running in the storm to try to catch up
with her. The scene finally ends with Kane forging ahead, her umbrella turned inside out, while the noise of the wind and rain gives
way to a children’s choir singing the song “Heidenröselein” (Franz Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s early nineteenth-century poem of
the same name, translated as “The Heathrose”), the tune that one of Kane’s grandchildren has been trying to play on her old pedal
organ since the beginning of the film. In contrast to the enigmatic temporal transition in No Regrets for Our Youth, the engagement
with the Second World War and with America in Rhapsody in August takes the form of memory. Although, as in the earlier film,
narrative is the key to our grasp of the mise-en-scène, it is less a matter of a progression of external events than a recollection of
catastrophic happenings, a recollection that materializes somewhat sporadically, in the children’s conversations among themselves
and with Kane over the course of several weeks. And even as we become aware of the burden of history that Kane has been
bearing for forty-some years, Kurosawa offers no newsreel footage or direct voice-over journalistic accounts of that history. The
conspicuous absence of such documentary evidence of the original event (reminding us of the absence of any images of the war or
any direct reference to the Occupation period in No Regrets for Our Youth) renders the act of recollection all the more evocative, as
the audience is left to imagine what it was like and what it must have been like. As we visit, first with the children and then with
Clark, a scene of the crime— the playground in the elementary school in Nagasaki where Kane’s husband was presumably killed
together with the schoolchildren, and where the monument of a twisted jungle gym stands as the only visible index to the tragedy of
the destruction— the present becomes foregrounded as the time in which both the characters and the audience must come to terms
with what is remembered. Such foregrounding of the present raises the stakes for the heterolingual address to an acute level.
Following the narrative that results from memory and recollection, the audience must
negotiate its reactions to myriad imbrications: Japan as a victim of the atomic bombs and of
America’s ultimate acts of aggression; Japan’s own record of imperialism and its countless
victims in the rest of Asia; Japan’s self-reconstruction as a pacifist nation since the end of the
war; reactionary Japanese politicians’ denial to this day of Japan’s war crimes; and the history
of Japanese Americans in the United States. By withholding the customary imagistic and narrational reminders, and
by focusing our attention on the time of now, Kurosawa has, I believe, once again opened up a space, one that is, like that in No
the staging of epistemic rupture serves to
Regrets for Our Youth, epistemic in import. Whereas in the earlier film
foreshadow Japan’s postwar existence in a global situation dominated by America, in Rhapsody in
August what is of interest is less the anticipation of geotemporal politics than the portentous yet
mundane question of authority and agency in the aftermath of an unimaginable disaster. How
are people supposed to behave when their loved ones are seized from them by war? Faced
with the aggressor, in this case America, how are an atomic bomb widow and her descendents
supposed to survive? Tadao and Yoshie offer one kind of answer: for them it is better simply to be silent
about the past because the former aggressors, citizens of a superpower, must be treated with
kid gloves; having cordial relations with them is of vital importance to Japanese self-interest. Kane
herself, on the contrary, insists that there is nothing wrong with speaking about the past because there is nothing wrong with
speaking truthfully; in that insistence, which seems to be shared (though perhaps not entirely comprehendingly) by Kane’s
grandchildren, we find a refreshing alternative to the unctuous and obsequious attitudes personified by her son and daughter. Even
so, Kane’s memory is thrust into a new dimension of complexity by the arrival of Clark. The pain she has been enduring for forty-
some years is now unexpectedly brought into sharp focus and subjected to the gaze of an outsider who is, moreover, not just an
American but also a blood relative. Clark is, strictly speaking, a cultural as well as biological hybrid, and his status as half-Japanese
and half-American can perhaps be read as an allegory of the inextricably entwined fates of Japan and America in the postwar era.
(Entirely left out of Kurosawa’s and the Japanese characters’ purviews is the ugly history of the U.S. government’s internment of
Japanese American citizens during the war.) Be this as it may, Clark’s visit to the Japanese village and its inhabitants is nothing
short of a dramatic entrance, the kind of fictional design that is aimed at or has the potential of bringing about something significant.
What exactly is it? If Clark is a stand-in for “ethnic America,” what does his brief appearance accomplish? Clark’s sojourn makes it
impossible not to think of Rhapsody in August as a film about mourning. It is as though Kane’s memory, which has hitherto been
somewhat blurry (as she at first seems to have forgotten, or so she claims, even about her elder brother in Hawaii), is now— if I may
use a term from film technology— remastered with Clark’s entry. As her personal loss and suffering acquire the effects of a restored
and enhanced film, which has reemerged in its full sensorial immediacy from the fog of old age and antiquated domestic existence,
the act of recollection takes on the significance of an inimitable cinematic handling of the past. Yet even as the audience is, like her
grandchildren, drawn sympathetically into the mournfulness of Kane’s life story, the knowledge of Japan’s imperial aggression
against its neighbors also looms. For a scholar of Chinese descent such as myself, the compassion Kurosawa so clearly bestows on
the victims of Nagasaki is controverted by the film’s silence on Japan’s war crimes in China, Korea, and southeast Asia.10 In this
respect, is not the film ironically a bit like Tadao and Yoshie, its most callous characters? What could be the rationale for its
muteness about the past? The ineluctability of this kind of antagonistic, rather than comfortable or harmonious, reaction among
members of the film’s audience is, I believe, exactly what lies at the core of Sakai’s proposal of the heterolingual address: How to
speak responsibly and nonexclusively to the element of the genuinely foreign or alien in our midst? By extension, this question
would have to involve not only the demographics of the audience (Japanese, American, Chinese, Korean, men, women, children,
and so forth) but also what may come across as politically objectionable or inappropriate language, as for instance the language of a
film. In the case of a film about a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, how are we to deal with the existence and eruption of obviously
irreconcilable perspectives, such as those stemming from Japanese national chauvinism, on the one hand, and, on the other, our
knowledge of Japan’s criminal imperialist behavior during the Second World War? The ingenuity of Kurosawa’s handling of this
impasse may be glimpsed in several sets of speeches and exchanges within the diegesis. In an early scene, when the
grandchildren suspect that Kane will not want to go to Hawaii because of the way her husband died, Kane clarifies that she does not
particularly “like or dislike America” because of what happened, and that rather, “war is to blame.” She reiterates this attitude toward
war later, when she hears Yoshie scolding her son for writing that awkward telegram to the Hawaii relatives. Taking responsibility for
the telegram, Kane lashes out, “They
claim they dropped the flash to stop war. It’s already been forty-five
years now. But the flash hasn’t stopped war. They’re still killing people! But you know . . . war is
to blame. People do anything . . . just to win a war. Sooner or later, it will be the ruin of all of us.”
Even in English translation, these simple words are striking in the manner they move from the specific to the general, through the
semantic shifts introduced in the third-person plural pronoun, “they.”11 In its collective anonymity, “they” is provocative in this
context precisely because it is ambiguous— and ambivalent. While the word does refer straightforwardly, at first, to Americans
insofar as they were the ones who dropped the flash, the perspective of Kane’s speech steadily broadens to become a criticism of
anyone who supports fighting a war in order to be triumphant and supremacist: “They’re still killing people! . . . People do anything . .
. just to win a war.” If the identifiable “they” returns us to a nameable other— Japan’s national enemy who victimized innocent
Japanese (and other) citizens— the anonymous “people” signals rather a general denunciation of war itself, whoever the instigator
might be. To put it differently, if “they” remains (localized in or as) the United States, Kane’s statement can be interpreted as an
anguished rejection of the national enemy, an entity based on the clearly set boundary between “us” and “them”: since “they” killed
“our” people, we must continue to condemn them. Mourning the dead, in this instance, would amount to a tribal ritual, one that
insists on not forgiving or forgetting one’s own condi tion of being injured, and the attendant act of recollection would serve the
purpose of reinstating that boundary between us and them so as to avenge those of our own who have been sacrificed. (The
characters Shylock and Shin-ae, as discussed in chapter 5, furnish good examples of this type of mourning and avenging behavior.)
Once the notion of “they” is detached from a particular name to become simply “people,” however, Kane’s statements take on a
decidedly different kind of connotation: all those who, like the Americans, provide justifications for the atomic attack (that it would not
only end the war but also end war) are precisely those who will continue waging war and killing people indefinitely. Instead of
invoking a definitive boundary between us and them as adversaries based on national, cultural, or other types of identities, Kane’s
statements problematize war itself by pointing to the hypocrisy and delusion of its perpetrators (those who always insist on giving
war yet another round of reasoning, yet another chance). Equally remarkable is the exchange that occurs between Kane and Clark
as they sit outside her house under the moonlight. Contrary to Tadao and Yoshie’s fears, not only are Clark and his family not
offended by the reminder of what happened in Nagasaki, but his father also immediately sent him on a visit so that he can do
whatever he can to help his aunt. As he sits face to face with Kane, this is what they say to each other: Clark: I am terribly sorry for
not knowing about Uncle. I’m really sorry. Kane: That’s all right. Clark: You were born and live in Nagasaki. And still, we didn’t
realize it. That was wrong of us. We were wrong. Kane: That’s all right. In the same conversation, Kane says “That’s all right” a third
time, followed by “This is just fine.” She then finishes by saying, in broken English, “Thank you very much,” whereupon she reaches
out to Clark and shakes hands with him. Once again, Kurosawa has exploited these simple words to their full ambiguous capacity. Is
Clark sorry because he and his family had no idea of what happened to Kane, or is he sorry for what the United States did to
Japan? Did he come as a member of the extended family to offer an apology to his aunt, or did he come as a representative of the
United States, to offer an apology to the Japanese?12 Although I tend to agree with the view that there is nothing in Clark’s words to
suggest that he is delivering more than a personal apology to an elderly relative, the historical relations between Japan and the
United States make it difficult to dismiss the loaded symbolic dimensions of his deliverance. This scene is poignant not because of
Clark’s words but because of Kane’s response: “It’s all right.” Is she saying it’s all right that the relatives in Hawaii did not think of
what happened to her husband because they were preoccupied with their own affairs, or is she saying it’s all right despite all her
suffering, because no one in particular, not even an American citizen or a blood relative, can or should be held accountable for the
casualties of that perpetual injunction, our love for war? In Kane’s gracious words, the aggression of identitarian politics, with neatly
divided positions between aggressor and aggressed on the basis of national boundaries, has quietly unfolded (as a paper boat
unfolds into the piece of paper which gives it its erstwhile shape, to paraphrase Walter Benjamin) into a universal refusal of war. (To
borrow the words of Julia Kristeva, “Might not [such] universality be . . . our own foreignness?”).13 This process of unfolding through
pure linguistic ambiguity turns the ordinary speeches and exchanges in this film into examples of profound heterolinguality, wherein
the lifelong sorrow of an elderly widow, speaking only Japanese and residing in the countryside, transforms itself into a sophisticated
pacifist, cosmopolitan address. In this transformation, mourning becomes a fore-giving and an embrace: even those who have
inflicted irreparable damage on one are offered release from their guilt. Perhaps this is the reason the film ends the way it does, with
all the characters running after Kane in the torrential rain. In their intensity and harshness, the elements strike like an invincible
enemy, against whom human resistance by means of a feeble umbrella seems laughable. Yet the film concludes not with the rain
stopping or with the characters finding shelter. Instead, after showing various characters slipping and falling on their run, the film
concludes when Kane’s umbrella has so completely collapsed that it might as well be given up. As she persists by inching forward,
her body drenched and exposed in the midst of the downpour, her fragile defense against nature’s onslaught becoming utterly
useless, the noise of the wind and rain is replaced by children’s voices singing these lyrics of the Schubert song: And the boy a rose
did see, a rose standing in the field. Blooming in innocence, Awed by the color it did yield. A never-ending fascination For the
crimson color of the rose standing in the field. 14 Is Kane not precisely the bright red rose standing in the field (like the one seen by
her little grandson and Clark outside the place of the memorial service for the atomic bomb victims), whose life force demonstrates
that war-like defenses are things that cannot and will not last?15 In his study of postwar world cinema, Gilles Deleuze writes that
Kurosawa is a director whose films are not so much about arriving at meaningful actions in response to a given situation as about
discovering large metaphysical questions deeply hidden therein. Deleuze also comments that in Kurosawa’s stories, no flight tends
to be possible.16 The way Rhapsody in August ends is certainly not a flight in the sense of an escape from the situation; at the
In the transcendence of war as
same time, it unsettles Deleuze’s conclusion, I think, with something rhapsodic.
allegorized by Kane— war not simply in the sense of reciprocal hostility between warring parties but
also in the sense of defensiveness, vengefulness, and self-aggrandizement against others— we
find an aesthetic improvisation of a type of postcatastrophe authority and agency, which
comes across much less in the form of action and assertion than in the form of letting go. In
their de-monumentalization of (the debt of) memory and makingpossible of forgiving, Kane’s
(speech) acts are no longer simply parts of a stubborn old woman’s recollection of the past. Rather, they
constitute and are enunciated filmically as the potentiality of a heterolingual address, in which we
hear a different “we” emerging, hailing a form of coexistence that is yet to be permitted by
the human world.
Link – Mexican Cartels
Discourse of the Mexican narco-state under siege by cartels instantiates
waves of racialized colonialism by positioning Mexico as culturally inferior
and in need of development – these representations undergird violent
neoliberal apparatuses which makes structural violence and Mexican
instability inevitable
Carlos ‘14 (Alfredo Carlos, PhD Candidate in Political Science at UC Irvine, former Q. A. Shaw McKean, Jr. Fellow with the
School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University, March 2014, “Mexico “Under Siege”: Drug Cartels or U.S.
Imperialism?” Latin American Perspectives Volume 41 Number 2)
According to major U.S. newspapers and policy makers, Mexico is currently waging a “war on drugs.” Former U.S. Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton (quoted in Dibble, 2010) described the situation as “starting to resemble an insurgency”
and compared it to Colombia’s crisis some two decades earlier. The Los Angeles Times (February 19, 2009) sponsored a conference
with the University of San Diego’s Trans-Border Institute at which it suggested that Mexico is “under siege” by drug
cartels. Regular updates on the drug war appear in U.S. newspapers. For instance, on January 20, 2010, the Associated Press ran a story entitled
“7 Bodies Linked to Drug Cartels Found in Mexico”; on March 19, CNN had one entitled “Drug Criminals Block Roads in Mexico”; and on June 23 the
New York Daily News announced, “Mexican Drug Violence Nears Bloodiest Month, President Felipe Calderon Pleads for Country’s Support.”A
simple Google News search will show that Mexican drugs, drug-related violence, and antidrug
efforts are front and center in Mexico and the United States and have become the primary issue
between the two countries. Drug-related violence is not, however, Mexico’s foremost problem,
and the reporting on it obscures the more serious and immediate economic and social problems
it faces. More important, it masks their origin in U.S. economic foreign policy while providing
justification for continued and future U.S. paternalism and domination. The media and the
government in the United States have a long history of constructing and perpetuating this type
of discourse about Mexico. It is linked to discourses surrounding the colonization of the
Americas, the white man’s burden, the extermination of the native population, Manifest Destiny,
the Mexican-American War, racial segregation in the United States, and prejudice against
immigrants. While the current discourse regarding Mexico is different in that Mexicans themselves are concerned about what is going on, the
way it is shaped and manipulated by the media reflects the earlier ones. Gilbert Gonzalez (2004: 7) suggests that the current
understandings and representations of Mexico date back to the 1800s, when “U.S. capital
interests sought to penetrate Mexico.” The original discourse was expressly linked to economic
processes, and the same is true of the current drug-related violence story. In that regard discourse
can be and in this case is extremely powerful. Meta-Narratives and Dominant Discourses Michel Foucault (1972–1977:
120) argues that “discourse serves to make possible a whole series of interventions, tactical and
positive interventions of surveillance, circulation, control and so forth.” Discourses generate
knowledge and “truth,” giving those who speak this “truth” social, cultural, and even political
power. This power “produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of
truth” (Foucault, 1979: 194). For Foucault (1972–1977: 119), “what makes power hold good, what makes it accepted,
is . . . that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces
discourse.” In essence, power produces discourse that justifies, legitimates, and increases it. Similarly,
Edward Said (1994: 14), speaking in reference to literary discourse, says that literature as a cultural form is not just
about literature. It is not autonomous; rather, it is about history and politics. He says that literature
supports, elaborates, and consolidates the practices of empire. Television, newspapers,
magazines, journals, books, advertisements, and the Internet all help construct stories, creating
cultures of “us” that differentiate us from “them” (Said, 1994: xiii). They all elaborate and consolidate
the practices of empire in multiple overlapping discourses from which a dominant discourse
emerges. Dominant discourses are constructed and perpetuated for particular reasons. As Kevin
Dunn (2003: 6) points out, representations have very precise political consequences. They either
legitimize or delegitimize power, depending on what they are and about whom (Said, 1994: 16). Said asserts that a
narrative emerges that separates what is nonwhite, non-Western, and non-Judeo/Christian from
the acceptable Western ethos as a justification for imperialism and the resulting policies and
practices and argues that discourse is manipulated in the struggle for dominance (36). Discourses
are advanced in the interest of exerting power over others; they tell a story that provides a
justification for action. For Said, there is always an intention or will to use power and therefore to
perpetuate some discourses at the expense of others. It is this intentionality that makes them
dangerous and powerful. As Roxanne Doty (1996: 2) suggests, through repetition they become “regimes of
truth and knowledge.” They do not actually constitute truth but become accepted as such
through discursive practices, which put into circulation representations that are taken as truth.
Dominant discourses, meta-narratives (master frames that are often unquestioned [see Klotz and Lynch, 2007]), and
cultural representations are important because they construct “realities” that are taken seriously
and acted upon. Cecelia Lynch (1999: 13) asserts that “dominant narratives do ‘work’ even when they lack
sufficient empirical evidence, to the degree that their conceptual foundations call upon or
validate norms that are deemed intersubjectively legitimate.” They establish unquestioned
“truths” and thus provide justification for those with power to act “accordingly.” They allow the
production of specific relations of power. Powerful social actors are in a prime position to
construct and perpetuate discourses that legitimize the policies they seek to establish. Narrative
interpretations don’t arise out of thin air; they must be constantly articulated, promoted,
legitimized, reproduced, and changed by actual people (Lynch, 1999). Social actors with this kind of power do this by
what Doty (1996) calls self-definition by the “other.” Said (1994: 52) suggests that the formation of cultural identities can only
be understood contrapuntally—that an identity cannot exist without an array of opposites.
Western1 powers, including the United States, have maintained hegemony by establishing the
“other”: North vs. South, core vs. periphery, white vs. native, and civilized vs. uncivilized are
identities that have provided justifications for the white man’s civilizing mission and have created
the myth of a benevolent imperialism (Doty, 1996: 11; Said, 1994: 51). The historical construction of this
“other”’ identity produces current events and policies (Dunn, 2003). Through constant repetition, a
racialized identity of the non-American, barbaric “other” is constructed, along with a U.S. identity
considered civilized and democratic despite its engagement in the oppression, exploitation, and
brutalization of that “other.” Consequently, dominant discourses and meta-narratives provide a veil for
“imperial encounters,” turning them into missions of salvation rather than conquests or, in
Mexico’s case, economic control (Doty, 1996). Dunn (2003: 174) suggests that dominant discourses legitimize
and authorize specific political actions, particularly economic ones. Scholars, intellectuals, and academics
also engage in the perpetuation of discourses and participate in their construction. There is a
large body of scholarly literature that describes Latin America as a “backward” region that
“irrationally” resists modernization. Seymour Martin Lipset (1986), drawing on Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, portrays Latin
America as having different, “inherently” faulty and “detrimental” value systems that lack the entrepreneurial ethic and are therefore antithetical to the
systematic accumulation of capital. A newer version of this theory is promoted by Inglehart and Welzel (2005), who focus on countries that allow “self-
expression” and ones that do not. Howard Wiarda (1986) suggests that the religious history of Latin America promotes a corporatist tradition that is
averse to democratic and liberal values, asentiment more recently echoed by the political scientist Samuel Huntington (1996). Along these same lines,
Jacques Lambert (1986) argues that the paternalistic latifundia (feudal-like) social structure of Latin America provides no incentive for self-improvement
or mobility. Ultimately, the
discourse created by the modernization and development literature focuses
on the “backward” values of the “other” and becomes the West’s justification for the continued
underdevelopment of the region. These interpretations lead to partial, misleading, and unsophisticated treatment of complex political
and economic dynamics, particularly in Latin America. They ignore the long history of colonization and imperialism.
Several notable Latin American intellectuals have countered with a critique of the development literature through dependency theory and Marxist
theories of imperialism. Writing on underdevelopment, Andre Gunder Frank (1969) focuses on exogenous factors affecting Latin American economic
development, among them the penetration of capital into the region and the asymmetrical trading relationships that were created. Celso Furtado (1986)
expands this notion and writes about the international division of labor and Latin America’s weakened position as the producer of primary raw materials
for Europe and the United States. Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto (1979) suggest that the domestic economic processes in Latin
American states emerged from this relationship of dependency. More notably Raul Fernandez and Jorge Ocampo (1974) argue that the Marxist theory
of imperialism
provides an explanation for the persistence of “backwardness” and identifies the
basic contradictions in Latin America as between imperialism and the Latin American nations.
This Latin American scholarship, with rich critiques of mainstream modernization theory, has been dismissed, however, because it comes from non-
mainstream academic and professional circles. Doty (1996: 164) views scholarship as an inventory in which non-Western scholarship is
excluded because it is not regarded as legitimate. While dependency theory and Marxist theories of imperialism were
briefly allowed into the inventory in the late 1980s and the 1990s, they quickly went out of fashion and are now excluded from the canon, easily
dismissed and ultimately illegitimate. Dale Johnson (1981) suggests that these theories were rejected for their determinism—the assumption that Latin
American nations had no agency in their own economic development. Others criticized them for assuming that economic development in its neoliberal
form was a positive goal and still others for providing no prescriptions for change or alternatives to modernization. Scholars critical of modernization
theories, including Theotônio dos Santos (1971) and Fernandez and Ocampo (1974), addressed all of these critiques and argued that these theories
were not in fact deterministic but, rather, merely sought to highlight exogenous historical processes, including the penetration of industrialized capital,
that had affected endogenous economic and political dynamics in Latin America and led to the persistence of “backwardness.” Yet dependency theory
and Marxist theories of imperialism and their corresponding discourse remained marginalized, largely because the scholarship itself is not from an
There is an asymmetrical relationship between
industrialized society or from scholars in the mainstream of their disciplines.
scholars from the North (the United States) and scholars from the South (Latin America, Africa, et al.) and even
between white and nonwhite (American Latino) scholars. The literature, while rich in analysis and highlighting critical issues, is
read by many Northern scholars from an impoverished, reductionist, and simplistic perspective. Discursive authorship is thus not equal, and clearly
Western representations exert hegemony by constructing discourses, representations, and
narratives from underdeveloped regions as illegitimate (Dunn, 2003). It is important, then, to
understand and deconstruct discourses, unmasking their political and economic motivations and
consequences. The goal, as Lynch (1999) points out, is to expose the material and ideological power
relationships that underlie them—in the current case, U.S. imperialism—and to examine
counterhegemonic alternatives. The U.S. Discourse on Mexico The original U.S. discourse on Mexico dates
back to the 1800s, when Mexicans were depicted as an “uncivilized species—dirty, unkempt,
immoral, diseased, lazy, unambitious and despised for being peons” (Gonzalez, 2004: 8). This
discourse set the stage for the creation of what Gonzalez calls a “culture of empire,” in which the United
States made a concerted effort to dominate Mexico economically and subordinate it to U.S.
corporate interests (2004: 6). This narrative depicted the country as a huge social problem and its
people as inferior to Americans, and it continues to dominate U.S. understandings of Mexico.
Sometimes this is done with the help of Mexican politicians themselves, as in President Felipe Calderón’s extension of the hegemonic discourse of the
“war on drugs.” The problem with this contemporary representation is that it oversimplifies the
country’s complex political dynamics and obscures what is really going on. Mexico is suffering
much more from extreme economic inequality, caused in large part by U.S. economic
imperialism and capital extraction (the North American Free Trade Agreement, the International
Monetary Fund, the World Bank), than from drug-related violence. The great migration that has occurred since
1994 has been the result of a decimated economy. While some people may leave Mexico out of fear of violence,
the vast majority of the millions of emigrants have left because of the necessity to feed their
families. The discourse about drug-related violence detracts from the recognition of this fact.
Media coverage of drug-related violence and other negative reporting about Mexico have
steadily increased over the past 10–15 years and skyrocketed in the recent past. The Los Angeles
Times, for example, has dedicated a web site to the series “Mexico Under Siege: The Drug War at Our Doorstep.” It has reported, among other things,
that President Calderón deployed 45,000 troops and 5,000 federal police to 18 states (Los Angeles Times, February 3, 2010) and that there were
10,031 deaths from drug-related violence between January 1, 2007, and June 5, 2009 (Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2012). (One may question the
reliability of these figures, given that on February 3, 2010, the paper had reported 9,903 such deaths since January 2007 and that on August 18 of that
year it had reported a total of 28,228.) As far back as 1997, M. Delal Baer (1997: 138), the director of the Mexico Project at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, DC, suggested that “ skewed
coverage is just another example of how the U.S.
media, average Americans, and their representatives in Congress increasingly subscribe to a
tabloid view of Mexico.” He asserted that “drug and corruption stories have increased every year in the
New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, leaping from 338 in 1991, to 515 in 1996, and 538
during the first eight months of 1997 alone” (138). This was 16 years ago; one can only imagine what the numbers are today as the drug problem in
The U.S. State Department sent out travel
Mexico is depicted more and more as a U.S. national security problem.
warnings in 2009, 2010, and 2011 to all U.S. universities regarding spring-break travel to
Mexico, cautioning them about the increase in crime and spreading fear about Mexico (Gomez, 2010).
The same was done with the outbreak of H1N1, originally referred to as the “swine flu.” Within days of
the outbreak Mexico was under pressure from the world community and especially the United States to close down schools and heavily populated
The association of a disease named after swine with Mexico
areas in order to avert the spread of the flu.
reinforced the “dirty,” “unkempt,” and “uncivilized” representations that Gonzalez discusses. Lost on the majority
of the U.S. media and, consequently, on average Americans, however, was the fact that the outbreak originated in a town where the Smithfield
Corporation, an American company with massive hog-raising operations known to improperly handle its waste, had a factory farm (Morales, 2009). The
CDCP (2010) reported that only around 11,000 people died of the H1N1 virus between April through December of 2009, in comparison with the
average of 36,000 people dying in the United States each year of the “regular” seasonal flu. If the H1N1 flu was such an epidemic, why was no one
reporting on the deaths from the regular seasonal flu in the United States, which were clearly more numerous? A large portion of the U.S. Department
of State web page on Mexico is dedicated to warning Americans about such crime, safety, security, and health issues (U.S. Department of State,
2011). It currently advises citizens to delay unnecessary travel to Mexico because of the drug war. One may expect this type of warning from an
it is disturbing when the negative narrative becomes “common
agency concerned with its citizens’ welfare, but
knowledge” and is included in government military strategic reports. In 2008 the U.S. Department of Defense
published a report entitled The Joint Operation Environment offering perspectives “on future trends, shocks, contexts, and implications for future joint
force commanders and other leaders and professionals in the national security field.” Part 3, Section C, of the report, entitled “Weak and Failing
States,” describes the “usual suspects” in this category—in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Discussing the
concept of “rapid collapse,” it asserts that while, “for the most part, weak and failing states represent chronic, long-term problems that allow for
management over sustained periods, the collapse of a state usually comes as a surprise, has a rapid onset, and poses acute problems.” It goes on to
suggest that “two large and important states bear consideration for rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico.” The discussion of Mexico is as
follows (U.S. Department of Defense, 2008: 35): The Mexican possibility may seem less likely, but the government, its politicians, police, and judicial
infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several
years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on
the serious implications for homeland security alone. Among the many things that make this statement problematic is its simplification of Mexico’s
it assumes that politicians, the police, and the judiciary are separate from and
political dynamics. First,
therefore adversaries of criminal gangs and drug cartels. Jorge Chabat (2002), a Mexican expert on drug trafficking
and national security, challenges this assumption, arguing that the drug cartels buy off politicians and are imbedded in
political structures and institutions. While the Mexican state has sought to clean up its politics and provide more transparency,
historically the political elite and government technocrats have used their positions of power to increase their wealth, turning a blind eye to illicit
operations. The Department of Defense statement is noteworthy because it goes on to lay the groundwork for potential military intervention in the event
that Mexico descends into chaos. The
problem here, of course, is who gets to define “chaos.” The Drug Enforcement
Representing Mexico as a
Administration is already preparing for such an event, maintaining a presence in Mexico (see Toro, 1999).
potential “failing state” in the midst of violent anarchy provides the U.S. justification for continued
economic paternalism. The U.S. media and government have become extremely effective in
representing a strange and threatening foreign culture for the American audience and thus
manufacturing consent as it is considered necessary for action in Mexico, whether it be further
neoliberal economic development or military intervention. It is therefore not surprising to see the rise in negative
reporting parallel the time line of increased U.S. capital penetration into Mexico in the mid-1990s. Deconstructing the Dominant Discourse Since the
Monroe Doctrine in 1823, the
United States has historically operated as if it had the moral high ground in
the international community. It has contrasted its supposed traditional commitment to human
dignity, liberty, and self-determination with the barbaric brutality of the “others” (Said, 1994). This
American exceptionalism has been used to legitimate its domination over other countries. The
notion of “world responsibility” is the rationale for its economic or military endeavors . Because of this, it
may be instructive to look at its track record on some of the issues for which it criticizes other countries. Because the current negative discourse about
there were an
Mexico is constructed around crime, comparing crime statistics in the two countries is helpful in deconstructing it. In 2010
estimated 23 million reported crimes of violence and/or theft in the United States. Of these 1,246,248
were violent crimes,2 403 per 100,000 people, and of these 14,748 were homicides (U.S. Department of Justice, 2010a). A murder is committed every
31 minutes (Watt, 2008). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1.35 million high school students in 2009 were either
threatened or injured with a weapon on school property at least once, while approximately 1.2 million acknowledged having carried a weapon on
school property (CDCP, 2009). In the 2007–2008 school year, a record 34 Chicago public school students were killed (IOSCC, 2008). The proportion of
prisoners to its population in the United States is at an all-time high, with 1.6 million criminals behind bars, more than any other nation in the world; 1 in
every 31 adults is in some part of the criminal justice system (U.S. Department of Justice, 2010b). This proportion of prisoners to the total population is
six times the world average (IOSCC, 2008). This snapshot does not include crimes committed or provoked by U.S. military aggression abroad.3
However, these statistics
clearly do not justify any assertion that the United States is a “failing state.”
Yet such data and observations are used to perpetuate a discourse that jumps to that
conclusion about Mexico. In comparison, Mexico’s rate of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants as recently as 2007 was 8.1 and has only
risen in response to a heavy government crack-down in what Youngers and Rosin (2005) call the “cockroach effect.” The most recent data suggest that
in 2011 the rate was 23.7, still middling and actually low compared with those of other Latin American nations (see Table 1). The United States, with a
rate of 4.8, is barely better than Uruguay and much worse than Canada, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. Compared with other industrialized
countries, it lags behind, closer to “chaos.” While proportionally more people are victims of homicide in Mexico than in the United States, Mexico
is far from being an extreme outlier. It is safe to say that there are many countries in Latin America that have similar if not much
more serious problems of crime and violence, while at the same time the United States faces similar issues within its own
borders. Yet, Mexico is scrutinized much more closely and is the only one viewed with concern
as a possible “failing state.” Furthermore, while more people are killed in Mexico, more people kill
themselves in the United States. Are we to conclude, then, that people in the United States are more self-destructive or psychotic?
No one would argue that U.S. society is disintegrating into chaos because a sizable number of its citizens want to end their lives. Yet similar figures are
used to arrive at this very conclusion when regarding Mexico. Some argue that Mexico is scrutinized because it borders the United States in a post-
9/11 world or because of corruption or the ineffectiveness of the Mexican judicial system. And while these critiques have some merit, the negative
Mexico’s
discourse that dominates is about the violence, not about Mexican corruption or their ineffective institutions. If looked at historically,
violence problem has remained relatively constant over the course of the past 25 years, while
the negative discourse has grown exponentially in this same time period. The condescending discourse
perpetuated in the United States makes it seem as though Mexico were becoming uninhabitable, when in reality this is far from the case. While many
there are still people in Mexico going about
residents do have concerns about the violence and it has in fact affected tourism,
their daily lives. There is a web site called “The Truth about Mexico” that is dedicated to making this very point. It was created by Americans
who have moved to Mexico to live but is now used by Mexicans as well to challenge the dominant discourse. One story, entitled “Mexico Murder Rate
Reality Check,” suggests that, according to the Mexican attorney general in 2009, “ the
drug-related violence has scared away
tourists and prompted some commentators to warn that Mexico risks collapse . . . but the country
registered about 11 homicides per 100,000 residents last year, down from 16 in 1997” (quoted in Brown, 2009). This was at the height of the negative
reporting and was still a decrease of 30 percent since 1997 at that point in time. An article regarding the U.S. State Department’s spring-break advisory
by Frank Koughan (2009), a former CBS News 60 Minutes producer who has been living in Queretaro since 2006, suggests that “consumers of
American media could easily get the impression that Mexico is a blood-soaked killing field, when in fact the bulk of the drug violence is happening near
Mexico is safe as long as you stay far, far away from the
the border. (In fact, one way of putting this would be that
US.)” While there may have been an increase in the numbers since 2009, the dominant discourse at the time was at least as horrific as today’s, even
though the statistics show that between 1997 and 2009 homicide rates had actually fallen and have since grown in proportion to the expansion of the
war on drugs. There has also been strong public pressure and civic engagement regarding the violence. One example is the Marcha por la Paz, a
march led by the poet-journalist Javier Sicilia seeking to draw attention to the government’s militaristic tactics for fighting narcotrafficking, which have
only increased and intensified the violence (Samano and Alonso, 2011). The march in 2011 attracted tens of thousands of participants from 38 cities in
different states in Mexico and from 26 other countries. Yet, the average television viewer in the United States never hears about events like this or
about the people who have been fighting to end the violence. Is there drug violence in Mexico? Yes, but this does not
make Mexico a “failing state.” While people are victims of drug violence in Mexico, in the United States they are also victims of drug,
gang, or random violence and more recently of mass shootings. Both countries experience senseless violence that
stems from complex societal and political dynamics that cannot be easily simplified. It is essential that
the dominant narrative be deconstructed in order to see why such narratives are perpetuated to begin with, which in the case of Mexico brings us back
The importance of the drug-related violence
to continued economic domination. Implications of the Dominant Discourse
story lies in its masking the nature of U.S. involvement in Mexico’s social and economic
problems. It perpetuates a relationship of imperialism between the United States and Mexico
that manifests itself in NAFTA, International Monetary Fund and World Bank lending policies,
and direct intervention in Mexico’s “sovereign” internal politics disguised as economic
development and military assistance to help bring order to Mexico. Mexican politicians have bought the story and
have been willing collaborators with economic development to “help” Mexico. Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari and his Institutional
Revolutionary Party vigorously pursued NAFTA as a mechanism for injecting foreign capital into Mexico’s ailing economy (Castañeda, 1993). Jaime
Serra, a former secretary of trade, and J. Enrique Espinoza, an economist formerly on the council of economic advisers to the president of Mexico,
have fervently proclaimed NAFTA a resounding success (Serra and Espinoza, 2002a), pointing to increased foreign direct investment as evidence.
However, free trade has led only to the enrichment of a few monopolistic corporations in the United
States while the economic situation of Mexico’s people deteriorates (Robledo, 2006). Gilbert Gonzalez and Raul
Fernandez (2003: 54) argue that “ NAFTA is just one of the most recent examples of U.S. domination over
Mexico and how it continues to misdevelop and tear apart the socioeconomic integrity of that
society.” They describe NAFTA as having two purposes: to “guarantee a free hand to U.S.
enterprises willing and able to invest in Mexico to take advantage of that country’s cheaper
wages” and to “deny in various forms and degrees to other economic powers the advantage of
operations in and exporting from Mexico.” In effect this means continuing Mexico’s long history as a
U.S. economic colony, providing cheap labor, raw materials, and manufactures for consumption
in the United States while restricting Mexico’s access to the U.S. market. NAFTA called for the
privatization of state companies and the flexibilization of the labor market through “restrictions
on wage increases, curtailment of vacations and sick-leave time, extensions of workweek, and
increased management powers” (Gonzalez and Fernandez, 2003: 55). This process was supposed to lead to an opening for
investment, economic growth, and access to diversified export markets for Mexico. The impact of NAFTA on Mexican
agriculture has been greater because agricultural production was once the foundation of
Mexico’s national development. State investment in agriculture was reduced by 95.5 percent
and credit made available to the rural sector by 64.4 percent (Quintana, 2004: 251). Disinvestment in Mexican
agriculture has meant that agricultural enterprises are unable to compete with subsidized U.S. commodities. The United States maintains domestic
subsidies that allow it to export corn at 30 percent below the cost of production, wheat at 40 percent below, and cotton at 57 percent below—a practice
known as “asymmetrical trading” and “dumping” and deemed illegal in world commerce (Fernandez and Whitesell, 2008). Serra and Espinoza (2002b)
suggest that this is a nonissue because of NAFTA’s tariff-rate quota system, which charges tariffs for exceeding the import quotas. However,
under NAFTA the tariffs were mandated to be phased out in
Cavanaugh and Anderson (2002) point out that
2008, and even while they were intact the Mexican government declined to collect them. The
outcome has been the disappearance of profitability for Mexican national agricultural producers.
Five years after NAFTA, corn had lost 64 percent of its value and beans lost 46 percent while at
the same time prices of staple consumer goods rose 257 percent (Quintana, 2004: 256). Despite these figures the
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (OUSTR, 2006) points to the growth of Mexican agricultural exports to the United States by US$5.6 billion
during the past 12 years as proof of the success of NAFTA. However, producers continue to abandon agricultural endeavors en masse, vacating 1.6
million previously cultivated hectares (3.95 million acres) in the first eight years of NAFTA (Quintana, 2004: 256). Peter Goodman (2007) tells the story
of Ruben Rivera, who sat on a bench in a forlorn plaza, rather than working on his seven-acre farm. He used to grow tomatoes and onions, hiring 150
workers to help at harvest. Now he doesn’t even bother to plant. He can buy onions in the supermarket more cheaply than he can grow them. A crop of
tomatoes yields less than the taxes. He lives off the $800 sent home monthly by his three sons, who run a yard work business in Macon, Ga. Stories
like this have become all too common. As Quintana (2004: 256) puts it, “ One of the historically great agricultural
civilizations of the world [now places] its food supplies in foreign hands.” Mexico now imports 95 percent of its
edible oils, 40 percent of its beef, pork, and other meat products, 30 percent of its corn, and 50 percent of its rice. NAFTA has resulted in
the “complete inability of the Mexican nation to produce the food required to feed its own people”
(Gonzalez and Fernandez, 2003: 57). In the end, “ free trade” has made Mexico a completely open market for U.S.
products while U.S. producers are guarded against Mexico’s products by subsidies and tariffs.
NAFTA was never meant as a development policy for Mexico or a policy to help cure its social
ills. It was a policy of U.S. economic expansion for the purpose of deepening U.S. hegemony
while allowing the continued extraction of capital. It was promoted by huge U.S. multinational corporations as benevolent
economic development to allow them to integrate themselves into the Mexican market without having to deal with that country’s requirements and
legislative issues. Mark Weisbrot (2004) of the Center of Economic Policy Research in Washington suggests that, had Mexico’s economy grown at the
same pace from 1980 to the present as it did in the period from 1960 to 1980, today it would have the same standard of living as Spain. . . . To have 25
years of this rotten economic performance, you’d have to conclude something is wrong. . . . It is hard to make the case that Mexico’s aggregate
economic performance would have been even worse without NAFTA. Not only has NAFTA not accomplished the growth propulsion its supporters
Poverty in rural areas has risen significantly
promised in Mexico but it has had devastating social costs for Mexican society.
from 37 percent in 1992 to 52.4 percent in 2002, with 86.2 percent of rural inhabitants living in
poverty (Quintana, 2004: 257). NAFTA has left nearly half of Mexico’s 106 million people, 51 percent of
the total population in 2010, living in poverty, causing the mass displacement of workers and
forced migration (Dickerson, 2006; World Bank, 2013). Since 1994 an average of 600 peasants a day (at least 1.78 million people) have
migrated from rural areas, many to northern cities along the U.S.-Mexican border and others into the United States (Quintana, 2004: 258). Migration
means family disintegration and the destruction of the social fabric of Mexico. Many of these jobless displaced workers will try their luck at crossing a
militarized border into the United States. Peter Goodman (2007), interviewing Luz Maria Vazquez, a tomato picker from Jalisco, reports that six of her
brothers and sisters are in the United States, most of them without papers. More than 11 million Mexicans (a conservative estimate) now live in the
United States without documents, and 7 million of them immigrated after NAFTA, between 1994 and 2005 (Passel, 2006).4 Clearly the politics in
Mexico are much more complex than the drug story in the United States makes them out to be. Conclusion The dominant discourse about Mexico in
the United States has a long history and has affected the way Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, and Chicanos are viewed and treated. While much has
The United States legitimizes its
changed since the 1800s, the current discourse about Mexico serves the same basic purpose.
expansionist economic foreign policy in terms of the burden of civilizing, uplifting, and promoting
development in less developed countries, beginning with its neighbor to the south (Gonzalez, 2004:
185). It employs a foreign policy that advances its imperialist interests. U.S. government and
media agencies generate a representation of Mexico that has provided avenues for very specific
courses of action. Promoting a discourse of a “chaotic,” “unruly,” “failing state” has provided
justification for direct U.S. military intervention, especially along the border, now potentially with
armed drones (O’Reilly, 2013), and legitimized the penetration of U.S. capital interests in Mexico at
the expense of Mexico’s own economy and, more important, its people. Even at its most basic level, we
can only call this imperialism. While Mexico has an ineffective justice system, government corruption, and crime and drug-related
violence, these are problems that most modern nation-states also face. In fact, the United States is itself heavily implicated in the drug trade, holding by
far the largest stocks of cocaine in the world and being Mexico’s primary market (INCB, 2008). It is also the largest supplier of arms not just to Mexico
but to all of Latin America (Chomsky, 2012). Latin American countries are working together toward the decriminalization of drugs, which has produced
very promising results in Portugal, while, in stark contrast, ”the coercive procedures of the 40-year U.S. drug war have had virtually no effect . . . while
creating havoc through the continent” (Chomsky, 2012). But the conversation doesn’t revolve around what the United
States can do to clean up its own act; it is about “othering” Mexico. The United States has had a tremendous
impact on Mexico’s internal dynamics regarding migration, unemployment, poverty, and crime. Its economic imperialism has
contributed to the weakness of Mexico’s economy and as a result its internal politics. NAFTA
has stunted Mexican economic growth and led to the mass displacement of workers, forcing
them into job markets that they would not have considered had they had access to jobs with
dignity. For many it has led to migration to the United States, while for others it has meant lives of crime and violence. But no one discusses this,
and it gets no media coverage because the focus is not on the failed U.S.-imposed neoliberal economy but on drug-related violence. This is done
purposefully, since the
story does specific work and is perpetuated because it benefits U.S. economic
interests and works as a mechanism of justification for continued U.S. imperialism. For the most part,
the concerns that the vast majority of people experience the vast majority of the time on a daily basis are not about these drug-violence outrages.
Instead they are economic—how they will pay their bills and clothe, shelter, and feed their families. Even in the conversation about immigration reform,
no one discusses the fundamental right that people have to live and grow in the place they consider home. No one discusses that people choose to
Representing Mexico as a
migrate only when they have no other options. U.S. imperialism has led to people’s having no other option.
“failing state” allows the United States to evade responsibility for creating many of these
problems in Mexico while also providing a powerful story to convince American citizens and
Mexican politicians that U.S. economic intervention in Mexico is necessary. The irony of it all is that
NAFTA continues to be justified through a narrative of a chaotic and violent Mexico needing
economic programs of development to solve its social problems, when in fact it is the
penetration of U.S. capital that has caused many of those problems. The meta-narrative helps
to perpetuate an asymmetrical power relationship between Mexico and the United States. The
dominant discourse provides the veil for this “imperial encounter” to become a mission of
salvation rather than of economic conquest. In the end, the way Mexico is represented in the United
States has little to do with its actual internal political or social dynamics, instead it is a means to
expand and maintain U.S. imperialism in Mexico. Over the past 150 years, one thing that has stayed the same is Mexico’s
position as an economic colony of the United States, a place to go for cheap labor, raw materials, and cheap manufactures for consumption at home.
Focusing on drugs and violence obscures this. While Mexico does have serious issues of drug-related crime, this crime is
not the most severe of Mexico’s problems. Those problems are poverty and unemployment and the country’s inability, for the first time in its history, to
feed its own people. Mexico
is indeed “under siege”—not by drug lords but by U.S. economic interests
—and this has had disastrous social costs for the Mexican people. This is not, however, the discourse we
engage in. That discourse is purposefully absent.
Link – Middle East Instability
The 1AC representations of the Middle East are rooted in binary systems of
exclusion which culminate in violence against the Other who occupies the
devalued position in this system.
Hirchi '07 (Mohammed, "Media Representations of the Middle East," WACC. World Assoc. for Christian
Communication. Online)
This marking of difference is articulated within clear boundaries; it does not tolerate ambiguous, unstable or
hybrid spaces of indeterminacy. According to Hall: ‘Stable culture requires things to stay in their appointed place. Symbolic boundaries
keep the categories ‘pure’, giving cultures their unique meaning and identity. What unsettles culture is
“matter out of place”– the breaking of our unwritten rules and codes’ (1997: 236). This process of purification
legitimizes exclusion, intolerance and racism. It also allocates marginal identities to
individuals who do not conform to the values of the West as a geographical and a
cultural space. In this perspective, symbolic representations are necessary to maintain difference:
‘Symbolic boundaries are central to all culture. Marking “difference” leads us, symbolically, to
close ranks, shore up culture and to stigmatize and expel anything which is defined as
impure, strangely attractive precisely because it is forbidden, taboo, threatening to cultural
order’ (Hall, 1997: 237). Throughout the centuries, symbolic boundaries have been very
powerful in maintaining separation between nations and individuals. Since its first contacts
with the Arab world, the West has developed a set of stereotypes depicting Arabs as
uncivilized and violent. One of the most prominent texts that capture this historical encounter is the 12th century French epic poem
‘The Song of Rolland.’ The Enlightenment, a period during which philosophers ranked societies along an evolutionary scale from ‘barbarism’ to
‘civilization’, enormously contributed to the vulgarization of this ideology. With the spread of colonization during the 19th century, a well organized
scholarship devoted to the representation of ‘Otherness’ emerged as a defining moment in this cross-cultural history. In the United States, a
From 1945 onward, the United States became increasingly
similar ideology evolved throughout the 20th century .
involved with the Arab world and Israel. As a staunch supporter of Israel, America found itself in a difficult position to
negotiate its preeminence in a world of competitive interests. Media corporations took an active role in redefining American cultural and political
agendas. Representation of the Middle East in mainstream American media Many media experts in the United States would argue that American
media cover the Middle East within the worldview of a primarily Western audience. The coverage will thus remain negative and stereotypical
Diplomatic historians
unless a redefinition of cultural differences between the United States and the Middle East is negotiated.
approach U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East from a rational perspective
privileging American interests in the region. Culture, in this context, plays a subordinate role. In this institutional
framework, news media can be seen as a driving force behind political mobilization, both domestically and internationally. The media fosters
stereotypical representations of Middle Eastern cultures and peoples and promote misunderstanding and intolerance in the mainstream American
these negative representations became even more anchored in
culture. Since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq,
the American cultural imaginary. Media apparatuses contribute enormously to the construction of these images and symbols
rather than construct a conceptual model that sheds light on the complex relationship between the media, culture, and the political process. In the
United States, despite the fact that Arabs have significantly contributed to the well being of this nation for at least the last two centuries, negative
representations of this ethnic group abound in scope and intensity. The constructed images manipulated throughout time have delegated Arabs to
second degree citizens, unable to embrace the secular ideals of the Western worldview. In this respect, the representation of
Middle Easterners in the American media is articulated within the framework of a
binary oppositional dynamics where the Middle East is classified as an undesired
space of barbarism and tyranny. As cultural critic Stuart Hall puts it, ‘binary oppositions are crucial for all
classification/establish a difference to facilitate the tasks of organizing systems of perceptions and classifications’ (1997: 226 ). This system
of classification is elaborated to maintain oppositional relationships between the civilized and
the uncivilized, etc. and to create an atmosphere of fear and discomfort to enhance
‘difference’ for the purpose of controlling the Other. In this context, misrepresentation becomes an effective
instrument for advancing political agendas. Throughout the history of the West, negative portrayals have been used to develop means by which
the imperial project can be achieved through visual representations. These representations serve as a popular medium to create a link between
the Imperial eye and the domestic imagination. In France for example, the Colonial Exhibition at the end of the 19th century served to capture the
relationship between the empire and its ‘domestic other’. Representation is a complex phenomenon, especially when dealing with cultural
differences. It engages emotions, attitudes, reactions and tries to control the viewer’s fears and questions. It also promotes a set of cultural values
that respond to the anxieties of the viewer. In this context, the Middle-Easterner in American popular media is defined according to these historical
and cultural paradigms. Besides his barbarism and his violence, he is also depicted as belonging to the realm of emotions, violent savage and
blood thirsty. Mainstream images of the Arab in the American media operate according to a dynamics of cultural distortions; the Arab is always
portrayed as closer to nature than culture, genetically incapable of ‘civilized’ refinements. The concept of ‘Naturalization’ connotes the impossibility
they are imprisoned in a space of stability and of fixed ‘difference’
of Arabs to embrace culture. Therefore,
and meaning. They are beyond history and incapable of embracing cultural emancipation.
Link – Middle East
The aff’s understanding of the middle east is founded upon a racist
otherization which ensures unending warfare and genocide
Nguygen ‘14 (Nicole Nguyen, PhD candidate in cultural foundations of education at Syracuse, MA in international
education from NYU, 1-21-14, “Education as Warfare?: Mapping Securitized Education Interventions as War on Terror Strategy,”
Geopolitics Volume 19 Issue 1)
To begin,portraying education as an issue of US national security relies first on the representation

of a menacing brown Other looming in the dangerous, lawless Middle East. The US state
illustrates the landscapes of faraway places and makes them intelligible to the US public in
ways that support the war machine. The state-sponsored 9/11 Commission Report that details
the events leading up to the September 11 attacks, for example, explains that “the country's
vast unpoliced regions make Pakistan attractive to extremists seeking refuge and recruits and
also provide a base for operations against coalition forces in Afghanistan.” 26 The Report names the
“north-south nexus of Kandahar-Quetta-Karachi … the Baluchistan region of Pakistan … and the sprawling city of Karachi” as
“centers of Islamist extremism.” 27 Moreover, the Report offers that “Afghanistan was the incubator for al-Qaeda and for the 9/11
attacks” and where “Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters have regrouped …” 28 Part of the United States’ “global strategy,” the Report
asserts, must be to focus on the “importance of Pakistan in the struggle against Islamist terrorism” as “within Pakistan's borders are
The Report
150 million Muslims, scores of al Qaeda terrorists, many Taliban fighters and – perhaps – Usama Bin Ladin.” 29
articulates the threat the Middle East region and brown bodies putatively pose to US national
security, especially as vast swaths of land putatively incubate and breed terrorism. Further, the
Report obfuscates the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan by moving in and out of analyses of each country with little articulation of
difference. By collapsing rural Pakistan and Afghanistan into a singular region that breeds extremism, this narrative narrowly locates
and conflates terrorism as originating from Afghanistan and Pakistan and operating indistinguishably through brown bodies.
Flattening the complex histories and politics of each country help to portray the Middle East as
terrifyingly suffused with terrorists. Danger and threat to US security are mapped onto brown
bodies wholesale and without disambiguation. Likewise, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) ran a
‘backgrounder’ information report, “Terrorism Havens: Afghanistan.” 30 This report offers in response to the question, “What was
Afghanistan's role in the September 11 attack” that “thanks to the ruling Taliban – Muslim fundamentalists who imposed radical
Islamic rule on the country – Afghanistan had become a base for terrorists, namely Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda training
camps.” 31 After constructing Afghanistan as a safe place for terrorism to multiply, the CFR Report
celebrates the US war in Afghanistan, arguing that “U.S. and coalition forces still have a strong presence in the
country, where they continue to put down scattered insurgent attacks against the coalition and the government.” 32 This fearful
representation of the rural Middle East – a haven for fundamentalism – centres the security of
the United States’ homeland while creating more vulnerable and more violent situations for the
demonised Other. We see this Bush-era depiction at work again in a May 2012 New York Times
article, which reports that the current Obama administration assumes “all military-age men in a
strike zone as combatants … unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them
innocent.” 33 This framing constructed by the president conflates all brown men and boys in the
Middle East as violent enemy combatants. By this US account, brown men and teenage boys are
indiscriminately marked as “insurgents without discrimination and their deaths were dismissed
as being of no account.” 34 This narrative constitutes all brown men as serious threats to US
security, a conceptual strategy used to justify drone strikes in the Middle East with impunity and
to deny civilian deaths. 35 Popular US media provide few alternative scripts to disavow or
complicate how the US public apprehends the brown Other. Drawing from critical geopolitics, this is the
power of the performative work of discourse: it renders particular hegemonic imaginative
geographies as the singular way of knowing brown bodies and how to secure the US homeland. As Gregory
reminds us, “The war on terror is an attempt to establish a new global narrative in which the power
to narrate is vested in a particular constellation of power and knowledge within the United States
of America” that then “license[s] the unleashing of exemplary violence against [the Other].” 36
These brief but important examples underscore how the US state and mainstream media
describe the Middle East using “danger words” associated with a “chaotic outside,” a threat to
the home, a place portrayed as a “refuge or sanctuary in a heartless world.” 37 In other words, the
manufactured threat of the outside mobilises action to protect and defend the home. Similarly,
Hannah refers to this particular grand narrative as the “ticking-bomb scenario,” which “prompts a
reimagining of the landscapes of everyday life as suffused with an unacceptably high level of
risk” 38 in order to justify various forms of torture and detention without trial. The US defends the
use of these violent measures, otherwise illegal and illegitimate, to the public by explaining that
these practices abate terror and tame these lawless terrorist havens in order to ensure personal
and national security 39 That is, the fearful US portrayal of the Middle East has productive force as
it authorises military intervention to eliminate the threat such barbaric places and people pose.
Link – Miscalculation
Fears of Accidental War are not material but a product of fear of difference
and nuclear hysteria.
Seng ‘02 (Tan See, Prof of Security Studies @ IDSS Singapore, July 2002, "What Fear Hath Wrought: Missile
Hysteria and The Writing of America, IDSS Commentary No. 28, http://www.sipri.org/contents/library/0210.pdf)
Few, to be sure, would doubt the sincerity of Secretary Rumsfeld when he averred last June: "I don't think vulnerability is a (viable)
policy."84 Clearly, Washington's preoccupation with missile defence has much to do with the Bush Administration's concern over
what it perceives as the strategic vulnerability of America to potential ballistic missile attack. Nonetheless, as important as debates
what is equally if not
over whether or not the "missile threat" actually exists are to the study and practice of international relations,
more fundamental is the question of how discourses of danger figure in the incessant writing of
"America" - a particular and quite problematic identity that owes its materiality to textual
inscriptions of difference and Otherness. Missile hysteria in US national security discourse
cannot be simplistically reduced to the level of an ideological explanation - certainly not according to the
classic formulation of Mannheim's. 85 Rather, what this paper has demonstrated is the centrality of difference and
deferral in discourse to the identity of America - a discourse of danger, fear, and vulnerability
posed by potential missile attacks against the US from "rogue states" and accidental or
unauthorized missile launches from a particular "China" or "Russia." The argument maintained here has
been that a particular representation of America does not exist apart from the very differences that
allegedly threaten that representation, just as the particular America of recent lore did not exist apart from Cold War-
related discourses of danger. If missile defence is (as Bauman, cited earlier, has put it) the "foolproof recipe" for exorcising the
national security advisors are the exorcists and shamans
ghosts or demons of missile hysteria, then Bush's
as well as the constructors of national insecurity via missile hysteria. 86 However, the argument has not
been that the Administration, the Rumsfeld Commission, and other missile defence enthusiasts fabricated, ex nihilo, a ballistic
missile threat against the US by means of a singular, deliberate "act," which is what some constructivists in international relations,
conspiracy theorists, and partisan Democrats - an interesting if not motley collectivity - would have us believe. Nor has it been that
through reiterative and
language and discourse is "everything" as linguistic idealists would have us imagine. Rather,
coordinated practices by which discourse produces the effects that it names, a certain
normative representation of America "emerges" - wrought, as it were, by fear and written into
being by missile hysteria.
Link – NATO Alliance
Their faith in NATO enacts a security framework which is bound to a
neoliberal white supremacist policing of global affairs. Claims of NATO’s
neutrality are the result of a view-from-nowhere anthropology that
contributes to a concealed system of global policing
Forte ’12 (Maximillian, Professor of Sociology at Concordia University, “Militanthro: Anthropology and the Study of
NATO and the U.S. Military”, 11/23/2012)
Two articles to which I want to draw attention discuss the important issues of research methodology for anthropologists studying
NATO and the U.S. military. For those who do not have paid access to these publications, I will summarize some of the key points.
Secondly, I will make some additional comments for those interested in pursuing research in these areas. The first article, published
in 2003 in Anthropology Today, is by Gregory Feldman, titled: “Breaking Our Silence on NATO.“ Feldman begins by stating a
while anthropologists had studied and written about the
problem, which starts with his observation that
expansion of the European Union into the former Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe, none had
mentioned the parallel and almost simultaneous expansion of NATO into this same area: “In
contrast to its approach to EU enlargement, however, anthropology has remained nearly silent
about the enlargement of NATO, the most powerful military alliance in history. Why the silence
about an international organization with lethal powers to which the vast majority of European
countries either belongs or will soon belong?” (p. 1) Feldman provides three possible answers for why that is the
case. The first, one that is very dated (likely dating back to around 1991), is that NATO is no longer assumed to be as relevant as
the EU, and that Russia is no longer the enemy, nor is NATO needed given European integration efforts. Unsurprisingly, one
mistake being made here is to view NATO only within the confines of Europe, confines that
NATO itself does not respect. Such a confining European framework, “casts the alliance as
something contained within a bounded Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals in which
the inhabitants share a (teleological) history ‘from Plato to NATO’. ” (p. 1) But, as Feldman commented,
“NATO’s role is evidently no longer to protect Europe from itself. Rather, ‘NATO is there to
protect rich, white capitalist countries (plus Turkey) from poor, brown ones’ as a former student from one
of the latter once noted. NATO’s identity is now constituted in opposition to ‘security risks’ identified in
the South in the form of migration, international drug and human trafficking and terrorism. The
invocation of Article Five shortly after 11 September 2001 accelerated, rather than initiated, this process. NATO’s current
reconfiguration of purpose relies on a discourse of military as essential attribute of nationhood,
in which its member states must repel what is implicitly construed as a ‘civilizational’ threat.” (p. 1)
From here Feldman proceeds to pose two questions that he is sure will and should interest anthropologists, concerning national
identities: “Ananthropology of NATO could begin by addressing two inextricably linked questions:
how does inclusion in NATO regiment debates about national identity in its member states, and
what are the effects of this on those European countries excluded from NATO and who by their
definition as Other contribute to the construction of this identity?” (p. 1) The second answer, or assumption,
that Feldman challenges interested me much more, because it involves the confining and narrow assumptions
that have become part of the mainstream in current Anglo-American anthropology. This
assumption is that NATO policy (and actions, we must add), do not involve “ordinary people”
and are thus for some reason “outside the purview of anthropology/ethnography” (p. 1). NATO is
thus cast as removed from “everyday life”. So what are the problems with this view. To summarize
Feldman’s response, the problems can be listed as: This view neglects the indirect social and economic
impacts on ordinary people as a result of maintaining excessively large militaries designed for
foreign intervention; It glosses over the identification of nation with the military; NATO is not just
a military organization confined to Brussels, but “rather it is a function of socially reproduced
discourses of military, state, nation and even civilization” (p. 2); and, NATO’s effects are
localizable and therefore accessible to anthropologists. The third assumption challenged by Feldman is that,
“NATO precludes ethnography because its Brussels headquarters is even more secretive than
the European Commission. An anthropology of NATO necessitates ethnography at
headquarters, which is not feasible. No anthropologist will gain ethnographic access to the elites
working in Brussels, unlike those who have undertaken ethnographies of the European
Commission” (p. 2) Feldman’s response is that this view is an antiquated one that privileges access to
specific (usually “remote”) locations, rather than being in line with more contemporary
arguments in anthropology that reconceptualize “the field” as multiple, interlocking social and
political formations. Where Feldman came closest to producing a really challenging answer that
opens up horizons, is in pursuing this line of the geographical decentering of research and what
this means for participant observation: “It is not that participant observation is irrelevant or
unnecessary, but in instances where face-to-face interaction does not address the necessary
research question, anthropologists should use alternative methods that focus on non-localizable
sites to expose the culturally produced logic structuring unequal social-political relations” (p. 2,
emphasis added) There is a genealogy here too, with such ideas stretching back further in
anthropology than some students might assume, or might have been told. Feldman, thus cites Laura Nader from
over 30 years ago, who drew on Sol Tax before her, and argued that “anthropologists should ‘shuffle around the
value placed on participant observation’ if they are to study the most important problems of the
world today” (p. 2). As an example, Feldman points to one of Hugh Gusterson’s chosen field sites, one
which, “consisted of a leading foreign policy journal, International Security, in which…[security
studies] intellectuals published articles between 1986 and 1989, the final years of the Cold War. This
journal was a crucial target of study for several reasons: its contributors’ status and influence, its mediating
position between academia and government foreign policy circles, the prestigious universities
that support it, its mix of theoretical and policy-oriented articles, and its acclaimed coverage of
the nuclear arms race and the global balance of power. A range of geographically disparate but
highly influential actors converged on the pages of International Security…” (p. 2) Those who would
especially appreciate this line of argument are those engaged in what is varyingly called virtual
ethnography, cyber anthropology, or digital studies, and even media studies (see for example Elizabeth
Bird’s The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World, which takes to task the conventional meanings of ethnography, and
even disputes the concept of an “audience”).
Link – North Korea
Their construction of North Korea as a hostile threat makes their impacts
self-actualizing
Cumings ‘15 (Bruce, distinguished service professor in history at the University of Chicago, “Getting North Korea wrong,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 71(4)p. 64–76)
Across the American political spectrum, the general view of North Korea is that it is an evil
regime; Bush was not alone in that regard. Perhaps it is this view that inhibits serious investigative reporting
and debate on North Korea. That deficiency, in turn, means that even the highest officials often
know next to nothing about their North Korean adversary. In his recent memoir, former Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta writes about the Korean conflict as if he just discovered it, with a boilerplate description of his visit to Panmunjom that
could have been written 40 years ago. In passing, Panetta trots out a venerable shibboleth from the Orientalist playbook: He
eyeballs an “inscrutable” North Korean soldier across the demilitarized zone, “just as inscrutable as the regime behind him.”
Therefore Washington doesn’t know much about the North—“it is an exasperatingly difficult culture to observe and understand”—
Washington’s “insights into the regime were few and shallow,” and the regime was just
“infuriatingly hard to penetrate.” But Panetta is curiously matter-of-fact in saying that “if North Korea moved across the
border,” the United States would command the South Korean military and defend the South, “including the use of nuclear weapons if
US forces in Korea are ready to “fight tonight,” and
necessary.” Just like hairtrigger protocols for nuclear weapons,
during his tenure the chance of war in Korea was “ever present and imminent” (Panetta, 2014: 274”276).
This is a naive but telling passage. A small Asian country is “inscrutable” and that fact is infuriating:
Power needs to know, and why don’t they let us know everything we want to know? Following the failed launch of a North
Korean longrange rocket, Panetta gave an interview to CNN in Brussels on April 19, 2012 in which he said that the United States
is prepared for “any contingency” when it comes to dealing with North Korea. He told his hosts: “We’re within an inch of
war almost every day in that part of the world, and we just have to be very careful about what we say and what we do”
(CNN Politics, 2012.)
Link – Nuclear Fear
The naturalization of nuclear war is a tool used to generate fear and shapes
the citizen psyche through securitization; Cold war proves.
Masco ‘14 (Joseph, is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago; “The Theater
of Operations”; Duke University Press; 45-65)
Has any nation-state invested as profoundly in ruins as Cold War America? Although many societies have experienced moments
of self-doubt about the future, perhaps even contemplating the ruins that might be left behind as testament to their existence, it
took American ingenuity to transform ruination into a form of nation building. In this regard, t he
invention of the atomic
bomb proved to be utterly transformative for Ameri- can society: it not only provided the
inspiration for a new U.S. geopolitical strategy—one that ultimately enveloped the earth in
advanced military technology and colonized everyday life with the minute-to-minute possibility of
nuclear war—but it also provided officials with a new means of engaging and disciplining
citizens in everyday life. For U.S. policy makers, the Cold War arms race transformed the
apocalypse not only into a technoscientific project and a geopolitical paradigm, but also a
powerful new domestic political resource. Put differently, a new kind of social contract was formed in the first decade
of the nuclear age in the United States, one based not on the protection and improvement of everyday life but rather on the national
contemplation of ruins. Known initially as civil defense, the project of building the bomb and communicating its power to the world
turned engineering ruins into a form of international theater. Nuclear explosions, matched with large-scale emergency response
exercises, became a means of developing the bomb as well as of imagining nuclear warfare (see, for example, Vanderbilt 2002;
Glasstone and Dolan 1977; Kahn 1960). This test program would ultimately transform the United States into the most nuclear-
bombed country on earth, distributing its environmental, economic, and health effects to each and every U.S. citizen.1 By the mid-
1950s it was no longer a perverse exercise to imagine one’s home and city devas- tated, on fire and in ruins; it had become a
formidable public ritual—a core act of governance, technoscientific practice, and democratic participation. Indeed, in early Cold War
America it became a civic obligation to collectively imagine, and at times theatrically enact, the physical destruction of the nation-
state.2 It is this specific nationalization of death that I wish to explore in this chapter, assessing not only the first collective
formulations of nuclear fear in the United States but also the residues and legacies of that project for contemporary American
society. Today we live in a world populated with newly charred landscapes and a production of ruins that speaks directly to this
foundational moment in American national culture (see Stoler with Bond 2006). The notions of danger, preemption,
and emergency response that inform the U.S. War on Terror derive meaning from the promises
and institutions made by the Cold War security state. Indeed, the logics of nuclear fear informing
that multigenerational state- and nation-building enterprise exist now as a largely inchoate, but
deeply embedded, set of assumptions about power and threat. How Americans have come to
understand mass death at home and abroad has much to do with the legacies of the Cold War
nuclear project, and the peculiar psychosocial consequences of attempting to build the nation
through the contemplation of nuclear ruins. What follows is largely a study of visual culture, and specifically the
domestic deployment of images of a ruined United States for ideological effect. I argue that key aspects of U.S.
security culture have been formed in relation to images of nuclear devastation: the constitution
of the modern security state in the aftermath of World War II mobilized the atomic bomb as the
basis for American geopolitical power, but it also created a new citizen-state relationship
mediated by nuclear fear. This chapter considers the lasting effects of nation building through nuclear fear by tracking the
production and ongoing circulation of nuclear ruins from the Cold War’s balance of terror through the current War on Terror. It is not
an exercise in viewer response but rather charts the development and circulation of a specific set of ideas and images about
ultimate danger. I begin with a discussion of the early Cold War project known as civil defense and track how the specific images
created for domestic consumption as part of that campaign continued to circulate as afterimages in the popular films of the 1980s
and 1990s.3 I show that the early Cold War state sought explicitly to militarize U.S. citizens through contemplating the end of the
nation- state, creating in the process a specific set of ideas and images of collective danger that continues to inform American
society in powerful and increasingly complex ways. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001,
the affective coordinates of the Cold War arms race provided specific ideological resources to the state, which once again mobilized
the image of a United States in nuclear ruins to enable war. Ultimately, this chapter follows Walter Benjamin’s call to interrogate the
aestheticized politics that enable increasing militarization and that allow citizens to experience their own destruction as an “aesthetic
pleasure of the first order” (1969, 242).4 Be Afraid but Don’t Panic! The disaster ruins everything, all the while leaving everything
intact. . . . To think the disaster (if this is possible, and it is not possible inasmuch as we suspect that the disaster is thought) is to
have no longer any future in which to think it. —Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster Nuclear ruins are never the end of the
story in the United States—they always offer a new beginning. In the early Cold War period, ruins become the markers of a new
kind of social intimacy grounded in highly detailed renderings of theatrically rehearsed mass violence. The intent of these public
spectacles—nuclear detonations, city evacuations, duck-and-cover drills—was not defense in the classic sense of avoiding violence
The central project
or destruction but rather a psychological reprogramming of the American public for life in a nuclear age.
of the early nuclear state was to link U.S. institutions—military, industrial, legislative, academic
—for the production of the bomb, while calibrating public perceptions of the nuclear danger to
enable that project.5 As Blanchot suggests, this effort to think through the ultimate crisis
colonized everyday life as well as the future, while fundamentally missing the actual disaster.
The scripting of disaster in the imagination has profound social effects: it defines the conditions
of insecurity, renders other threats invisible, and articulates the terms of both value and loss. In
the United States, civil defense was always a willful act of fabulation, an official fantasy
designed to promote an image of nuclear war that would be above all other things politically
useful. It also installed an idea of an American community under total, immediate, and unending
threat, creating the terms for a new kind of nation building that demanded an unprecedented
level of militarism in everyday life as the minimum basis for collective security. After the Soviet Union’s
first nuclear detonation in 1949, U.S. policy makers committed themselves to a new geopolitical strategy that would ultimately
dominate American foreign policy for the remainder of the twentieth century. The policy of containment, as formalized in a report to
the president by the National Security Council, known as nsc 68, proposed as a response to the Soviet bomb a total mobilization of
wartime posture
American society based on the experience of World War II.6 nsc 68 articulates the terms of a permanent
funded by an ever-expanding domestic economy, transforming consumerism into the engine of
a new kind of militarized geopolitics. The report identifies internal dissent as perhaps the greatest threat to the project
of the Cold War and calls for a new campaign to discipline citizens in preparation for life under the constant shadow of nuclear war.
nuclear fear was immediately understood to be not only the basis of
Thus, in the White House,
American military power, but also a means of installing a new normative reality in the United
States, one that could consolidate political power at the federal level by reaching into the
internal lives of citizens. Nuclear danger became a complex new political ideology, both mobilizing
the global project of the Cold War (fought increasingly on covert terms internationally) and installing a powerful means of
controlling domestic political debates about the terms of security. By focusing Ameri- cans on an imminent end of the nation-state,
federal authorities mobilized the bomb to create the Cold War consensus of anticommunism, capitalism, and military expansion.
Defense intellectuals in the administrations of presidents Harry Tru- man and Dwight Eisenhower, however, worried that nuclear
terror could become so profound under the terms of an escalating nuclear arms race that the American public would be unwilling to
support the military and geopolitical agenda of the Cold War.7 The immediate challenge, as U.S. nuclear strategists saw it, was to
avoid both an apathetic public (which might just give up when faced with the emerging destructive power of the Soviet nuclear
arsenal) and a terrorized public (which would be unable to function cognitively) (Oakes 1994, 34; see also George 2003). For
example, a highly influential civil defense study from 1952, Report of the Project East River, argued that civilian response to a
nuclear attack would be all-out panic and mob behavior: American society, the report concluded, would not only be at war with the
A
Soviets but also at war with itself as society violently broke down along race and class lines (Associated Universities 1952).
long Cold War consequently required not only a new geopolitics powered by nuclear weapons,
but also new forms of psychological discipline at home. One of the earliest and most profound
projects of the Cold War state was thus to deploy the bomb as a mechanism for accessing and
controlling the emotions of citizens. As Guy Oakes has documented, the civil defense programs of the
early Cold War were designed to “emotionally manage” U.S. citizens through nuclear fear (1994,
47). The formal goal of this state program was to transform “nuclear terror,” which was interpreted by U.S. officials
as a paralyzing emotion, into “nuclear fear,” an affective state that would allow citizens to
function in a time of crisis (Oakes 1994, 62–63; see also Associated Univer- sities 1952). By militarizing everyday
life through nuclear fear, the Cold War state sought to both normalize catastrophic danger and
politically deploy an image of it. Rather than offering citizens an image of safety or of a war that could end in victory, the
early Cold War state sought instead to calibrate everyday American life to the minute-to-minute possibility of nuclear warfare. In
addition to turning the domestic space of the home into the front line of the Cold War (see McEnaney 2000; Elaine May 1990), civil
The civil
defense officials argued that citizens should be prepared every second of the day to deal with a potential nuclear attack.
defense program thus shifted responsibility for nuclear war from the state to its citizens by mak-
ing the enemy public panic, not nuclear war itself. It was, in other words, up to citizens to take responsibility for
their own survival in the nuclear age. Val Peterson, as director of the new Federal Civil Defense Administra- tion (fcda), argued:
Ninety percent of all emergency measures after an atomic blast will depend on the prevention of panic among the survivors in the
first 90 seconds. Like the A-bomb, panic is fissionable. It can produce a chain reaction more deeply destructive than any explosive
known. If there is an ultimate weapon, it may well be mass panic—not the A-bomb. . . . War is no longer confined to the battlefield.
Every city is a potential battleground, every citizen a target. There are no safe rear areas. Panic on Main Street can be as decisive
as panic in the front lines. (1953, 1–2) Panic is fissionable. Indeed, Peterson argued that Americans were particularly “susceptible
to panic” and offered a checklist on how citizens could become “panic stoppers” by training themselves for nuclear attack and be-
coming like “soldiers” at home (V. Peterson 1953, 17; see figure 1.1). Thus, the official message from the early Cold War state was
that extreme self-control was the best way for citizens to fight a nuclear war, revealing a national project to both colonize and
normalize everyday life with nuclear fear. By declaring a war on panic, as Jackie Orr (2006, 14) has so powerfully shown, the
Civil
national security state remade the individual as a permanently militarized, if insecure, node in the larger Cold War system.
defense planners sought ultimately to saturate the public space with a specific idea about
nuclear war, one that would nationalize mass death and transform postnuclear ruins into a new
American frontier, simply another arena for citizens to assert their civic spirit, fortitude, and
ingenuity. At the heart of the project was an effort to install psychological defenses against the
exploding bomb, as well as a belief in the possibility of national unity in a postnuclear
environment—all via the contemplation of nuclear ruins. Indeed, as the Eisenhower administration promoted an
Atoms for Peace program around the world to emphasize the benefits of nuclear energy and provide a positive vision of atomic
science, it pursued the opposite emotional management strategy within the United States (Osgood 2006; Craig 1998; Hewlett and
Holl 1989). The
domestic response to the growing Soviet nuclear arsenal was a new kind of social
engineering project, pursued with the help of social scientists and the advertising industry, to
teach citizens a specific kind of nuclear fear while normalizing the nuclear crisis. The goal, as one top-
secret study put it in 1956, was an “emotional adaptation” of the citizenry to nuclear danger, a program of “psychological defense”
aimed at “feelings” that would unify the nation in the face of apocalyptic everyday threat (Panel on the Human Effects of Nuclear
Weapons Development 1956, 10–11).8 This took the form of the largest domestic propaganda campaign to date in American
history.9 Designed to mobilize all Americans for a long Cold War, the civil defense effort involved town meetings and education
programs in every public school; it also sought to take full advantage of mass media—television, radio, and particularly film. By the
mid-1950s, the fcda saturated newspapers and magazines with nuclear war advertisements and could claim that its radio
broadcasts reached an estimated audience of 175 million Americans each year.10As the campaign evolved, the fcda
turned increasingly to film, creating a library of short subjects on nuclear destruction and civil
defense that were shown across the country in schools, churches, community halls, and movie
theaters. The fcda concluded: “Each picture will be seen by a minimum of 20,000,000 persons, giving an anticipated aggregate
audience of more than half a billion for the civil defense film program of 1955” (Federal Civil Defense Administration 1956, 78).
Thus, a key to winning the Cold War was to produce the bomb not only for military use but also in cinematic form for the American
public. It is important to recognize that the circulation of these images relied on a simultaneous censorship of images from the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. U.S. authorities made available images of destroyed buildings from Japan but
withheld the detailed effects of the atomic bomb on the human body, as well as some firsthand accounts of the aftermath of the
bombings.11 Thus, an immediate project of the nuclear state was to calibrate the image of atomic warfare for the American public
through the mass circulation of certain images of the bomb and the censorship of all others. In this way, officials sought to mobilize
the power of mass media to transform nuclear attack from an unthinkable apocalypse into an opportunity for psychological self-
management, civic responsibility, and, ultimately, governance. Civil defense officials sought to produce an “atomic-bomb–proof
society” in which nuclear conflict was normalized alongside all other threats, making public support for the Cold War sustainable.
Civil defense theorists argued that citizens could achieve this contradictory state of productive fear (simultaneously mobilized and
normalized) only by gaining intimacy with nuclear warfare itself, by becoming familiar with the language of nuclear effects from blast,
heat, and fire to radioactive fallout. Irving Janis, a rand analyst, concluded that the goal of civil defense was ultimately an
“emotional inoculation” of the American public (1951, 220). This inoculation, he cautioned, needed to be finely calibrated: the
simulated nuclear destruction in civil defense exercises, as well as the film footage of atomic tests released to the public, had to be
formidable enough to affectively mobilize citizens but not so terrifying as to invalidate the concept of defense altogether (a distinct
challenge in an age of increasingly powerful thermonuclear weapons, which offered no hope of survival to most urban residents).
A central project of civil defense was thus to produce fear but not terror, anxiety but not panic,
and to inform the public about nuclear science but not fully educate it about nuclear war. The
goal was a micro regulation of a national community at the emotional level. In other words, alongside
the invention of a new security state grounded in nuclear weapons was a new public culture of insecurity in the United States:
figuring the United States as a global nuclear superpower was coterminous with a domestic campaign to reveal the country as
completely vulnerable, creating a citizen-state relationship increasingly mediated by forms of inchoate but ever-present nuclear
fear. Indeed, one of the first U.S. civil defense projects of the Cold War was to make every U.S. city a target, and every U.S. citizen
a potential victim, of nuclear attack. Through the 1950s the fcda circulated increasingly detailed maps of the likely targets of a
Soviet nuclear attack, listing U.S. cities in order of population and ranking them as potential targets. In one 1955 fcda map (see
figure 1.2), the top seventy Soviet targets include major population centers as well as military bases in the United States— revealing
not only the vulnerability of large cities to the bomb, but also the increasingly wide distribution of military-industrial sites across the
continental United States. As the size of the U.S. and Soviet bombs grew and the means of their delivery improved (from bombers
to interconti- nental missiles), so did the highly publicized target lists. Thomas Martin and Donald Latham’s 1963 civil defense
textbook, Strategy for Survival, for example, presented a case for 303 ground zeros within the United States in case of nuclear war:
No one can predict that any one or combination of these cities would be attacked in any future war. Thus, it might appear that we
are trying to know the unknowable, to predict the unpredictable, to impose a logical rationale upon war which is, itself, illogical and
irrational. But such an inference is incorrect. It was shown in Chapter 5 that there are good reasons to believe that a large fraction of
these cities would be attacked in a future war—but what specific cities would be included in this fraction? Because there is no
precise answer to this question, civil defense planning must assume that all could be potential targets. Any other approach is
thermonuclear Russian Roulette played with 100 million American lives. (Martin and Latham 1963, 182) Thermonuclear Russian
roulette. Marking every population center with over 50,000 residents a likely target of nuclear attack, Martin and Latham saw no safe
area in the United States. From New York to Topeka, from Los An- geles to Waco, from Albuquerque to Anchorage— each
community could increasingly argue that it was a first-strike target of Soviet attack. Given the
expanding distribution of the nuclear weapons infrastructure (nuclear material production sites,
scientific laboratories, command and control centers, and military bases) in U.S. territories,
Americans not only increasingly lived beside nuclear facilities but also worked inside them.
Indeed, citizens were informed from multiple media sources that their community was the literal
front line of the Cold War, with Soviet thermonuclear warheads poised to attack.12 From 1953 to
1961, the yearly centerpiece of the civil defense program was a simulated nuclear attack on the United States directed by federal
authorities (see T. Davis 2002; McEnaney 2000; Oakes 1994). Cities were designated as victims of nuclear warfare, allowing
civic leaders and politicians to lead theatrical evacuations of the city for television cameras, followed by media discussions of blast
damage versus fire damage versus fallout, and the expected casualty rates if the attack had been real. In 1955, for example, the
scenario called Operation Alert involved sixty cities hit by a variety of atomic and hydrogen bombs, producing over eight million
instant deaths and another eight million radiation victims over the coming weeks (figure 1.3). The scenario imagined twenty-five
million Americans left homeless and fallout covering some 63,000 square miles of the United States (Federal Civil Defense
Administration 1956; see also Krugler 2006, 126). In the first decade of the Cold War, Americans acted out their own incineration in
this manner annually, with public officials cheerfully evacuating cities and evaluating emergency planning, while nuclear detonations
in Nevada and the South Pacific provided new images of fireballs and mushroom clouds to reinforce the concept of imminent
The early Cold War state sought to install a specific idea of the bomb in the American
nuclear threat.
imagination through these public spectacles, creating a new psychosocial space between the
utopian promise of American technoscience and the minute-to-minute threat of thermonuclear
incineration. It sought to make contemplating mass death an intimate psychological experience,
while simultaneously claiming that nuclear war could be planned for alongside tornados, floods,
and traffic accidents. Civil defense officials ultimately sought to make nuclear war a space for nation
building and thereby bring this new form of death under the control of the state. Here is how one of the
most widely circulated U.S. civil defense films of the 1950s, Let’s Face It, described the problem posed by nuclear warfare: The
tremendous effects of heat and blast on modern structures raise important questions concerning their durability and safety.
Likewise, the amount of damage done to our industrial potential will have a serious effect upon our ability to recover from an
atomic attack. Trans- portation facilities are vital to a modern city. The nation’s lifeblood could be cut if its traffic arteries were
severed. These questions are of great interest not only to citizens in metropolitan centers but also to those in rural areas who may
be in a danger zone because of radioactive fallout from today’s larger weapons. We could get many of the answers to these
questions by constructing a complete city at our Nevada Proving Ground and then exploding a nuclear bomb over it. We could study
the effects of damage over a wide area, under all conditions, and plan civil defense measures accordingly. But such a gigantic
undertaking is not feasible. We could build a city to bomb it. The problem voiced here is ultimately one of scientific detail: how can
the security state prepare to survive a nuclear attack if it does not know in detail how every aspect of American life would respond to
the unprecedented effects of the exploding bomb and the resulting social confusion? But after denying the possibility of building an
entire city in Nevada simply to destroy it, the narrator of Let’s Face It reveals that the nuclear state has, in fact, done just that:
Instead we build representative units of a test city. With steel and stone and brick and mortar, with precision and skill—as though it
were to last a thousand years. But it is a weird, fantastic city. A creation right out of science fiction. A city like no other on the face
of the earth. Homes, neat and clean and completely furnished, that will never be occupied. Bridges, massive girders of steel
spanning the empty desert. Railway tracks that lead to nowhere, for this is the end of the line. But every element of these tests is
carefully planned as to its design and location in the area. A variety of materials and building techniques are often represented in a
single structure. Every brick, beam, and board will have its story to tell. When pieced together these will give some of the answers,
and some of the information we need to survive in the nuclear age. A weird fantastic city. The
test city was also an
idealized model of the contemporary American suburb, and by publicizing its atomic destruc-
tion the state was involved in an explicit act of psychological manipulation. As we shall see, the
Nevada Test Site was the location of nuclear war “simulations” that involved real nuclear
explosions and model American cities destroyed in real time for a national audience. Each ruin in
these national melodramas—each element of bombed U.S. material culture–was presented as a key to solving the “problem” of
But in this effort to control a specific
nuclear warfare, a means of cracking the code for survival in nuclear conflict.
idea of death, the civil defense strategy also forced citizens to confront the logics of the nuclear
state, allowing many to reclaim and reinvest these same ruins with a counternarrative and
critique.13 Thus, real and imagined nuclear ruins became the foundation for competing ideas of
national community, producing both resistance to and the normalization of a militarized society.
But even if the early Cold War effort to produce an “atomic bomb–proof ” society failed, we shall see that the psychosocial legacies
I offer a visual history
of this moment continue to haunt and inform U.S. national culture.14 In the remainder of this chapter,
of nuclear ruins in the United States as a means both of recovering the affective and imagina-
tive coordinates of the nuclear security state and of exploring the lasting impacts of the Cold
War strategy of emotional management on American society in the age of counterterror. “Cue for
Survival” On May 5, 1955, a hundred million Americans watched a typical suburban community
being blown to bits by an atomic bomb on live television (Fed- eral Civil Defense Administration 1955a, 1956).
Many watched from homes and apartments that were the explicit models for the test city, and
saw mannequin families posed in casual everyday moments (at the kitchen table, on the
couch, in bed—or watching TV) experience the atomic blast. Opera- tion Cue was the largest of
the civil defense spectacles staged at the Nevada Test Site: it promised not only to demonstrate
the power of an exploding bomb but also to show citizens exactly what a postnuclear American
city would look like (Federal Civil Defense Administration 1955b). In addition to the live
television coverage, film footage was widely distributed in the years after the test, with versions
shown in movie theaters and replayed on television. Some of the most powerful and enduring
U.S. images of atomic destruction were crafted during Operation Cue and remain in circulation
to this day. Thus, in important ways, the broken buildings, charred rubble, and scorched
mannequins produced in Operation Cue continue to structure contemporary American
perceptions of postnuclear ruins, constituting a kind of ur-text for the nuclear age. As an experiment,
Operation Cue was designed to test the effects of an atomic blast on residences, utilities, mobile housing, vehicles, warning
systems, as well as a variety of domestic items and bomb shelter designs. Linked to each of these objects was a specific test
program and research team drawn from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, Atomic Energy Commission, and fcda. A variety of
civil defense exercises were conducted in the aftermath of the explosion, including rescue operations, fire control, emergency
evacuations by airplane, communication and sanitation efforts, and mass feeding experiments. The test city was designed to
resemble a “representative” American community: it was made up of an assortment of current building styles (ramblers and two-
story brick houses, as well as trailers and mobile homes), a full range of public utility systems (from electronic towers to propane gas
tanks), and numerous types of bomb shelters. There were experiments designed to protect paper records, including a variety of
office safes located across the test city. Over 150 industrial associations participated in the test, ensuring that the very latest
consumer items—cars, furniture, clothing, dishes, televisions, and radios—were installed in the model homes and streets. Hundreds
of civilian participants were invited to inhabit not the pristine pretest city but the posttest atomic ruins: civilians were simultaneously
witnesses and test subjects, serving as representative “Americans” to be tested by viewing the blast and participating in mass
feeding and other emergency operations afterward. The formal inhabitants of Operation Cue were the mannequin families, dressed
and theatrically posed to suggest everyday activities, communicating through their posture and dress that the bombing was an
Operation Cue was designed to appeal to
unexpected intrusion into an intimate, everyday home space (figure 1.4).
a domestic audience, and particularly to women.15 Unlike previous civil defense films, Operation Cue (1955) has a female
narrator—Joan Collins—who promises to see the test “through my own eyes and the eye of the average citizen.” In its effort to
produce a bomb-proof society, the fcda was concerned with documenting the effects of the
bomb on every aspect of white, middle-class, suburban life (a de facto recognition that urban centers could
not be protected in a nuclear war; see Galison 2001). The media strategy involved recalibrating domestic life by turning the nuclear
family into a nuclearized family, pre- programmed for life before, during, and after a nuclear war. Gender roles were reinforced by
dividing responsibility for food and security in a time of nuclear crisis between women and men. Similarly, the civil defense cam-
paigns in public schools were designed to deploy children to educate their parents about civil defense. Normative gender roles were
used to reinforce the idea that nuclear crisis was not an exceptional condition, but one that could be incorporated into everyday life
with minor changes in household technique and a “can do” American spirit. f particular concern in Operation Cue, for example, were
food tests and mass feeding programs. In each of the model homes, the pantries and refrigerators were stocked with food. In her
voice-over, Collins underscores Operation Cue’s focus on women, announcing: “As a mother and housewife, I was particularly
interested in the food test program, a test that included canned and packaged food.” Additionally, food in various types of packaging
was buried along the desert test site to expose it to radiation, and some of the mannequin families were posed as if they were
involved in food preparation at the time of the detonation. Conceptually, the argument was that at any moment of the day—while
enjoying one’s breakfast, for example—the bomb could drop. Laura McEnaney argues that the fcda sought to create a “paramilitary
housewife” (2000, 109), emotionally and materially in control of her home and thinking about postnuclear social life. Formally, the
fcda was interested in whether or not food would be too contaminated to eat in the immediate aftermath of a blast, and how to feed
large groups of homeless, injured, and traumatized people. Within this scheme for crisis management, food was positioned as a
primary means of calming individuals’ anxieties and establishing social authority (111). Informally, the goal was to saturate the
domestic space of the home with nuclear logics and civic obligations and to militarize men, women, and children to withstand either
a very long nuclear confrontation or a very short nuclear war. Food for the test was flown in from Las Vegas, Chicago, and San
Fran- cisco to document the government’s ability to move large quantities of food around the country in a time of emergency. The
fcda report, Effects of Nuclear Explosions on Frozen Food, concludes that “under emergency conditions similar to this exposure,
frozen foods may be used for both military and civilian feeding” (Schmitt 1956, 3), but this conclusion only hints at the scale of this
experiment. Frozen chicken potpies were a privileged test item and were distributed through the test homes as well as buried in
large freez- ers. The pies were then exposed to nuclear blast and tested for radiation, as well as nutritional value, color, and taste.
Thus, while building increasingly powerful atomic and thermonuclear weapons, the security state set about demonstrating to
Americans that even if the nation-state disappeared under nuclear fire, its newly developed prepared foods would still be edible
(making the chicken potpie a curious emblem of modernity in the process). Like these bomb-proof pies, all commodified aspects of
American life were to be tested against nuclear blast, as the state sought to demonstrate not only that there could be a postnuclear
Indeed, documenting evidence of material
moment, but that life in it could be imagined on largely familiar terms.
survival after an atomic blast was ultimately the point of Operation Cue. The mass feeding project, for
example, pulled equipment from the wreckage after the test, as well as the food from refrigerators and buried canned goods, and
served them to as- sembled participants: this emergency meal consisted of roast beef, tomato juice, baked beans, and coffee
The destruction of a model American community thus
(Federal Civil Defense Administration 1955b, 67).
became the occasion for a giant picnic, with each item of food marked as having survived the
atomic bomb and each witness positioned as a postnuclear survivor. Additionally, the emergency rescue
group pulled damaged mannequins out of the rubble and practiced medical and evacuation techniques on them, eventually flying
several charred and broken dummies to off-site hospitals by charter plane. The formal message of Operation Cue was that the
postnuclear environment would be only as chaotic as citizens allowed, that resources (food, shelter, medical) would still be present,
and that society—if not the nation-state—would continue. Nuclear war was ultimately presented as a state of mind that could be
incorporated into one’s normative reality: it was simply a matter of emotional preparation and mental discipline. The mannequin
families that were intact after the explosion were soon on a national tour, complete with tattered and scorched clothing. J.C. Pen-
ney, which had provided the garments, displayed these postnuclear families in its stores around the country. Presenting a detailed
before-and-after photographic record of damage to each figure, the exhibit stated: “These mannikins could have been live people, in
fact, they could have been you.”16 Inverting the appeal of a standard advertising campaign, the exhibit did not make the blue suit or
polka-dot dress the focal point for viewers. Rather, it was the mannequin as survivor, whose very existence seemed to show that
you could indeed “beat the A-bomb,” as one civil defense film of the era promised. Invited to contemplate life in a postnuclear ruin as
the docile mannequins of civil defense, the national audience for Opera- tion Cue was caught in a sea of mixed messages about the
power of the state to control the bomb. This kind of ritual enactment did not resolve the problem of the bomb; instead, it used
nuclear fear to focus citizens on emotional self-discipline. It asked them to live on the knife’s edge of a psychotic contradiction—an
everyday life founded simultaneously on total threat and absolute normality—with the stakes being nothing less than survival itself.
Indeed, although Operation Cue was billed as a test of “the things we use in everyday life,” the
full intent of the overall project was to nationalize nuclear fear and install a new civic
understanding via the contemplation of mass destruction and collective death. Consider the narrative
of Arthur F. Landstreet (the general manager of the Hotel King Cotton in Memphis, Tennessee), who volunteered to crouch down in
a trench at the Nevada Test Site, about 10,000 feet from ground zero, and experience the nuclear detonation in Operation Cue.
After the explosion he explained why it was important for ordinary citizens to be tested on the front line of a nuclear detonation:
Apparently the reason for stationing civilians at Position Baker was to find out what the actual
reaction from citizens who were not schooled in the atomic field would be, and to get some idea
of what the ordinary citizen might be able to endure under similar conditions. This idea was
part of the total pattern to condition civilians for what they might be expected to experience in
case of atomic attack. . . . Every step of the bomb burst was explained over and over from the moment of the first flash of
light until the devastating blast. We were asked to make time tests from the trench to our jeeps. We did this time after time,
endeavoring to create more speed and less loss of motion. We were told that this was necessary because, if the bomb exploded
directly over us with practically no wind, the fallout would drop immediately downward, and we would be alerted to get out of the
territory. We would have about 5 minutes to get at least 2.5 to 3 miles distant, so it was necessary that we learn every move
The total pattern to condition civilians. Physical
perfectly. (Federal Civil Defense Administration 1955b, 73)
reactions to the nuclear explosion are privileged in Landstreet’s account, but a corollary project
is also revealed: that of training the participants not to think in a case of emergency, but simply
to act. If the first project was an emotional management effort to familiarize citizens with the
exploding bomb—to psychologically inoculate them against their own apocalyptic imaginations
—the latter project sought simply to control those same bodies, to train and time their response
to official commands.17 The atomic bomb extended the docility of the citizen-subject to new levels, as civil defense sought
to absorb the everyday within a new normative reality imbued with the potential for an imminent and total destruction. This short-
circuiting of the mind and willingness to take orders under the sign of nuclear emergency reveal the broader scope of the civil
defense project: anesthetizing as well as protecting, producing docility as well as agency. This effort to document the potentialities of
life in a postnuclear environment met with almost immediate resistance. In addition to the mounting scientific challenges to the
claims of civil defense, a “mothers against the bomb” movement started in 1959 when two young parents in New York refused to
participate in Operation Alert by simply taking their children to Central Park rather than to a fallout shelter (Garrison 2006, 93–95).
The widely publicized effects of radioactive fallout in the 1950s, as well as the move from atomic to thermonuclear weapons,
provided ample evidence that Operation Cue was not, in the end, a “realistic” portrait of nuclear warfare.18 Indeed, when
Operation Cue was re-released in 1964, the following text was added to the introduction,
minimizing the claims of the film: The nuclear device used was comparatively small. It had an
explosive force of 30 kilotons, equivalent to 30,000 tons of tnt. Whereas some modern
thermonuclear weapons are in the 20-megaton range— twenty million tons—more than 600
times as powerful as the bomb shown here, and with a much wider radius of destruction. In this
test, many of the structures damaged by the 30-kiloton bomb were approximately one mile
from “ground zero.” With a 20-megaton blast, they probably would be obliterated, and
comparable damage would occur out to a distance of at least 8.5 or 9 miles. They probably
would be obliterated. Thus, as a scientific test of everyday objects, Operation Cue had less
value over time, as the effects of blast, fire, and radiation in increasingly powerful weapons
rendered civil defense almost immediately obsolete as a security concept. In Cold War ideology,
however, the promise of nuclear ruins was deployed by the state to secure the possibility of a postnuclear remainder, and with it
the inevitable reconstitution of social order. The discourse of “obliteration” here, however, reveals the technoscientific limitations of
that ideological project, as the destructive reality of thermonuclear warfare radically limits the possibility of a postnuclear United
States. After the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, U.S nuclear testing went under- ground and the effects of the exploding bomb were
no longer visible. The elimination of aboveground tests had two immediate effects: it changed the terms of the public discourse
about the bomb, as the state no longer had to rationalize the constant production of mushroom clouds and the related health
concerns about the effects of radioactive fallout on American society; and it locked in place the visual record of the bomb. Thus,
the visual record of the 1945–62 aboveground test program, with its deep investment in manipulating public opinions and emotions,
remains the visual record of the bomb to this day. As science, Operation Cue was always questionable, but as national theater it
remains a much more productive enterprise: it created an idealized consumer dream space and infused it with the bomb, creating
the vocabulary for thinking about the nuclear emergency that continues to inform American politics (see figures 1.5 and 1.6).
Thus, the motto of Operation Cue—“survival is your business”—is not an ironic moment of
atomic kitsch but rather reveals the formal project of the nuclear state, underscoring the links
among the production of threat, its militarized response, and the Cold War economic program.
As an emotional management campaign, civil defense proved extraordinarily influential,
installing in American national culture a set of ideas, images, and assumptions about nuclear
weapons that continued to inform Cold War politics and remain powerful to this day. I turn now
to two afterimages of the 1950s civil defense program, each set roughly a generation apart, to
consider the lasting consequences of this era’s emotional management strategy, and to
explore the psychosocial effects of deploying highly detailed depictions of the end of the nation-
state as a means of establishing national community. Afterimage 1: The Day After The anticipation of nuclear
war (dreaded as the fantasy, or phantasm, of a remainderless destruction) installs humanity—and through all sorts of relays even
On Sunday,
defines the essence of modern humanity—in its rhetorical condition. —Jacques Derrida, “No Apocalypse, Not Now”
November 20, 1983, a hundred million Americans turned on their televisions to watch the United
States destroyed by Soviet interconti- nental ballistic missiles (icbms), and a few survivors in
Lawrence, Kansas, negotiate everyday life in a postnuclear environment (see figure 1.7).
Watched by half of the adult population in the United States, The Day After was a major cultural
event, one that refocused public attention on the effects of radiation, mass casualties, and
postnuclear life without a functioning state. Presented as a “realistic” portrayal, the blast and
radiation effects depicted in the film were supported by statements from health experts and
transformed into a moment of national dialog about the physical and biological effects of
nuclear war (Rubin and Cummings 1989). Immediately following the film’s broadcast on abc, the network presented
a roundtable discussion of the film and the current state of nuclear emergency. Public school teachers across the country advised
students to watch The Day After in order to discuss its implications in class, thereby nationalizing the discussion. Even Presi- dent
Ronald Reagan, whose arms buildup and provocative nuclear rhetoric helped instigate the film, watched along with his fellow
Americans, announcing after the program that he too had been terrified by its depiction of nuclear war. In synchronizing a hundred
The Day After created a national community brought together by images of its
million viewing subjects,
own destruction. In doing so, the film also replayed the official program of Operation Cue with uncanny precision and
demonstrated the enduring national and cultural legacy of the 1950s emotional management project. The Day After follows several
idealized Midwestern families, documenting their lives before nuclear war breaks out and then attempting to survive in a
postnuclear world. The first hour of the film is devoted to everyday life in Lawrence (against the backdrop of increasing international
tensions); the second hour is devoted to the brief nuclear strike and then life in a postnuclear environment. The film rehearses the
lessons of Operation Cue with an eerie fidelity: after nuclear attack, the state is absent, and it is up to citizens to step in to provide
order, food, and medical care to survivors. The key difference between The Day After and Operation Cue has to do with the nature
of survival: although Operation Cue argued that life was possible after nuclear attack and promoted the idea that nuclear war was
simply another form of everyday risk (alongside weather, fire, and traffic accidents), The Day After questioned whether life after
nuclear war was worth living.19 The central protagonist of the story, a doctor played by Jason Robards, is shown in the final scene
dying of radiation sickness, collapsed in what might be the ruins of his former home, his wife and children long dead from the attack.
No triumphal narrative of survival and reinvention here. Instead, the final moment of the film issues yet another warning: The
catastrophic events you have witnessed are, in all likelihood, less severe than the destruction that would actually occur in the event
of a full nuclear strike against the United States. It is hoped that the images of this film will inspire the nations of this earth, their
peoples and leaders, to find the means to avert the fateful day. Less severe than a full nuclear strike. Thus, the “realism” of The Day
After is revealed in the end to be a deception—just as was the case with the Opera- tion Cue film a generation earlier—as the
filmmakers are forced to admit that the horror of nuclear war is ultimately beyond the power of cinematic representation. The
simulated realism of the film perfectly illustrates Derrida’s claim that nuclear war is “fabulously textual” because until it happens it
can only be imagined, and once it happens it marks the end of the human archive (1984, 23). As the only “remainderless event,”
nuclear war is thus in the realm of the sublime, ungraspable and subject only to displacements, compensa- tions, and
misrecognitions (28). Thus,
by rehearsing nuclear war in the imagination or via civil defense
exercises, one does not master either the event or its aftermath. Rather, one domesticates an
image of a postnuclear world that stands in for the failure of the imagination to be able to
conceive of the end. This postnuclear imagination is necessarily an arena of cultural work, as
early Cold War officials immediately recognized—one that promotes an idea of order out of the
sublime and often becomes a space of pure ideology. To this end, the consistency of the
nuclear tropes presented in The Day After and the nationalization of the televised event
document the multigenerational power of nuclear ruins in the American imaginary. A full generation
after Operation Cue, filmmakers could rehearse with startling specificity the entire 1950s program of civil defense and provoke a
national conversation about life after nuclear war. The state was no longer needed to enact this national melodrama of destruction
because its terms were already deeply installed in American culture and subject to simple citation and repositioning. The
entertainment industry could now provide the fire- storm and fallout as “special effects,” rehearsing the lessons of nuclear crisis that
a live television audience first experienced in 1955 via a real nuclear detonation in Nevada. This time, however, the ruins were
engineered not to “emotionally inoculate” Americans against nuclear war, but rather to shock them into action during the nuclear
emergency of the early 1980s. Put differently, the Reagan administration’s escalating arms race and talk of “winnable” nuclear wars
(Sheer 1982) produced a cultural return to the images and logics of Operation Cue, mobilized this time as a call to political action
rather than normalization. Thus, the form and content of cinematic nuclear destruction remained largely unchanged from 1955 to
1983, but its emotional project was inverted from promoting the docility of the citizen-subject to mobilizing a national community
before the bombs fall. The Day After reenacted the national melodrama articulated in Opera- tion Cue twenty-eight years earlier with
remarkable precision, but it did so not to produce a bomb-proof society but rather as a de facto form of nuclear critique. Similarly,
activist groups (including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Nuclear Freeze Campaign) used depictions of nuclear warfare
—including targeting and blast damage maps of U.S. cities and medical analyses of radiation injuries—to counter the escalating
military budgets and nuclear tensions of the late Cold War.20 In other words, the calibration of the emotional management project
was no longer controlled solely by the government, allowing counterformulations using the same texts and images that originally
structured the Cold War cultural project. Nuclear ruins are revealed here to be the grammar of nuclear discourse in the United
States—enabling both pronuclear and antinuclear projects— inevitably deployed to articulate the affective terms of national
belonging. For despite its implicit nuclear critique and antiwar message, The Day After continues to mobilize a nuclear-bombed
America as a call to community rather than as a marker of the end of sociability itself. Afterimage 2: Armageddon and Deep Impact
There was a tacit agreement, equally binding on everyone, that the true state of material and moral ruin in which the country found
itself was not to be described. The darkest aspects of the final act of destruction, as experienced by the great majority of the
German population, remained under a kind of taboo like a shameful family secret, a secret that could not even be privately
acknowledged. —W. G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction Questioning the near total silence in German literature about
Sebald finds an “extraordinary faculty for self-
everyday life in the bombed-out ruins of World War II,
anesthesia shown by a community that seemed to have emerged from a war of annihilation
without any signs of psychological impairment” (2004, 11). He attributes this absence of commentary (about life in
the ruins of Dresden and other German cities that were firebombed by the United States) to a collective understanding that it was
Germany that had pioneered mass bombing years earlier, in Guernica, Warsaw, and Bel- grade (104). Thus, the national repression
he interrogates is double—that of life in the postwar ruins and that of a prior position as mass bomber— linking trauma and
destruction as part of the same psychosocial legacy. I suggest that the United States—a country that did not experience mass
bombings in World War II but that did conduct them, using both conventional and nuclear weapons—took an opposite national and
cultural route in the Cold War. For while nuclear war did not occur after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than
The bomb became an intimate part of
repress the bomb, American culture proliferated its meaning and influence.
American popular and political culture, incorporated into a set of ideas, images, and institutions
that were installed in the 1950s and soon functioned outside the direct control of the national
security state (see, for example, Brians 2006; Evans 1998; Sontag 1966). In other words, we live today in the world
made by the Cold War, a global project that engineered everyday life—indeed, life itself—
around the technological means of apocalyptic destruction (see Masco 2006).
Link – Russia Instability
Their characterization of the plan as a maneuver to offset Russian
instability continues a political ethos of Cold War posturing that
guarantees error replication
Crosston ’15 (Matthew, Professor of Political Science, Director of the International Security and Intelligence
Studies Program, and the Miller Chair at Bellevue University, “America vs. Russia: Bringing a Knife to a Gun Fight”,
THE CASPIAN PROJECT: A WEEKLY EDITION FROM THE MODERN DIPLOMACY no. 7, pgs. 5-8)
In South Ossetia, Russia was outraged once more when it was accused of ‘invading’ another country
when it felt it was justifiably responding strongly to unrest and instability threatening its own
North Ossetia (which resulted in Russian peacekeepers being killed according to the UN) and sending an appropriate force
message to Georgia to stop exacerbating the situation between North and South. In
Crimea/Eastern Ukraine, Russia is bluntly pursuing its own foreign policy interests during a time
of political turmoil in a region that was once its own (Crimea was given to Ukraine in the 1950s with an air of diplomatic
indifference as the expected eternal nature of the Soviet Union made the ‘gift’ irrelevant – ie, Moscow would always control it from afar), while
listening to the West say it is trying to ultimately occupy all of Ukraine and possibly beyond. In
each case, when you look back over numerous media, academic, and diplomatic sources, the word
‘imperialism’ factors prominently: Russia’s motivations in each case were not based on national
security interests, but were instead founded on its inevitable need to regain an old Soviet‘
imperialistic’ nature. This Cold War residue even made the categorization and scope of the
conflicts themselves a source of political discord: in the West, Chechnya often became
‘Southern Russia,’ South Ossetia became ‘Georgia,’ and Crimea has now become ‘Ukraine.’ In
other words, time and again Russia preferred keeping situations more case-specific and
minimalized, while the United States (in Russia’s opinion at least) effectively re-characterized the situations
so that they seemed more far reaching and tyrannical in terms of danger and concern. No doubt even
more galling to Russia has been the need to answer such criticism while the United States has pursued decidedly more
aggressive maneuvers on a global scale without interference and relatively minor criticism.
Russia did not interfere when campaigns were launched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russia did not
interfere with maneuvers in Libya and Yemen. What Russia bristles at is when America
characterizes its own maneuvers as somehow being something ‘above’ basic foreign policy
priorities and national security objectives while everything the Russian Federation does in much
the same light is declared ‘neo-imperialist’ or breaking international law. Make note: this is not any lame or
manic anti American diatribe. Russia is not anti-American. Russia is simply first and foremost pro-Russia, just as it expects and assumes America to be
first and foremost pro-America. And here is the tricky part: on this issue, in the eyes of most of the world when speaking privately, Russia is right.
America is the only country that indefatigably explains its positions as being about something
more than just purely American interests. But the U.S. needs to understand that this sermon is being delivered from a pulpit
more and more often to an EMPTY congregation: no one except America believes this diplomatic propaganda. Surveying allies and
adversaries alike reveals nothing but dismissive smirks about the idea that American global
maneuvers are based on higher moral principles rather than on what best positions American
national interests. Again, remember the subtlety: such dismissiveness is not anger about America trying to
leverage its power for maximum output. It is rather irritation at how often America tries to judge
and prevent other states from doing the exact same thing on the regional and/or global stage.
Other countries might not like how Russia expresses its power but they accept those maneuvers, for better or worse, as the way the
geopolitical game still works on the modern global stage of differentiated power capacity. As long as
the United States continues to delude itself on this basic fundamental aspect of global affairs -
envisioning itself as the great preserver of international principles while never supposedly acting
opportunistically or self-servingly - then it will continue to blow a mighty wind on situations like
Crimea while accomplishing nothing. Indeed, Russians have complained about the essence of
this American diplomatic grandstanding for decades, in earnest since 9/11 when they believed
America would be joining them in the global fight against radical Islamic extremism only to be
inexplicably (to them) rebuffed. America has long held pride in the fact that it can and does project
its global power independently when it wants to. It has never, however, responded positively
whenever any other nation tries to do the same, whether it is Iran, China, Saudi Arabia,
Venezuela, or Russia. And for those who think it is alright to ‘constrain’ such nations, keep in
mind that France, Germany, Israel, and India have all complained at times of the same thing.
There is nothing wrong with trying to ‘manage your power brand’ so that it comes across as something more noble and more righteous than pure
complaining about other countries not buying
nationalist desire. When the United States seems to actually come across as
in and wanting the same right to enact its political will just like America, then it underserves its
own true global power by seeming a bit petulant and unsubtle. And doing that, unfortunately, is
why Russia has been so successful in maintaining geopolitical sympathizers outside of Western
Europe when it comes to American posturing. It makes the U.S. look like it is trying to bring a
knife to a foreign policy gunfight.
Link – Russia Politics
Their descriptions of Russian domestic unrest stems from a narcissistic
cold war ideology that makes relations impossible
(Московский Государственный Институт Международного Отношения), Moscow, Russian Federation, pgs. 11-
15)
There is no stronger example of the schizophrenic nature of American foreign policy toward Russia than comparing statements
written in the formal National Security Strategy (NSS) of President Obama with actual testimony given by the Director of National
In 2010 the NSS asserted that the U.S. would endeavor to ‘build a stable,
Intelligence James Clapper.
substantive, multidimensional relationship with Russia, based on mutual interests.’ What’s more, the
NSS called Russia a 21st century center of influence in the world and a country with whom America should build bilateral
cooperation on a host of issues, including forging global nonproliferation; confronting violent extremism;
fostering new trade and development arrangements; promoting the rule of law, accountability in
government and universal values in Russia; and in cooperating as a partner in Europe and
Asia.15 Now take into account Director James Clapper while appearing before Congress in 2013 to
discuss global threats. He described Russian foreign policy as a nexus of organized crime, state
policy, and business interests (let it be noted that all three of these descriptors were said
pejoratively).16 Clapper went on to warn that both China and Russia represented the most
persistent intelligence threats to the United States and that Russia could even face social
discontent (read: political disorder and revolution) because of a sluggish economy, the constraint of
political pluralism, and pervasive corruption.17 At first blush these two accounts seem to offer a
completely incompatible attitude toward Russia. Reading deeper between the lines of the NSS
reveals key words, however, that always trigger contempt from Russian actors in the Kremlin.
The ideal of ‘promoting rule of law, government accountability and universal values’ is not an
olive branch offering Russia the chance to team up with America. This ideal is not being
promoted with Russia but in Russia. To follow that goal up with being a ‘cooperative partner’ in Europe and Asia has
also always signaled to Russian ears an American skepticism about Russia’s ability to be a ‘non-meddler’ . In other words,
the NSS comes across to Russians not as a mechanism to promote deeper co-equal ties
between the two countries but rather as a snobbish slap across the face about how the United
States needs to engage Russia to stop it from getting in its own and others’ way. Clapper’s comments
in some ways garner even more derision from Moscow. Not so much the complaints about centralized power and corruption. Russia
has been hearing these criticisms since Yeltsin first came down off the tanks after the August coup in 1991. Russia has always been
rather dismissive of these arguments. Rather, Clapper’s comments about the possibility of social discontent and unrest, placing that
possibility at the feet of the Russian government because of repression and incompetence, always comes off as a red flag to the bull
of Russian conspiracy theorists: they are quick to see American interference in any and all things that go wrong in Russia. And even
if the more rational voices in Russian political power dismiss conspiracy theories, there is still the obvious interpretation that while
America might not try to personally foment unrest, Clapper’s comments make it seem like instability would be welcomed. The U.S.
government at times can play too fast and loose with semantics: as long as America does not actively try to create discord it thinks it
cannot possibly be seen as a source of such discord. Very few actors around the globe agree with that interpretation, especially
Russians. Tothis day Russians point to Georgia, to Ukraine, to the countries of the Arab Spring, to
Syria, and believe the build-up to the unrest was either directly orchestrated by the United
States or at least subtly fostered by America. To Russians there is no difference between
‘actively pursuing’ and ‘subtly managing’ while to Americans they are complete polar opposites.
This is what allows Russia to take statements about bilateral cooperation and substantive
partnership and see nothing but animosity, mistrust, and manipulation. Indeed, it is surprising there is not
more analysis comparing the U.S. National Security Strategy with the subsequent Russian foreign policy concept that came out in
2013 on the heels of Clapper’s testimony. It affirms the Putin criticism that U.S.-Russia relations will always remain complicated
American identity is
because of fundamental cultural differences. What might be these cultural differences? Namely, that
based on individual wants, racism, genocidal and other extreme forms of violence and thus will
always conflict with Russian identity, which is based on ‘loftier ambitions, more of a spiritual
kind.’18 This was only compounded on September 11th of the same year, when Putin published a letter to the New
York Times:  The UN could collapse and international law would suffer if nations take military
action without UN approval.  Such action in Syria would only result in a total destabilization of
the area and a widening of conflict and terrorism.  Russia is protecting, therefore, international
law rather than the Assad regime.  Many in the world are beginning to see the United States as
relying solely on brute force and that such U.S. reliance has proven ineffective and pointless. 
President Obama’s statement that the United States should act when possible to uphold
international norms was ‘extremely dangerous,’ arguing that all countries are equal already
under international law.19 This amounts to nothing more than posturing presidencies and tit-for-tat foreign
policy, where each side envisions the other as the chief global antagonist while promoting themselves as the cowboy in the white
hat standing up for the less powerful in the world. But it is important to note that Russia’s tit, as it were, came after America’s tat.
Rightly or wrongly, Russia is convinced that America has a global agenda that pushes not only itself as a single unilateral
superpower but also pays special attention to keeping Russia on the sidelines, politically and militarily marginalized. What this de
facto means for U.S-Russia relations is that the highest office in both countries cannot actually be counted upon to inspire new and
better interaction and engagement. Rather, the administrations of the two presidents seem rather intent and eager to only make
things worse. Given the aforementioned section showing how media outlets and academic think tanks also tend to not improve the
situation, this leaves very little room for analysts to carve some balance and fairness into the debate. Despite this problem, some
are indeed attempting to carve that space and deserve greater attention.
Link – Russia (Think Tanks)
Their use of think tanks as a way of predicting Russian behavior
guarantees error replication
(Московский Государственный Институт Международного Отношения), Moscow, Russian Federation, pgs. 3-8)
There are numerous think tanks, both in the United States and Russia, which are deeply concerned about
the state of Russian-American relations. Places like the Moscow Carnegie Centre or the Brookings Institute
in Washington DC are regular go-to places for the media when seeking expert opinion and
analysis. However, these centers have had a decided slant in allocating blame for the poor
bilateral relations to the Russians, with the explanations ranging from the fairly simple to the
rather mystically esoteric. “If America did not exist, Russia would have to invent it. In a sense it already has: first as a
dream, then as a nightmare. No other country looms so large in the Russian psyche. To Kremlin ideologists, the very concept of
Russia’s sovereignty depends on being free of America’s influence. Anti-Americanism has long been a staple of Vladimir Putin, but it
has undergone an important shift. Gone are the days when the Kremlin craved recognition and lashed out at the West for not
recognizing Russia as one of its own. Now it neither pretends nor aspires to be like the West. Instead, it wants to exorcise all traces
of American influence.”2 It
is not difficult to find this Freudian popcorn political psychology today when
it comes to ‘analyzing’ Russian positions. It portrays the United States as the victim of a global
oedipal complex when it comes to Russia: first Putin desperately craves daddy’s attention only
to then defiantly and recklessly reject him, petulantly trying to run away from home. It is important to
remark how most countries around the world would actually find it dangerously myopic and unhealthy to base its own foreign policy
on earning the ‘approval’ of another country. With ease the far more standard approach to foreign policy formulation is to determine
a country’s own national interests within its local security dilemma and craft an independent and fierce strategy that can best
achieve its optimal goals. That normal process, ironically, is often described in America as a ‘shift’ away from craving attention to
exorcising American demons. In reality there is no shift: Russia has always been about Russia, as it expects America to be about
What Russia usually finds so
America, France to be about France, Nigeria to be about Nigeria, so forth and so on.
irksome is that when it does what everyone else does in terms of exercising global power, it is
judged as psychologically unstable or deficient. What the American media outlets and think tank
personalities fail to recognize is how much of this judgment is coming not from explicitly
observable behavior or direct quotes from Russian actors but is placed upon Russia by the so
called experts themselves as they push a decidedly one-sided interpretation. Russia is not supposed to
aspire to be a copy of the West nor should it be allowing particular American influence over its policies. This is not said as anti-
Americanism but rather as simple logic: America would never strive to copy another country and it most certainly would not allow
another country to force-influence its foreign policy. So why should Russia? It is this very simple and straightforward question that
seems to never be asked by what are otherwise august media institutions and impressive political think tanks in the West.
Sometimes this tendency can reach near farcical levels. When Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the Russian parliament’s foreign-
relations committee, received so much media attention here when he spoke about ridding Russia of dependence on America and
even fining cinemas that showed too many foreign films, Western experts needed to recognize the absurd for absurdity. But they did
not. Failure to do so is perplexing given Western analysis always laments the strengthening of Putin’s own presidential power
system and decries how little power sits within the legislative or judiciary branches of Russian government. Thus, it is nonsensical to
highlight parliamentarians as having real impact. But this happens often in America with no sense of diplomatic irony. There also
current
tends to be a failure to focus Russian analysis through the looking glass of reciprocity. What this means is that
American thinking emphasizes how untrustworthy Moscow decision-makers are while
completely ignoring the same Russian criticism lobbed back at Washington. President Putin openly and
publicly discusses his lack of trust in American power and in the specific policy decisions emanating from the White House. It is this
skepticism that supposedly forces his own lack of desire to engage the United States. There are simply too few voices at present in
the West trying to analyze this mindset as a legitimate position. As far as can be determined, the only reason this is not analyzed
more seriously is because the competing alternative – that Putin is untrustworthy and Moscow is the cause of all communication
breakdown – is simply accepted as a de facto axiom. In
short, if the United States does not trust Russia, it is
because of how Russia behaves on the global stage and its untrustworthy history. If Russia
does not trust the United States, that is simply Russian posturing and a case of political
transference, wanting to blame its own selfmade problems on someone else so that it can avoid
any accountability. The problem is how readily this is unquestioningly accepted and how few so-called
Russian experts are willing to step forward and shine a light on such intellectual superficiality. Perhaps one of the worst
examples of this is the over-reliance on ‘insider knowledge’ without actually vetting the source’s
objectivity. The recent exit of Alexander Sytnik as a senior fellow from the Russian Institute for Strategic Research is a prime
example. Upon his exit early in 2015, Reshetnikov unleashed a torrent of information that, while interesting, really does not amount
to more than just gossip and hearsay. Worse, American media and political analysts adopted it almost wholly as fact rather than as
a possibly compromised source motivated to talk badly about Russia: “The Russian analyst’s scathing remarks about the country’s
leadership and about the community of government experts confirm that the concept of Russian supremacy has a strong hold on the
Russian leadership. These supremacist views are not limited to the post-Soviet space, where ‘only ethnic Russians are capable of
creating statehood.’ The West is also seen as decadent and somewhat spiritually inferior to the Russians. The spread of such views
in Russia, especially among the country’s leaders, precludes easy and quick solutions to the Ukrainian crisis, but rather suggests a
relatively lengthy period of tensions between Russia and the West, even if Russian strongman Vladimir Putin were, for some
The tendency is to use personal opinion as confirmation of fact when
reason, to step down.”3 (Italics mine)
it should be recognized as biased material. The only confirmation is the affirming of
preconceived ideas and a particular agenda that undermines any new attitudinal environment
between Russia and the United States. As a consequence, it is easy to find ‘research’
proclaiming Russian goals that have never been publicly disclosed or addressing Putin
objectives that have never been formally issued. This is not to say that Russia is incapable of
having ulterior motives or secret agendas. Truly every country to one degree or another has them. The criticism here
is the propensity in the Russian analytical sphere to assume such agendas and then cherry picking information to affirm the
pure methodological terms, selection bias is rife within the community that analyzes
assumption. In
Russia, leaving those analyses decidedly weak. This bias is only more pronounced when you
leave academically-oriented think tanks/news monitors behind and observe within the corridors
of American power. Traditionally, the focus has been on a decidedly anti-Russian fervor coming from the Republican Party.
However, this analysis would argue that except for a very brief and ultimately dashed Obama ‘reset,’ Russian-American relations
within Washington DC has always been dominated in both parties by a remarkably typical Republican mindset. That mindset
sets a fairly stark characterization: Russia is an aggressive and untrustworthy dictatorship that is
an innate contradiction to American values. As such it will inevitably always be a threat to U.S.
interests and global security. 4 By all indicators, Russia is a threat not just to itself and its immediate neighbors but to the
entire world, masking its own domestic failings and instabilities with an aggressive foreign policy that will never acquiesce to a more
peaceful and cooperative global community.5 Indeed,
in an American political world that likes to specialize in
ambiguous statements and plausible deniability, it is rather remarkable how freely the American
Congress seems to deride Russia: John Boehner: “It is increasingly evident that Russia is intent
on expanding its boundaries and power through hostile acts.” Ted Poe: “The Russian bear is
coming out of its cave because it got its feelings hurt because of the fall of the Soviet Union, and
now it is trying to regain its territories.” Chris Smith: accused a “repressive Russian regime” of “coddling dictators”
around the globe from Central Asia to Syria to Cuba and Venezuela. Trent Franks: After the conclusion of an arms deal between
Keep in mind all of the
Russia and Venezuela, President Putin was called a “thugocrat” engaged in “dangerous alliances.”6
above statements were uttered before the 2014 crisis in Ukraine even broke out. So before the
U.S. Congress received what is has subsequently considered undeniable and irrefutable proof
of Russian aggression in Ukraine, it was already quite prepared to view Russia solely as a
corrupt kleptocracy willfully abusing human rights, powered by an irrational and paranoid hatred
of the United States as the sole driver of its foreign policy.
Link – Somali Instability
Descriptions of Somalia as a rogue insecure state contribute to violent
forms of international governance and disavows ongoing local movements
against the liberal order. This demonstrates the essentialist elitism that
their knowledge production relies on.
Richmond ’15 (Oliver, International Relations prof at University of Manchester, “Decolonizing security and
peace: Mono-epistemology versus peace formation”, Conflict Resolution and Ontological Security: Peace Anxieties,
Routledge, 2015)
In Somalia, long considered in western circles as the most anarchic of places, local clan
governance has emerged through local organizations where the state and international
actors are absent. Internationals see Somalia as subject to most levels of insecurity,
and in particular as a threat to the liberal peace ontology. In one of the longest running failed states in
modern history, informal systems for security, governance, law, economic support and
even representation have emerged through networks of civil, customary, and business
actors in an ‘informal mosaic’ which is forming a new, localized, peace in each instance
(Menkhaus 2006). Menkhaus (2006, p.87) has described this as a ‘radical localization’ of politics via
‘informal, overlapping polities loosely held by clan leaders and others’ also including
elders, the business community, and clergy forming tense coalitions over power,
resources, as well as judicial and law enforcement matters . Indeed, neither internationals
nor the centralized state have provided peace, but local peace formation actors have
been more successful in their own way. Customary systems there have been
instrumental in both war and peace, and equally vital to both . Indeed, Menkhaus goes as far as to
argue that the international system itself is mirrored by the complex system of blood payments, customary law, negotiation, and
force. Such
processes have also actively worked to undermine the revival of a centralized
state, because the state itself is viewed as a potential threat to peace. In turn the
vestiges of state still functioning often seek to marginalize the threat of local peace
formers to its remaining power (Menkhaus 2006, p.76). Often, detailed, formal agreements are made and mediated
between customary elders and district or state officials (as in Ethiopia) (Hagmann 2007, pp.6, 18). Where the state has been absent
this peace formation role has been the only possibility (Hagmann 2007, p.9). It has provided some level of social and material
security, a rule of law, a customary order, supported by elders, society, the business community, and even militias, as also in
Puntland and most obviously in Somaliland. This has arisen through the Guurti (an upper parliamentary house), a legislative and
cultural link between traditional, informal and modern, formal governance without which there would be no rule of law or social order.
It bridges and negotiates in order to maintain peace (Richards 2012, p. 154–155). This has rested on hybrid forms of governance,
incorporating aspects of the modern state with informal, local, historical processes in Somaliland. Menkhaus (2006, p.82) describes
physical insecurity is not
this as ‘without government, but not without governance’. What this suggests is that
necessary matched by existential security, even where a peace process or the
institutions of state are coming into being. The northern assumption that the state is a
vital vehicle for peace does not hold in this case either, suggesting significant
epistemological disagreement. Local peace formation processes across the region, of
course, small scale and little able to deal with direct violence, are actually ontologically
secure in their understanding of how peace may be made, and with what outcome. They
are also unanimous that a centralized state is a threat to both ontological security and their epistemic framework of peace. Neither
has the liberal peace made a great impression, or has much in the way of a hybrid peace or state emerged as yet (despite very
Radically different
significant structural and governmental power lying in the hands of internationals and donors).
ontologies of security for self and others exist in this case at local, state, and
international levels. Homogenization, standardization, liberalization, westernization and
other familiar motifs of peace and conflict resolution and their claims to produce
ontological security through universalism have not impressed and been ignored. Such
patterns of subaltern agency with respect to peace-making are common, though they
often differ in their approach to building a state and a liberal peace or rejecting them . Even
if such processes are not made public or formal they often continue informally or as NGOs that do not want to become part of the
state infrastructure though they are crucial to the debate on peace locally and at the national level (this is the case with the National
Peace Council in Sri Lanka) (Perera 2012). In South Africa a peace architecture emerged at grassroots level as the apartheid
system was being dismantled and a liberal state was being built. Many others have since followed, including Ghana, Kenya, South
Sudan, Togo, and Timor-Leste, often assisted by UNDP support and community forums, women’s groups, track II processes, and
mediators.
Link – South Korea Alliance
The appeal to the status of Middle Power serves to invoke South Korea as a
model of statecraft, in which the colonized nation enters the status of Great
Power. This upholds a code of hierarchy that creates the conditions for
endless intervention
Hughes ’12 (Theodore, KOREA FOUNDATION ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF KOREAN STUDIES IN
THE HUMANITIES AT COLOMBIA UNIVERSITY, “DEVELOPMENT AS DEVOLUTION: Overcoming
Communism and the “Land of Excrement” Incident”, from the book “Literature and Film in Cold War South
Korea: Freedom's Frontier”, Colombia University Press)
For the past ten years, South Korea has been invoked as a privileged example of
developmental success, a model-become-reality for Iraq, Afghanistan, and, eventually,
other sites in the Middle East. A multilayered forgetting enables this instance of exemplarity.
Recall that for Timothy Mitchell the “world-as-picture” stages a colonial European modernity marked by a
“double claim”: that the model or project is always a mere copy, that the world it replicates “must
be, by contrast, original . . . in a word (what we imagine as) real.” For Mitchell, as we saw earlier, “the
effectiveness of this world-as-picture lies not simply in the process of serialization. It lies in the
apparent contrast created between images, which are repeatable, serializable . . . and the
opposing effect of an original, of what appears to be the actual nation, the people itself, the real economy.” 86 Here,
the site of the “original,” which Mitchell proceeds to deconstruct, is Europe. The Cold War extends colonial
European modernity, but with a modification of the picture linked to responsibilization and
de jure sovereignty. Replacing Europe, or what we might more accurately call the Euro-American core, as the
“actual” is a more flexible hierarchization that allows for the advance of postcolonial
nation-state units in the evolutionist world system—for example, by possible inclusion in the
OECD, the expanding G-series, etc. Serialization now enters the picture in a different way. We
encounter a serialized modularity that continuously transforms “copy” into “original,” “model” into
referent for the next project. In the end, we may witness the elimination of this transfer of model to
referent altogether (a transfer, or its promise, that is itself currently the enactment of the global
regime of responsibilization). This staging would involve what Baudrillard long ago designated as
the “hyperreal” or, put somewhat differently, the seamless circulation of Wiener’s “pure information.”
We live in the interstices, in a globalization marked by desires both for the imagining of transferable
reference and for the cybertechnological doing away of reference altogether. The former, like
the nation-state, is still with us, if, in no other place, at least in exemplarity or the imagining of
the example. Nam’s works attempt to contest Park Chung Hee’s articulation of statist, ethnonational developmentalism, which
is itself a continuation of and reaction against the colonial past and U.S. metropolitan representations of its free-world
To figure development as devolution is to make visible the relation between
developmentalist mission.
Cold War developmentalism and the history of Euro-American colonial racism that informs it.
Both developmentalism and colonial racism rely upon an evolutionary narrative. Nam’s attempt to
interrupt the developmentalist imagination involves a location of the “original” in the immediacy of the ethnonationalized body, away
from the exemplarity of Euro-America. The
interrogation of the developmentalist fantasy frame and its
visual hailing of free-world subjects in Nam’s work underscores the importance of appropriations
of Hollywood-style backdrops, the imagining of the South Korean present landscape as having
developed into a U.S. background populated by South Korean protagonists. As noted above,
such imaginings are easily found in 1950s and 1960s popular culture. Kim Ki-do˘k’s Yongary, Monster from the Deep ( Taegwoesu
yonggari , 1967), for example, provides us with a remake of Godzilla that turns upon the spectacle of an already developed Korea in
full possession of a space program—we are presented with cars, roads, clothes, homes, and suburban spaces that seem very much
in line with what we might expect in 1960s Pasadena or Cape Canaveral. The film and its 1967 audience enter into the space, in the
movie theater, of the future perfect of development—development as an already accomplished fact and as yet to be achieved.
Yongary , in fact, follows statist anticommunism in its portrayal of the monster as something more than degraded other. In a pivotal
scene and in the midst of Yongary’s rampage through Seoul, the child protagonist dances with the monster to the tune of a jazzed-
up version of “Arirang.” Indeed, Yongary and the boy have a special relationship, informed by the trope of the organicist nation—
body (North Korea) has become separated from head, the boy genius, product and future vanguard of the developmental South
Korean state. Body and mind, North and South Korea, unite momentarily and spontaneously, to the rhythm of “Arirang,” jazzifi ed,
modernized, yet ethnonational. I noted above the ways in which the resistance Nam mounts to the Cold War order rearticulates the
questioning of Western exemplarity in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Certainly, Nam’s nationalism coincides, on multiple levels,
with the masculinisms and essentialisms informing both the Japanese imperialism of the past and the U.S. neocolonialism of the
present. What is the relation between the call to overcome modernity by the pre-1945 pan-Asian
imperial subject and the call to do the same by the post-1945 South Korean ethnonational
subject? In Nam’s texts, as in South Korean postcolonial statist-nationalism, this relation makes itself
visible in a certain way: as what is to remain unseen and unspoken. In the next chapter, we will look at the
ways in which the writer Ch’oe In-hun seeks to move beyond oppositions such as colonial/anticolonial, nation/empire, East/West,
and fi rst world/second world, which played such a central role in organizing and disciplining Cold War subjects in South Korea. The
search for an alternative begins with the flight to a “neutral country” in Ch’oe’s 1960 The Square (published during the April 19–May
16 period) and comes to a certain end in his 1973 The Tempest , a much less well-known text that, like The Ugly American , locates
a noncapitalist fantasy frame in a fi ctional country in Southeast Asia. As we will see, it was Ch’oe In-hun who fi rst addressed the
ways in which the
contemporary division system was bound up both with the selective remembering
of the colonial past in South Korea and the visual regime making up the broader Cold War
order.
Link—Taiwan
The 1ac’s construction of Taiwan represents the conventional image of US
geopolitical domination by using crisis management as a policy posture
meant to bolster US national security and its containment policy on China.
The discursive imagery of the 1ac is nothing more than western realism
meant to maintain American supremacy.
Pan 04[Chengxin Pan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Humanities and
Social Sciences, Deakin University, Discourses of “ China” in International Relations: A Study in
Western Theory as (IR) Practice, “A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The
Australian National University” pg 157-161 anthonyjoseph
The ‘China Threat’ Discourse and the New Containment Policy Insofar as “saying is doing,”105 I want to suggest that the construction of the
‘China threat’ comes with a built-in, politico-strategic question with ‘real-world’ consequences—’What should we do about it?’106 In other
words, it is always a clarion call for the practice of power politics, at t he
apex of which is to “maintain American
supremacy in political and economic terms around the globe.”107 This, according to Benjamin Schwarz: 104 Ibid., p. 103. 105 Nicholas G.
Onuf, “Constructivism: A User’s Manual,” in Vendulka Kubálková, Nicholas G. Onuf, and Paul Kowert, eds., International Relations in a
Constructed World, Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998, p. 59. 106 For example, an article in Time magazine begins with: “The Cox report hypes
the China danger, but the rivalry is real and growing. What should America do about it?” Johanna McGeary, “The Next Cold War?” Time June 7,
1999, p. 27. 107 Chalmers Johnson, “In Search of a New Cold War,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55, no. 5 (1999), (Neo)Realist Framings of
Contemporary China 155 means not only that the
United States must dominate wealthy and technologically
sophisticated states in Europe and East Asia—America’s “allies”—but also that it must deal with
such nuisances as Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic and Kim Jong Il, so that potential great powers need not
acquire the means to deal with those problems themselves. And those powers that eschew American supervision
—such as China—must be both engaged and contained. The upshot of “American leadership” is
that the United States must spend nearly as much on national security as the rest of the world
combined.108 At stake here are the vested interests of U.S. national security agencies and their
industrial contractors, for a ‘China threat’ scenario would almost guarantee a surge of U.S.
spending on weapons and increased enthusiasm for the national missile shield.109 In this context, therefore, it is necessary
to focus again on how the creation of the Chinese Other in the ‘China threat’ argument plays an
important role in shaping the power relations between the West (the United States in particular)
and China, and how the containment policy cannot be put into practice without a prior sanction
of the discursive imagery of China as a ‘real’ strategic threat. In a short yet decisive article entitled “Why We Must
Contain China,” American columnist Charles Krauthammer takes “a rising and threatening China” as his starting point of analysis. In
consequence, he argues that “any
rational policy toward” it must “have exactly these two components”:
“containing China” and “undermining its ruthless dictatorship.” Indeed, by seeing China as a
bully and the mother of all other enemies (since “it is sending missile and nuclear technology to such places as Pakistan and
Iran”), he urges that this containment policy “must begin early in its career,” and be complemented by a policy aimed at “undermining its
aggressively dictatorial regime.” To further flesh out his containment strategy, Krauthammer offers such practical options as strengthening
regional alliances (with Vietnam, India, Russia, as well as Japan) to box in China; standing by Chinese dissidents; denying Beijing the right to
host the Olympics; and keeping China from joining the World Trade Organisation on the terms it desires.110 Similar policy advice was also
offered by an article published in The Economist, which anchors its argument in an image of China as “the real source of the current tension” in
Asia.111 The only important difference between the two articles is that the latter is more frank about the underlying aim of the containment
strategy, which is to prolong U.S. military dominance in that region. It insists that “South-East Asian 108 Benjamin Schwarz, “Permanent
Interests, Endless Threats: Cold War Continuities and NATO Enlargement,” World Policy Journal 14, no. 3 (1997), p. 29. 109 Newman and
Whitelaw, “China: How Big a Threat?” 110 Charles Krauthammer, “Why We Must Contain China,” Time, July 31, 1995, p. 72. 111 “Containing
China,” The Economist, July 29, 1995, pp. 11-12. (Neo)Realist Framings of Contemporary China 156 countries should stop averting their eyes
from reality and instead make a more active effort to keep an American military presence in the region. It is unlikely that China would have
challenged the Philippines over the rocky islet it claims in the South China Sea if the American navy had still had its Philippine base.”112
Commenting on these efforts to create and strengthen alliances to contain China, former National
Security Adviser Samuel Berger wrote: “continued rapprochement with India and effervescent U.S.-Japan relations, both fully justified, now are
pursued with more than a whiff of Chinese encirclement.”113 Certainly , the strategy derived from the ‘China threat’
argument is not a monolithic whole of confrontational containment. More often than not,
there exists a subtle, business-style policy of ‘crisis management.’ For example, central to the concerns
of Gerald Segal and David S. G. Goodman in their edited volume China Rising: Nationalism and Interdependence is how to “constitute a
policy framework for managing a rising China.” 114 Bernstein and Munro also shy away from the word ‘containment’ and
prefer to call their China policy ‘management,’ that is, “how can the conflict with China be managed?”115
Nonetheless, what remains unchanged here is a continued advocacy of controlling China. A
perusal of Bernstein and Munro’s texts reveals that what they mean by ‘management’ is almost identical to Krauthammer’s explicit containment
stance.116 By framing U.S.-China relations as an issue of crisis management, they leave little
doubt of who is the ‘manager,’ who is to be ‘managed,’ and where power and authority
should lie. Indeed, for Betts and Christensen, coercion and war are part and parcel of their China management policy: In addressing the
China challenge, the United States needs to think hard about three related questions: first, how to avoid crises and
war through prudent, coercive diplomacy; second, how to manage crises and fight a war
if the avoidance efforts fails; third, how to end crises and terminate war at costs
acceptable to the United States and its allies.117 112 Ibid., p. 11. 113 Samuel R. Berger, “Don’t Antagonize China,”
The Washington Post, July 8, 2001, p. B7. 114 Gerald Segal and David S. G. Goodman, “Introduction: Thinking Strategically about China,” in
David S. G. Goodman and Gerald Segal eds., China Rising: Nationalism and Interdependence, London: Routledge, 1997, p. 5. 115 Bernstein and
Munro, The Coming Conflict with China, p. 203. 116 The main components of Bernstein and Munro’s management policy include: using most
favoured nation status as a leverage to pressure China, supporting Chinese dissident groups, embarrassing China by lending sympathy to Taiwan
and Tibetan exile leaders, maintaining the American military presence in Asia and keeping it vastly more powerful and effective than China’s
military, strengthening Japan and the U.S.-Japanese alliance and, last but not least, courting the younger, more modern generation in China. Ibid.,
pp. 205-221. 117 Betts and Christensen, “China: Getting the Questions Right,” p. 28. (Neo)Realist Framings of Contemporary China 157
Containment policy is as much about satisfying the Western goal of absolute security as it is about deterring China. Thus, as Gerald Segal makes
clear, there is really no substitute for coercive containment, since no alternative to it can meet the need to seek an absolute security guarantee
from China. No one, as he argues, can “count on China’s short-term economic need ensuring a peaceful partner in the 21st century. Hence the
question arises of the limit of the interdependence strategy to restrain China [emphasis added].”118 In
order to “ensure China’s
cooperation on matters of regional and international security [emphasis added],” Segal insists that
aggressive containment must be the order of the day: If Hong Kong and southern China’s economies have
to be damaged in order to modify Chinese policies on arms sales or human rights, then so be it. If
industries in Shanghai or some other regions have to be targeted in order to induce regional leaders to press Beijing on foreign policy disputes,
then so be it. Foreigners will have an increasing stake in the conclusion that, if Beijing is to remain in the middle of its kingdom, it will have to be
a looser kingdom.119 While seeing the need for containment,120 Huntington signifies that there still exist other options to ease the threat, such as
the democratisation of China. And to this end, Huntington virtually comes up with a strategy of Christianising Chinese leaders. He believes that
China’s Confucian heritage, an obstacle to democracy, can be overcome by Christianity, as in the case of Korea and Taiwan, where “the political
leaders most active in pushing for democracy were Christians.”121 For all its contemporary ‘political science’ guise, this is reminiscent of a 19th-
century missionary conviction that in order for China to be democratised, it must be Christianised first. Of
course, not all these
strategies will be automatically translated into actual policy and practice. But more often than
not they do make their way into bilateral relations. For example, alarmed by the 1999 Cox Report of China’s nuclear
espionage, the powerful U.S. Senator (now retired) Jesse Helms was determined to press Washington to do something about it. Among his key
recommendations were to “shore up our own defenses, and those of our allies… bring Taiwan under a regional missile- 118 Gerald Segal,
“China’s Changing Shape,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 3 (1994), p. 55. 119 Ibid., p. 58. 120 For example, Huntington writes that “If the United
States does want to stop Chinese domination of East Asia, it will need to redirect the Japanese alliance to that purpose, develop close military ties
with other Asian nations, and enhance its military presence in Asia and the military power it can bring to bear in Asia.” Huntington, The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, p. 232. 121 Ibid., p. 238. (Neo)Realist Framings of Contemporary China 158 defense umbrella,”
and “build a national missile defense,” including scrapping the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty.122 As we now know, almost all these measures
have become part of American foreign policy. In this context, I argue that it is imperative to ask the question of “What are the implications of this
kind of policy on China?” In a recent article critical of the containment policy, Joshua Cooper Ramo has specifically pointed out some of its dire
implications for China. As he notes: If
you do happen to fall into the camp of people who would like to
contain or constrain China, you should be clear that the ultimate impact of that policy, if it
succeeds, will be to condemn hundreds of millions of people and perhaps more, to lives of
poverty and perhaps chaos. Effectively “isolating” China or treating it as “threat” as some
offensive- realist policy makers suggest, would have huge human consequences. Choking off growth in
the PRC could lead to instability and chaos. China’s history is a fragile one and though growth in China at the moment is robust, a real effort to
topple China into chaos would probably succeed. So policy makers who argue for containment, as Paul Wolfowitz did in 1997, should be direct
about what they are really arguing for: the collapse of China.123 The ensuing questions are of course “Will China readily accept such an
outcome?” and if not, “What are the implications for its relations with the countries which seek to contain it?” These are the questions that I will
try to answer in the remaining parts of this chapter, which will centre specifically on two recent incidents in the course of the new U.S. pursuit of
containing the ‘China threat’: firstly the Taiwan Missile Crisis of 1995-1996 and then the Spy Plane incident of 2001. ‘Threat’ Theory as Practice
(I): China and the Taiwan Missile Crisis (1995-1996) In the eyes of many Western foreign policy analysts, China’s approach to Taiwan is nothing
less than a microcosm of China’s grand strategy to dominate Asia. The consensus is that should one continue to harbour any illusion about
Beijing’s threatening ambition, the sabre-rattling missile exercises near Taiwan’s coast in 1995- 1996 should be a wake-up call.124 122 Jesse
Helms, “‘Engagement’ with China Does Not Work. Now What?” The Wall Street Journal, July 18, 1999, p. A18. 123 Joshua Cooper Ramo, The
Beijing Consensus, London: The Foreign Policy Centre, 2004, p. 57. 124 See for example, Bernstein and Munro, The Coming Conflict with
China; Ross Munro, “Taiwan: What China Really Wants,” National Review, October 11, 1999, pp. 45-49; Denny Roy, “Tensions in the Taiwan
Strait,” Survival 42, no. 1 (2000), pp. 76-96; Evan A. Feigenbaum, “China’s Challenge to Pax Americana,” The Washington Quarterly, 24, no. 3
(2001), pp. 31-43; Allen S. Whiting, “China’s Use of (Neo)Realist Framings of Contemporary China 159 While the 1995-1996 missile crisis has
been a favourite ‘starting point’ to paint an image of the China threat and to justify a firm Western response to it, the question of how the situation
reached its boiling point is often conveniently ignored. But it is precisely in this process that the
mutually reinforcing
relationship between the ‘China threat’ image and Western containment can be laid bare. As noted
in the previous chapter, with the outbreak of the Korean War, the fear of a ‘Red Menace’ crossing the frontier prompted the U.S. to deploy its
Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait in order to thwart what it saw as an orchestrated Communist offensive in Asia. This move cemented
the separation between Taiwan and the mainland, and it was not until the establishment of full
diplomatic relations between China and the U.S. in January 1979 that the military tension in the
Taiwan Strait began to ease. Meanwhile, China’s economic reform and opening up to the outside world encouraged a sustained
increase in economic, cultural, and political contacts across the Taiwan Strait. Yet, despite these new developments, the
conventional Western image of the ‘China threat’ lingered on, and was the rationale
behind the passing of the Taiwan Relations Act by Congress shortly after the
normalisation of Sino-U.S. relations.125 To manage such a ‘threat,’ the Act emphasised (and continues to
emphasise) renewed U.S. commitment to Taiwan’s security even though their diplomatic ties were
severed. Since Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, the ‘China threat’ argument, drawing explicitly on ‘democratic peace’
theory, has taken on a new dimension: an increasingly assertive China bullying a now democratised Taiwan. This highly charged, dichotomised
interpretation of the Taiwan question bears significant strategic implications. “Do you believe a vibrant democracy of about 20 million people on
large island off the coast of Asia is worth defending?” asked an Australian policy analyst. Expecting no other possible answer, he went on:
“Good, then you accept that defence of Taiwan against Chinese aggression is a worthy cause….”126 In a similar fashion, The Economist argues
that “the best policy is gradually to expand ties with Force, 1950-96, Taiwan,” International Security 26, no. 2 (2001), pp. 103-131; Robert S.
Ross, “Navigating the Taiwan Strait: Deterrence, Escalation Dominance, and U.S.-China Relations,” International Security 27, no. 2 (2002), pp.
48-85; Thomas J. Christensen, “The Contemporary Security Dilemma: Deterring a Taiwan Conflict,” The Washington Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2002),
pp. 7-21. 125 The Taiwan Relations Act considers “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by
boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”
<http://www.taipei.org/tra/TRA-Law.htm>. 126 Michael Warby, “China Doesn’t Merit Appeasement by Us,” The Canberra Times, March 13,
2000, p. 9. (Neo)Realist Framings of Contemporary China 160 Taiwan, as America is already doing.”127 In
this context, despite
a promise in a 1982 joint communiqué with China to reduce its arms sales to Taiwan,
America’s arms sales, whose accumulated value since 1992 has reached more than
US$20 billion, has continued unabated. Thus understood, Western realist research
findings and policy postures are from the outset part of the ‘China threat’ problem. That
is, they serve to theoretically legitimate continued arms sales to Taiwan, which in turn
helps not only to bolster Taiwan’s defence capabilities, but also to induce some of its
leaders’ independent ambitions. This is evident, for example, in both President Lee Teng-hui’s high-profile visit to the U.S.
in June 1995 and his inflammatory ‘two-state’ theory on cross-strait relations. As Chalmers Johnson argues, “Lee was almost surely responding
to continuous signals he had been receiving from Republican leaders in Washington that they would welcome a confrontation with China and
want to see Taiwan take this extremely provocative step.” 128 Also, former U.S. defence official Chas Freeman remarked that “ U.S. arms
sales to Taiwan no longer work to boost Taipei’s confidence that it can work out its
differences with Beijing. Instead, they bolster the view that Taiwan can go its own way.”129 This, predictably, reinforces Beijing’s
suspicion of the U.S.’s ambition in the region, frustrated its reunification goal, and prompted it to prepare militarily for what it fears as a worst-
case scenario. This was the context of the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis. In
a bid to hamper Taiwan’s
independence move, in the summer of 1995 and again during Lee’s re-election campaign in March 1996, Beijing
launched military exercises, including missile tests, near the Taiwan Strait. For most
Chinese, the carrying out of military exercises, well within their own territory, had little to
do with attacking Taiwan, much less with challenging America’s security interests in the
Western Pacific. Rather, it was more about China’s long-cherished dream of national unity, with its ‘sabre-rattling’ tactics serving as a
display of determination to carry out its reunification policy. However, interpreting such exercises as China’s muscle-flexing with direct security
implications for the region, with “an almost 19th-century display of gunboat diplomacy,”130 the United States dispatched two nuclear-powered
aircraft-carrier battle 127 The Economist, “Containing China,” p. 12. 128 Johnson, “In Search of a New Cold War,” p. 49. 129 Quoted in Martin
L. Lasater, The Taiwan Conundrum in U.S. China Policy, Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000, p. 15. 130 Chalmers Johnson, “Containing China: U.S.
and Japan Drift Toward Disaster,” Japan Quarterly 43, no. 4 (1996), p. 10. (Neo)Realist Framings of Contemporary China 161 groups to waters
near the Taiwan Strait, its biggest military deployment in the region since the Vietnam War. Without denying the enormous security
repercussions of these missile tests, I suggest that the
‘China threat’ argument prevents the U.S. from
recognising its own role in the lead up to this crisis. If the flashpoint of Taiwan does spill over into regional
conflict, it may say as much about the danger of the dominant Western perspective on the Taiwan question as about the threat of China’s display
of force itself. If such a danger was still somehow obscured in the missile crisis, it was to be manifested in another standoff in Sino-U.S. relations,
namely, the spy plane incident of 2001.
The aff’s approach to Taiwanese conflict is structured by normative

understandings of sovereignty that make war inevitable
Pan 10 [Chengxin Pan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Humanities
and Social Sciences, Deakin University, “Westphalia and the Taiwan Conundrum: A Case
against the Exclusionist Construction of Sovereignty and Identity,” Journal of Chinese Political
Science, December 2010, Volume 15, Issue 4, pp 371–389]
Westphalian Sovereignty, Zero-sum Games, and the Taiwan Conflict
If the Chinese mainland and Taiwan share
the common normative ground of Westphalian sovereignty, the ensuing question is: How does
this normative convergence contribute to the intractability of the Taiwan issue? Conventional wisdom
has it that conflict arises from difference, while cooperation rests on convergence, as “democratic peace” theory would have us
believe. But this is true only to a certain point. Very often, commonality as well as difference is at the core of social conflict. For
instance, a fundamental aspect of the conflict between Christianity and Islam could be traced back to their commonly-held
monotheism as well as their myriad differences. Indeed, it is not despite, but because of, their shared belief in the existence of only
one God that their clash has been so irreconcilable. Similarly, it may be argued that many European conflicts in the colonial era
were animated as much by their shared belief in social Darwinism as by their differing colonial interests. Thus Otto Klineberg
observes that “the opinions and attitudes of two contending sides may be mirror images of each other” ([54], 94). Ashis Nandy [55]
calls this phenomenon “the intimate enemy,” whereas Raymond Aron refers to it as “the enemy partners.”5 This may sound odd, but
that is because, as Charles Taylor points out, people have conflated common meaning with consensus. While the latter is conducive
to cooperation, the former is not necessarily the case. As Taylor ([56], 39) explains: We could... say that common meanings are
quite other than consensus, for they can subsist with a high degree of cleavage; this is what happens when a common meaning
comes to be lived and understood differently by different groups in a society. It remains a common meaning, because there is the
reference point which is the common purpose, aspiration, celebration.... But this common meaning is differently articulated by
different groups. This is the basis of the bitterest fights in a society.... Perhaps one might say that a common meaning is very often
the cause of the most bitter lack of consensus. In cross-strait relations, Westphalian sovereignty is precisely
such a “common meaning,” which can similarly explain the very lack of consensus between
Beijing and Taipei. It is in this sense that I argue that the link between Westphalian sovereignty and
conflict needs to be more fully understood. As many scholars have noted, sovereign states and war often go hand in
hand. For Charles Tilly, “war made the state and the state made war” ([30], 42). In a similar vein, Michael Howard argues
that “no Nation, in the true sense of the word, could be born without war” ([57], 102, emphasis in
original). By “the true sense of the word,” there is little doubt that Howard means the Westphalian sovereign
state. The irony here is that while the Westphalian state is defined by its ability to monopolize
the legitimate use of violence, the process in which to acquire that monopoly is
frequently fraught with violence ([58], 59). Admittedly, the Westphalian model of sovereignty is not meant to incite
war or violence. Quite the opposite, Bodin’s idea of sovereignty was designed to find a cure to the scourge of religious conflict that
had ravaged France at the time. For Thomas Hobbes, the main political purpose of the sovereign state (the Leviathan) was to
maintain internal order. Similarly, through a clear demarcation of sovereignty on the basis of
territory and the reciprocal recognition of sovereignty, the Treaty of Westphalia was aimed primarily to
settle Europe’s prolonged religious disputes. That said, while Westphalia helps regulate violence by restricting
the monopoly of violence and war-making to territorial states only, it does not quite succeed in stopping war
or violence per se. As Susan Strange observed, internally it “did nothing to stop conflicts over the major sources
of revenue and wealth for the state” ([59], 347). Indeed, in his study of the relationship between identity and violence in
Bosnia, David Campbell goes so far as to argue that the conventional understanding of sovereignty and
territorial identity was largely responsible for both ethnic cleansing and slow international
intervention in the Balkans [60]. Even as the sovereign state manages to establish order
domestically, it can be argued that human violence is merely displaced “from within the
territory of the state into the realm of interstate relations ” ([61], 440). The reason why Westphalian
sovereignty is intimately linked to conflict is straightforward. To begin with, Westphalian sovereignty, understood as final authority,
does not allow for compromise where sovereignty is believed to be at stake. A struggle for final authority is by
definition a mutually exclusive, zero-sum game. Hobbes observes that “If any two men desire the same thing,
which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies” ([62], 184). Thanks to the diffusion of the
Westphalian norm, sovereign authority is precisely such a commonly desired thing and cannot
be jointly enjoyed. As such, its exclusive ownership often needs to be settled by “the victory of one side over the other, a
victory that makes the one sovereign and the other subject” ([1], 98). In international relations, there are numerous
examples of this type of zero-sum struggle for sovereignty. Take the conflict between Israel
and the Palestinians for instance, the indivisible characteristic of sovereignty was likened by a
former Tel Aviv lawyer to a “woman,” who cannot be shared ([63], 66). This analogy, while rather crude, does strike at the heart of
conceptual
the Israeli-Palestinian problem, a problem which, according to Anthony Burke, has much to do with “the
foundations Israel shares with other states—with the modern [Westphalian] ontology of the
secure nation-state” ([63], 70–1). Such a zero-sum struggle for exclusive sovereignty is also
manifested in the contentious and potentially explosive Taiwan issue. During much of the Cold War
period, the two sides, informed by the Westphalian idea of exclusive sovereign authority, pretended that the other did not even exist
The KMT government in Taiwan viewed the People’s Republic as
as a political entity, let alone as an equal.
a bunch of “Communist bandits” (gongfei) and pursued a policy of “three no’s” vis-à-vis the
mainland: no official contacts, no negotiations, and no compromise. Likewise, Beijing regarded Taiwan as
little more than a “renegade province.” In the fight over the seat in the United Nations in the early 1970s, mainland China insisted
that it would not join unless Taipei was expelled (Taipei buchu, Beijing buru). The Taiwan authorities, after losing the
UN votes, decided to withdraw from the UN rather than accepting a proposal of dual
representation, on the ground that “There is no room for patriots and traitors to live together”
(Han zei bu liangli) ([81], 108). With final authority believed to be at stake, compromise has thus been routinely ruled out by both
sides as a sign of weakness or even surrender. In a 1997 interview with Asian Affairs, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin made
On such a question involving
this point clear: “You have here a case where the fundamental interests of a nation lie.
state sovereignty, a government has no room for any compromise” [64]. Echoing this stance, a
group of scholars at an influential think tank in Beijing argued that “we are not willing to
see the loss of the principle of single sovereignty—the inseparability of sovereignty…. If
any compromises are made with regard to Taiwan, they will not be made over the
question of sovereignty and the one China principle, which is the key to the problem” ([38],
134). Likewise, in reference to Beijing’s “one country, two systems” proposal, the Taiwan authorities made an
uncompromising, mirror-image response: “the purpose of ‘one country, two systems’ is to
demand the ROC’s complete surrender to the Chinese Communists…. Therefore, this piece of proposal
from the Chinese Communists is in fact impractical in the objective sense, and absolutely unacceptable to us in the subjective
sense” [65]. Thus, this unwillingness to make compromise, which in large degree accounts for the
Taiwan impasse, is clearly derived from the Westphalian notion of exclusionary sovereignty.
Second, also complicating this zero-sum standoff is the aforementioned Westphalian
nexus between sovereignty and territory. If the struggle over sovereignty already precludes
compromise, then the Westphalian territorialization of sovereignty makes such a struggle even more
diametrically Manichaean: either a state possesses sovereignty over a particular piece of
territory, or it doesn’t ([61], 439). Just as there is no room for compromise over final authority,
so there is no space for territorial ambiguity; sovereignty, in the Westphalian sense of the word, has to be
clearly demarcated along a geographical boundary that separates “self” from “Other.” This
helps us understand not only why territorial integrity has been at the core of the “one China”
principle, but also why, despite ever-increasing economic links, solutions to many
territorial disputes in Asia still remain elusive ([16], 121). Third, given that the Westphalian ideal entails the
convergence between the state and the nation, not only is the struggle over sovereignty concerned with territory, but it is also about
national identity. As noted before, a central part of the modern narrative of state sovereignty has been
about popular sovereignty, in which final authority is allegedly invested with the nation. To the extent
that Westphalian sovereignty implies that the nation’s identity and survival hinges on
territorial sovereignty, a struggle for the latter then becomes a matter of life and death for
the former. As the argument goes, if “A stateless person in the statecentric world is a nonperson” ([66], 245). then a
stateless nation in the Westphalian state system would be no nation at all. To compromise on
sovereignty and territorial integrity thus amounts to nothing short of treason or national
suicide. In this sense, it is not difficult to understand why the struggle for the olive trees on the banks of the river Jordan,
emblematic of a fight over people’s sense of home and identity, has been so venomous ([67], 27). Equally, it is also easy to
understand why the territorial status of Taiwan has taken on such monumental significance for both sides. An influential book on
Taiwan independence, The Four-Hundred-Year History of the Taiwanese by Shih Ming, argues that unless the Taiwanese establish
their own country, the future of the nation will remain wretched and uncertain ([68], 150). Without doubt, such a direct appeal to
national identity and survival has contributed a great deal to the further hardening of the resolve of many Taiwanese for national
self-determination. Indeed, it was precisely on the basis of the democratic right to national self-determination that the Taiwan
authorities under Lee Teng-hui and Chen Shui-bian were able to strenuously refuse to negotiate with Beijing on the prospects of
reunification.
Link – Terrorism
Their description of terrorist threats justifies endless war
Jackson ‘09 (Richard Jackson 9, Reader in the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University,
and a Senior Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Contemporary Political Violence, 2009,
“Knowledge, power and politics in the study of political terrorism,” in Critical Terrorism Studies: A New Research
Agenda, p. 70-77)
In sum, these frequent narratives within the literature construct the widely accepted ‘knowledge’ that
non-state terrorism represents a major security threat to the international community and to democratic societies in
particular, in part because their inherent freedoms make them more vulnerable to terrorist infiltration and attack. Moreover, these narratives
construct a common sense and widely, though not totally, accepted ‘knowledge’ that contemporary terrorism is a new and deadlier form of
terrorism than any encountered previously, one which creates an exceptional state of emergency requiring ‘new’
counterterrorism measures to defeat and which cannot be dealt with using negotiation and dialogue,
methods which have been previously successful in dealing with the ‘old’ ideological and nationalist terrorism. The origins and causes of terrorism6 A
surprising number of terrorism studies texts promote the view that the roots and causes of terrorism lie in individual psychological abnormality, and
religious or ideological extremism engendered through processes of ‘radicalisation’. Although theories of individual psychopathology among terrorists
have fallen out of favour among most leading scholars in recent years, the notion that terrorist behaviour is rooted in the personality defects of
individuals remains close to the surface of most texts, not least in the notion that weak-minded, uneducated, or emotionally vulnerable young Muslims
fall prey to indoctrination and brainwashing – so-called ‘radicalisation’ – by terrorist recruiters operating through madrasahs, radical mosques, or
extremist internet sites (see Haqqani, 2002). Related to this, it is not uncommon to find texts which argue that ‘Islamic’ suicide bombers are primarily
young men driven by sexual frustration and impotence. In a much-cited text on contemporary ‘religious terrorism’ for example, Mark Juergensmeyer
states that ‘the young bachelor self-martyrs in the Hamas movement .. . expect that the blasts that kill them will propel them to a bed in heaven where
the most delicious acts of sexual consummation will be theirs for the taking’ (Juergensmeyer, 2000: 201). In any case, such narratives construct the
accepted knowledge that terrorists are different and abnormal and, more importantly, that their actions are rooted in their personalities rather than other
factors related to their political situation, strategic calculation or experiences of oppression and humiliation. During the cold war, many terrorism studies
texts suggested that the roots and causes of terrorism lay within communist ideology and the direct involvement of the Soviet Union (see Raphael, this
volume). Claire Sterling’s (1981) popular book, The Terror Network, for example, posited the existence of a global terrorist network sponsored by the
Soviets that was behind many of the revolutionary and anti-colonial movements. As Sam Raphael illustrates in this volume, a great many of the leading
terrorism studies scholars at the time subscribed to the ‘Soviet network theory’ of terrorism. In many ways, the cold war focus on left-wing ideology was
replaced by what is now a vast and growing literature on the religious origins of terrorism, particularly as it relates to Islam (see Jackson, 2007a).
Based on David Rapoport’s (1984) initial formulation of ‘religious terrorism’, the discourse of ‘Islamic terrorism’ argues that the roots and causes of
much of the al-Qaeda-related terrorism today can be found in ‘Islamic extremism’. Walter Laqueur for example, suggests that while there is ‘no Muslim
or Arab monopoly in the field of religious fanaticism . . . the frequency of Muslim- and Arab-inspired terrorism is still striking’ (Laqueur, 1999: 129).
Similarly, a prominent counterterrorism think tank publication argues that ‘in the Islamic world one cannot differentiate between the political violence of
Islamic groups and their popular support derived from religion . . . the present terrorism on the part of the Arab and Muslim world is Islamic in nature’
(Paz, 1998, emphasis added). Marc Sageman argues in relation to al-Qaeda: ‘Salafi ideology determines its mission, sets its goals, and guides its
tactics’ (Sageman, 2004: 1). In sum, and similar to narratives of individual deviance, these narratives construct the widely accepted ‘knowledge’ that
contemporary terrorism is primarily rooted in and caused by religious extremism and fanaticism, and not in rational calculation or other political, cultural,
and sociological factors. Responding to terrorism A final set of assumptions and narratives within the broader literature relates to questions about how
to respond to terrorism. Following the logic of the preceding notions of the existential threat posed by the ‘new terrorism’, as well as the fanatical nature
and origins of religiously-inspired terrorism, it is frequently argued in the literature that ‘new’ methods of counterterrorism are required for its control,
and that there are justifiable reasons to employ any means necessary, including torture, targeted killings, and restrictions on human rights, to deal with
the threat (see Jackson, 2007d). Rohan Gunaratna, Paul Wilkinson, and Daniel Byman, all major figures in the field, for example, have openly
condoned the extra-judicial assassination of terrorist leaders as a potentially effective method of counterterrorism (see Gunaratna, 2003: 233–235;
Wilkinson, 2002: 68; Byman, 2006, 2007). At the very least, it is commonly accepted that coercive instruments, including sanctions, pre-emption and
military force, are both legal and effective forms of counterterrorism (see for example, Shultz and Vogt, 2003; Byman, 2003). Often unstated, but
appearing as a subtext, it is implicitly assumed that non-violent responses to terrorism such as dialogue and political reform are simply bound to fail in
the current context (see Toros, forthcoming). More specifically, as I have shown elsewhere (Jackson, 2005), the global counterterrorism campaign
known as the ‘war on terror’ is based on a particular series of defining narratives. The most important narrative at the heart
of the war on terror is the notion that the attacks of 11 September 2001 amounted to an ‘act of war’. This narrative in turn, logically implies that a war-
based counterterrorism strategy is both necessary to counter the threat and legal under international law. Consequently, a great many terrorism studies
texts take it as axiomatic or common sense that the war on terror, and force-based counterterrorism in general, is both legitimate and efficacious. In
this way, the notion that responding to terrorism requires force and counter-violence, and sometimes even war and
torture, has come to assume a form of widely accepted ‘knowledge’. In short, the assumptions,
narratives and knowledge-practices I have described above, and quite a few more besides, collectively make up much of
the widely accepted body of terrorism ‘knowledge’, or, the discourse of terrorism studies. This ‘knowledge’ is
reproduced, often with little deviation from the central assumptions and narratives, continuously in the field’s
journals, conferences, and in literally thousands of publications every year by academics and think tanks.
Furthermore, as Michael Stohl has recently illustrated, many of these core narratives or ‘myths’, as he terms them, have proved to be extremely
durable over several decades (see Stohl, 1979, 2008). A critical analysis of the terrorism studies discourse Having briefly outlined some of its main
characteristics, the purpose of this section is to provide a critical analysis of the broader terrorism studies discourse employing a first and second order
critique. The main argument I wish to advance here is that most of what is accepted as well-founded ‘knowledge’ in
terrorism studies is, in fact, highly debatable and unstable. More importantly, this ‘knowledge’ functions
ideologically in society to reify existing power structures and advance particular political projects.
First order critique As explained earlier, a first order or immanent critique employs the same modes of analysis and categories to criticise the discourse
on its own terms and expose the events and perspectives that the discourse fails to acknowledge or address. From this perspective, and
employing the same social scientific modes of analysis, terminology, and empirical and analytical
categories employed within terrorism studies, as well as many of its own texts and authors, it can be argued that
virtually all the narratives and assumptions described in the previous section are contestable and subject to
doubt. There is not the space here to provide counterevidence or arguments to all the assumptions and narratives of the wider discourse; I have
provided more detailed counter-evidence to many of them elsewhere (see Jackson, 2008a, 2008b, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). It must instead suffice to
discuss a few points which illustrate how unstable and contested this widely accepted ‘knowledge’ is. The following discussion therefore focuses on a
limited number of core narratives, such as the terrorism threat, ‘new terrorism’, and counterterrorism narratives. In the first instance, the conceptual
practices which construct terrorism exclusively as a form of non-state violence are highly contestable. Given that terrorism is a violent tactic in the same
way that ambushes are a tactic, it makes little sense to argue that some actors (such as states) are precluded from employing the tactic of terrorism (or
ambushes). A bomb planted in a public place where civilians are likely to be randomly killed and that is aimed at causing widespread terror in an
audience is an act of terrorism regardless of whether it is enacted by non-state actors or by agents acting on behalf of the state (see Jackson, 2008a).
It can therefore be argued that if terrorism refers to violence directed towards or threatened against civilians which is designed to instil terror or
intimidate a population for political reasons – a relatively uncontroversial definition within the field and wider society – then states can also commit acts
of terrorism. Furthermore, as I and many others have documented elsewhere (for a summary, see Jackson, 2008b), states have killed, tortured, and
terrorised on a truly vast scale over the past few decades, and a great many continue to do so today in places like Colombia, Zimbabwe, Darfur,
Myanmar, Palestine, Chechnya, Iraq and elsewhere. Moreover, the deliberate and systematic use of political terror by Western democratic states
during the colonial period, in the ‘terror bombing’ of World War II and other air campaigns, during cold war counter-insurgency and proinsurgency
campaigns, through the sponsorship of right-wing terrorist groups and during certain counterterrorism campaigns, among others, is extremely well
documented (see, among many others, Gareau, 2004; Grey, 2006; Grosscup, 2006; Sluka, 2000a; Blakeley, 2006, forthcoming; Blum, 1995; Chomsky,
1985; Gabelnick et al., 1999; Herman, 1982; Human Rights Watch, 2001, 2002; Klare, 1989; Minter, 1994; Stokes, 2005, 2006; McSherry, 2002).
The assumption that terrorism can be objectively defined and studied is also highly questionable
and far more complex than this. It can be argued that terrorism is not a causally coherent, free-standing
phenomenon which can be identified in terms of characteristics inherent to the violence itself (see
Jackson, 2008a). In the first instance, ‘the nature of terrorism is not inherent in the violent act itself. One and the same act . . . can be terrorist or not,
depending on intention and circumstance’ (Schmid and Jongman, 1988: 101) – and depending on who is describing the act. The killing of civilians, for
example, is not always or inherently a terrorist act; it could perhaps be the unintentional consequence of a military operation during war. Terrorism is
therefore a social fact rather than a brute fact, and like ‘security’, it is constructed through speech-acts by socially authorised speakers. That is,
‘terrorism’ is constituted by and through an identifiable set of discursive practices – such as the categorisation and
collection of data by academics and security officials, and the codification of certain actions in law – which thus make it a contingent
‘reality’ for politicians, law enforcement officials, the media, the public, academics, and so on. In fact, the current discourse of terrorism used by
scholars, politicians and the media is a very recent invention. Before the late 1960s, there was virtually no ‘terrorism’ spoken of by politicians, the
media, or academics; instead, acts of political violence were described simply as ‘bombings’, ‘kidnappings’, ‘assassinations’, ‘hijackings’, and the like
terrorism does not exist outside of the definitions and
(see Zulaika and Douglass, 1996). In an important sense then,
practices which seek to enclose it, including those of the terrorism studies field. Second, an increasing number of studies suggest
that the threat of terrorism to Western or international security is vastly over-exaggerated (see Jackson,
2007c; Mueller, 2006). Related to this, a number of scholars have convincingly argued that the likelihood of terrorists deploying weapons of mass
destruction is in fact, miniscule (B. Jenkins, 1998), as is the likelihood that so-called rogue states would provide WMD to terrorists. A number of recent
studies have also seriously questioned the notion of ‘new terrorism’, demonstrating empirically and through reasoned argument that the continuities
between ‘new’ and ‘old’ terrorism are much greater than any differences. In particular, they show how the assertion that the ‘new terrorism’ is primarily
motivated by religious concerns is largely unsupported by the evidence (Copeland, 2001; Duyvesteyn, 2004), as is the assertion that ‘new terrorists’
are less constrained in their targeting of civilians. Third, considering the key narratives about the origins and causes of terrorism, studies by
psychologists reveal that there is little if any evidence of a ‘terrorist personality’ or any discernable psychopathology among individuals involved in
terrorism (Horgan, 2005; Silke, 1998). Nor is there any real evidence that suicide bombers are primarily driven by sexual frustration or that they are
‘brainwashed’ or ‘radicalised’ in mosques or on the internet (see Sageman, 2004). More importantly, a number of major empirical studies have thrown
doubt on the broader assertion of a direct causal link between religion and terrorism and, specifically, the link between Islam and terrorism. The
Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism for example, which compiled a database on every case of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003, some 315 attacks
in all, concluded that ‘there is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions’ (Pape, 2005:
4). Some of the key findings of the study include: only about half of the suicide attacks from this period can be associated by group or individual
characteristics with Islamic fundamentalism; the leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the secular, Marxist-Leninist Tamil Tigers, who committed
seventy-six attacks; of the 384 individual attackers on which data could be found, only 166, or 43 per cent, were religious; and 95 per cent of suicide
attacks can be shown to be part of a broader political and military campaign which has a secular and strategic goal, namely, to end what is perceived
as foreign occupation (Pape, 2005: 4, 17, 139, 210). Robert Pape’s findings are supported by other studies which throw doubt on the purported
religion-terrorism link (see Bloom, 2005; Sageman, 2004; Holmes, 2005). Lastly, there are a number of important studies which suggest that force-
based approaches to counterterrorism are not only ineffective and counterproductive, but can also be damaging to individuals, communities, and
human rights (see Hillyard, 1993; Cole, 2003). Certainly, there are powerful arguments to be made against the use of torture in counterterrorism
(Brecher, 2007; Scarry, 2004; Jackson, 2007d), and a growing number of studies which are highly critical of the efficacy and wider consequences of
the war on terrorism (see, among many others, Rogers, 2007; Cole, 2007; Lustick, 2006). In sum, much
of what is accepted as
unproblematic ‘knowledge’ in terrorism studies is actually of dubious provenance. In a major review
of the field, Andrew Silke has described it as ‘a cabal of virulent myths and half-truths whose reach
extends even to the most learned and experienced’ (Silke, 2004b: 20). However, the purpose of the first order critique I
have undertaken here is not necessarily to establish the real and final ‘truth’ about terrorism. Rather, first order critique aims simply to destabilise
dominant understandings and accepted knowledge, expose the biases and imbalances in the field, and suggest that other ways of understanding,
This kind of critical destabilisation is useful for
conceptualising, and studying the subject – other ways of ‘knowing’ – are possible.
opening up the space needed to ask new kinds of analytical and normative questions and to
pursue alternative intellectual and political projects.
Link – Terrorism Policy
The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism has institutionalized a policy
paradigm of permanent fear – that makes rational assessment of the threat
impossible and paves over the thousands of deaths created by
counterterror policies
Jackson ‘15 (Richard Jackson, professor of peace studies at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University
of Otago, New Zealand, (2015) The epistemological crisis of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 8:1, 33-54)
The consequences of counterterrorism’s epistemological crisis

The significance of the epistemological crisis lies primarily in its consequences for counterterrorism thought and practice – which are
inextricably bound together and inseparable, in any case. That is, the
epistemological crisis can be understood as
generative of certain kinds of thinking, actions and practices. As Daase and Kessler (2007, 412) describe the
process by which contemporary understandings of terrorism construct the basis for action: “It is the relationship between what we
know, what we do not know, what we cannot know and what we do not like to know that determines the cognitive frame for political
practice.” Or, as Zulaika (2012, 58) quoting Merton notes: “If men (sic) define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”
(1968, 475). Once the premises of the epistemological crisis have been accepted as true, and
especially once they have been institutionalised and internalised, they then form the logic or
cognitive frame for action. From another perspective, it can be argued that, once accepted and
institutionalised, the epistemological crisis acts as a kind of policy paradigm, forming a central
part of the “elite assumptions that constrain the cognitive range of useful solutions available to
policy makers” (Campbell 1998b, 385).
Crucially, the epistemological crisis is not about individual or collective negligence or the personal
failures of counterterrorist officials; those in charge of preventing terrorism are likely to be genuinely concerned,
responsible individuals acting in what they perceive to be the best interests of society (Zulaika 2012, 52). Rather,
counterterrorist failings and abuses are the result of the broader epistemic structures and
conditions – the policy paradigm – under which officials are forced to think and act.
Apart from the trillions of dollars and millions of people in the “security-industrial complex” who
are currently invested in preventing the coming terror (see Zulaika 2012, 51; Baker-Beall and Robinson 2014),
the first and most obvious consequences of the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism are all
the fantasy-infused security practices and postures discussed earlier, as well as the extensive
programmes of security theatre enacted at airports and elsewhere, the institutionalisation of the
state of exception, and socially disciplinary practices such as mass surveillance, control orders,
counter-radicalisation programmes, resilience initiatives and the like. Zulaika (2009, 18) argues that
contemporary counterterrorism represents a form of thinking that resembles “the mental world of
medieval witchcraft and inquisitorial nonsense”. Considering some of the magical realist thinking inherent in
contemporary counter-radicalisation programmes (see also HeathKelly 2012a), including the official expression of notions of pre-
crime, the concept of “risky citizens”, efforts to control words and images considered to be capable of infection, and more, such an
assessment is entirely apposite.
Another obvious and related consequence of the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is the
institutionalisation and sedimentation of a politics of fear (see Jackson 2013, 2007). In an atmosphere of
permanently “waiting for terror” and moral panic, threat levels are raised and lowered by officials, often on the
basis of fantastical projection rather than hard evidence, and public fear is manipulated for
electoral gain and the promotion of non-terrorism-related political projects. In the process, the
interplay of knowledge and ignorance transforms a public fear of terrorism into a general and
permanent epistemic fear (Zulaika and Douglass 1996), one which can be easily manipulated for
political gain. From this perspective, the epistemological crisis of counterterrorism is functional to political elites who can
manipulate uncertainty and the underlying logic of the crisis for direct political and material gain.
A third predictable consequence of the epistemological crisis in terms of risk management and preemption are the well-
documented and highly destructive counterterrorist practices of preemptive war, the use of
drones to kill terrorist suspects, torture and rendition, control orders and mass surveillance. For
example, given that we cannot know for certain who the terrorist is, only that they certainly exist
and are plotting mass destruction, and that we cannot take the risk that inaction will allow them
to complete their mission, it makes perfect sense to include as many people as possible on any
terrorist watch list. It is now known that in the United States, “More than one million names are included on
secret lists of suspected terrorists maintained by the Obama administration”. While “people on the list are likely to be
subject to enhanced surveillance”, not surprisingly in the context of the epistemological crisis, “almost half of the people
on a key government list don’t have known ties to any specific terrorist organisation” (Lee 2014;
emphasis added). Given the way that uncertainty and the unknown nevertheless create an imperative to act preemptively, it is
perhaps surprising that many more people are not on the secret list. Of course, the reason for this is likely to be that virtually
everyone is under surveillance anyway, as the Edward Snowden revelations demonstrate.
A fourth consequence of the epistemological crisis is the many “false positives” (Heath-Kelly 2012a) produced
by the moral imperative to act, even if “it turns out to be wrong”. Here we can note the hundreds
of thousands of people killed in the invasion of Iraq aimed at preempting the “world’s most
dangerous regimes… [from] threaten[ing] us with the world’s most destructive weapons”, as George
Bush famously argued. Similarly, thousands of others have been rendered, detained, imprisoned,
tortured, assassinated in drone strikes, or like Jean Charles de Menezes, shot to death in
domestic counterterrorist operations. In each case, the moral imperative to act preemptively
overwhelmed any caution which might have been engendered by uncertainty or lack of
knowledge.
Official calculations under the conditions of the epistemological crisis state that it is better to act
than not act, even if it turns out to be wrong and leaves innocent people dead or injured. Similar
logic applies to the greatly enhanced security measures across society, mass surveillance, de-radicalisation programmes, control
orders, and the like, as well as efforts to curtail opposition and dissent in all forms, in case it proves to be the work of terrorists.
Knowing that there are terrorists in our midst, but not knowing who they are or what they are
planning, we are bound to watch everyone, detain anyone, secure everything, preempt attacks
and prevent terrorist intentions from emerging in the first place.
Another consequence of the epistemological crisis is that the symptoms – or the “signs of future threat”, as Martin
(2014) puts it – rather than the deeper roots or causes of terrorism become the primary focus of action.6
That is, preventing the inevitable coming attacks becomes the main objective of counterterrorism,
rather than the prevention of the circumstances and conditions that lead to terrorism in the first
instance (Frank 2014, 333). This is both a consequence and cause of the taboo which prevents direct
knowledge of terrorist subjectivity. It is also the result of rendering previous knowledge about
terrorist behaviour obsolete, the fatalism of accepting that terrorism will occur whatever actions are taken, and the
processes of knowledge subjugation about the kind of policies and circumstances which give rise to terrorism in the first place. In
any case, counterterrorism efforts have become fixated on the anticipation of imagined future plots, rather than focused on the
current actual threat and its causes (Mueller 2006).
Finally, the
epistemological crisis precludes the possibility of the rational evaluation or cost-benefit
analysis and assessment, of counterterrorist policies (Mueller and Stewart 2011), and acts to pacify
dissent and opposition to state security programmes. Instead, in a context bound by anti-knowledge and the
unknown, speculation, imagination and counter-factual, unprovable knowledge becomes a substitute form of
assessment, and the (non)victims of terrorist attacks that never occurred (but could have) are
counted as evidence of success:
Fighting terror is like fighting car accidents: one can count the casualties but not those whose
lives were spared by prevention. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Israelis go about their lives
without knowing that they are unhurt because their murderers met their fate before they got the
chance to carry out their diabolical missions. This silent multitude is the testament to the policy’s
success. (Luft 2003, 3) Clearly, within such a paradigm, evidence-based reform and refinement of counterterrorist policy is
unnecessary and illogical in any case. This means that mistakes tend to recur and lessons cannot be learned.
Link – Ukraine
Fear of Russian involvement in Ukraine reflects Western hypocrisy and
only serves to divert attention from American aggression against Russia
and Muslim states
Donovan ‘14 (G Murphy Donovan is the former Director of Research for Russian (nee Soviet) Studies at USAF
Intelligence, “Russophobia and Islamophobia,” American Thinker, 3-14,
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/03/russophobia_and_islamophilia.html)
It’s hard to believe that it has been a quarter of a century since Ronald Reagan began to dismantle the ideological wall that divided
American politicians, Right and Left, are trying to resuscitate the Cold
Europe. Harder still to believe that
War -- or something hotter. Recent events in the Ukraine seem to be giving the citizens of
Europe and America hot flashes of deja-vu. At the tactical level, US policy has devolved to “regime
change.” At the strategic level, US policy is simply incoherent, if not nihilistic; swapping corrupt
oligarchs for neo-fascists or religious zealots. The logic for supporting recent coups have little to do with common
sense -- or democracy. And with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and now the Ukraine, language needs
to be coined to avoid words like coup. By any other name, a coup is still a coup. And using a
post-facto election to legitimize a coup is a little like putting a new hat on a dead cat. The
Kerry/Obama team is giving subtlety and sovereignty bad names. When Vladimir Putin, tongue
in cheek, says there are no Russian troops in the Ukraine, he mocks John Kerry and Victoria
Nuland who orchestrate dissidents in Maidan square, in some cases neo-fascists who did not get
their way on the bail-out treaty with the EU. The auction for the Ukraine is now closed. The price doubled overnight, from 16 to 35
billion dollars and counting. Politicians break it, now the taxpayer gets to pay for it. Kerry is now offering to buy the next Ukrainian
election too. Speaking of elections, Europe and America might need referendums at home on future bailouts, foreign and domestic.
The EU and US look like the “two broke girls” of Capitalism. Angela Merkel might be the only European politician with any jingle left
When Putin says he protects Crimean Russians, again with a sneer, he mocks
in her jeans these days.
Obama’s, humanitarian interventions. The fast track to imperialism is
Samantha Power’s, now Barak
paved with words like “humanitarian.” When Russia sponsors a referendum in the Crimea, the Kremlin pre-empts,
indeed ridicules, the EU sponsored presidential election to be orchestrated by Kiev in May 2014. When demagogues like Hillary
Clinton compare Russian behavior to Nazi Germany, she mocks Allied history and the sacrifice of 5 million Russians in WWII.
The name of the game in
Russian blood chits, we might add, that made the Allied victory over Nazis possible in 1945.
the Crimea is not the Ukraine in any case. Maidan Square and the Crimea are merely board
pieces, according to Vicky Nuland at the State Department; moveable parts in another Great Game -- Europe versus
Russia redux. Back to the future, indeed! The pillars of Obama foreign policies are now explicit;
Russophobia on one hand and Islamophilia on the other. Indeed, a renewed Cold War with
Russia, sponsored by a lame duck, allows Media shills to change the subject. With the Ukraine in the
headlines, the domestic health care debacle and those failed Muslim wars fade to background
noise.
Link – Ukraine
The Crimea crisis has been over-coded by our old Cold War fears to
construct Russia as the same evil Soviet threat. This only increases
antagonism.
Peschlova ’14 (Kristina Peschlova, “Discourse Strategies in Response to the Crimean Crisis: The Case Studies of
Lithuania and Slovakia,” MA thesis (Central European University, Department of International Relations and European Studies),
2014. 48-50, 55-56)
After signing the association agreement with Ukraine, Grybauskaite said in an interview that “We are only in [sic] the beginning of a
cold war … And this cold war we already saw in the form of quasi-military actions, today we’re seeing elements of the beginning of
an economic blockade for Ukraine and maybe for some other, even European countries … We also see an absolutely open
propaganda and informational war already. Especially, we see it on our borders, in the Baltic States, it’s already open.”
According to Grybauskaite, “We are facing the largest security threats and challenges after Second
World War” and “it’s practically a prelude and a beginning of a ‘New Cold War’ if Russia will not stop.”
Lithuanian President positioned herself and her country again of the side of the “West,” creating a clear division
between “us” and “them,” “othering” Russia. She draw attention to the urgency of the issue that already threatens
the Baltics and is just a matter of time when it hits them in full scale. She formulated the Russian-Ukrainian crisis
as a prologue to a “New Cold War,” adding a “dramatizing effect” to the situation. Grybauskaite
straightforwardly identified Russia as the perpetrator, unlike, for example, the Slovak Prime Minister who addressed
the breach of international law on rather general terms, avoiding alienating Russia explicitly.
By re-telling the story, the
President directly drew historical analogies between the annexation
of Crimean and occupation of the Baltic States by Russian army in the 1940s, seeking for the
recognition of the “national narrative” strives for re-assertion; yet again accentuating its antagonisms
towards Russia. The events surrounding Russian invasion are still an essential ingredient in the national narrative of the
Lithuanian “self” and seem to “construct the past for the purposed of the present, if only by selective emphasis.”
[Continues]
the events surrounding the
Lithuania’s reaction appears to have come across as more consensual domestically, since
invasion of Crimea were more easily integrated into the existing frame which portrayed Russia as
“unpredictable,” “untrustworthy,” “imperialist” and “aggressive.” Slovakia’s position was more pragmatic,
putting an emphasis on the benefits of trade and energy dependency on Russia. The discourse constructed by Prime Minister Fico
did not apply historical analogies of Russian invasion like in the case of Lithuania, but on the contrary, avoided such comparisons as
much as possible to the discontent of his critics. Thus, the Crimean crisis was less successfully integrated into the Russia-friendly
frame that the government tried to promote.
As Ehin and Berg point out, “the recognition that many of the problems in Baltic-Russian relations are rooted in history is
obviously not new,” however, few studies tried to link the “diagnosis of the troubled relationship” to “broader explanatory frameworks
and theoretical debates in international relations.” By focusing on what is neglected by Leonard and Popescu, for example, we can
see that the concepts of “storytelling,” “othering” and “framing” help us to better understand the dynamics of the Lithuanian-Russian
relationship.
As regards scholarly work on identity, “most of the existing literature focuses on Baltic and Russian identity constructions
separately taken.” This thesis contributes to the constructivist debate on conceptions of national identity, which are assumed as
inherently relational, created through the process of socialization and social interaction. Through the analysis of the discourse
understandings of the “self” and “other”
surrounding the Crimean Crisis, this work demonstrates that intersubjective
which rest on shared historical experience create
expectations of behavior and have implications for foreign
policy actions. The Crimean Crisis serves as an example of a “challenged order,” where long-
established paradigms that provided a framework for both thinking and action are prone to “storytelling” and
identity re-assertion. How the policy-making then “frame” the debate constructs political reality
within which threat perceptions are amplified, or by contrast, deemphasized.
Link – War on Terror
The aff’s attempt to redeem the effort of the War on Terror represents the
evolution of the national security state which produces terrorism as a self-
fulfilling prophecy in an attempt to secure the globe for the West
Forte and McLoughlin ’13 (Maximillian, Professor of Sociology at Concordia University, Kyle, Montreal QC:
Alert Press, “Emergency as Security: The Liberal Empire at Home and Abroad”, New Imperialism Vol. 3, pgs. 1-4)
“Just as our vision of homeland security has evolved as we have made progress in the War on Terror,
we also have learned from the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina….We have applied the lessons of Katrina to this Strategy to make
sure that America is safer, stronger, and better prepared. To best protect the American people,
homeland security must be a responsibility shared across our entire Nation. As we further develop a
national culture of preparedness, our local, Tribal, State, and Federal governments, faith-based and community organizations, and
businesses must be partners in securing the Homeland. This Strategy also calls on each of you….Many of the
threats we face…also demand multinational effort and cooperation. To this end, we have
strengthened our homeland security through foreign partnerships, and we are committed to
expanding and increasing our layers of defense, which extend well beyond our borders, by
seeking further cooperation with our international partners. As we secure the Homeland, however,
we cannot simply rely on defensive approaches and well-planned response and recovery
measures. We recognize that our efforts also must involve offense at home and abroad”. (George W. Bush, preface to
Homeland Security Council, 2007). Fear is critical to the construction of crisis, a component that requires
both identification and motivation. The object one fears may be an environment, idea, object, or
person(s). The F works in this volume represent the collective efforts of the seminar held in 2013 at Concordia University. This
introduction is intended to provide a theoretical frame connecting the works in this volume of the New Imperialism to a critical
anthropology of security in the neoliberal context. In an effort to contribute to the definition of that frame, and connect the works
contained herein, we will offer the following scheme. First, we will briefly outline the neoliberal framework as a social and economic
Neoliberalism respects no
system through which we argue security is a vital component, both practically and conceptually.
borders, and to the extent that neoliberalism is a core material and political practice that
underpins the new imperialism, the latter is relevant as much to the U.S. and Canada, as it is to Iraq, Afghanistan, and
Venezuela. We thus seek to connect this framework of thinking on security in a neoliberal context
to anthropological thought, but that also questions some of the approaches contemporary
anthropologists have participated in that sustain imperial adventures abroad. Finally we will highlight
some of the connections to be found in the chapters in this volume that may be useful for a critical anthropology of the new
imperialism. Daniel Goldstein (2010) argues that the post 9/11world has entered a new phase of global history characterized by the
“security moment,” a state in which interactions at both international and local contexts are fundamentally influenced by concerns
over individual and national security. That is to say anxieties
over attack, disaster, and physical violence have
become essential factors in political regulation, commercial interest, and public interaction.
Perhaps no more emblematic of these concerns is the American led “war on terror,” about which George W. Bush stated during his
address to the special joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, that, “freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human
freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us. Our nation, this generation, will
lift the dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We
will not tire, we will not falter and we will not fail”. (Bush, 2001) Waged in the name of domestic and international security, the “war
on terror” provides, in part, a contemporary definition of security as a social construct. Security concerns physical bodies, feelings of
terror or of threat, and the destruction of property or interruption of commerce. Absent are additional understandings of security
concerning stability of food sources as in food security to combat malnutrition or starvation, access to health care, or ensuring that
The war on terror and the
everyone has full employment under the banner of job security (Goldstein, 2010, p. 491).
aftermath of 9/11 cemented a new cultural understanding of security, the foundation of which is
built upon a neoliberal capitalist ideology of individualized risk management and privatized
response in conjunction with the retreat of societal safety nets and the privatization of the
environment. However, Goldstein adds an important dimension to this: security understood in the narrow sense above, “is a
characteristic of a neoliberalism that predates the events of 9/11” (2010, p. 487). While there is always a risk of producing
overdetermined accounts that also leave little room for the agency of the so-called powerless, it can be useful to think of
neoliberalism as a globalized bundling of diverse concepts and concerns. These have a profound effect on how security is
conceived and practiced in the contemporary period.It is a globalized bundle that includes, “the dissemination
of a universal culture (consumerist), enemy (terror), political system (procedural democracy),
mode of hyperconsumption (transnational corporate power, global economy), development aid
(substantial U.S. influence over the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade
Organization), and environmental security factors (ozone depletion, global warming), among
several others”. (Astrada, 2010, p. 5) The neoliberal context holds security to be that of stability of the
market and the guarantee of unobtrusive state structures to economic development (for more on the
relationship between neoliberalism and the new imperialism, see Jalbert’s chapter in this volume). In effect, this model
demands that a country be sufficiently prepared to deal with the turmoil produced by
liberalization, in essence privatization and deregulation of the economy and the erosion of any
kind of social safety net. States attracted/attractive to transnational capital then become increasingly aggressive in their
enforcement of social stability. Too much trouble from popular movements could mean the flight of investment or additional market
instabilities. As Goldstein puts it, “‘Security’
calls on the power of fear to fill the ruptures that the crises
and contradictions of neoliberalism have engendered and so functions as a principal tool of
state formation and governmentality in the world today, albeit one that is constantly challenged
and negotiated by a range of local actors and state subjects”. (Goldstein, 2010, p. 487) As grassroots
demand grows for state intervention for the protection and fulfilment of a more popular will, a fundamental contradiction emerges.
The demands of the people represent a spirit the liberal democratic state is theoretically
beholden to, yet at the same time the structures and individuals that comprise the state thrive on
systems of unequal accumulation perpetuated through capitalism. When the disparity between the promises
of the economic system and the reality grows, social movements or popular struggles begin to form in response, thus representing
Such contradictions, when
inherent insecurity in the continued accumulation of property and wealth (Harvey, 2005).
amounting to crisis, plainly reveal the state’s true loyalties to financial or ideological interests as
popular movements can quickly find themselves labelled as threats to national security (as
discussed in McLoughlin’s chapter in this volume). Goldstein, following Sawyer, thus notes what he calls a “key irony of
neoliberalism” which lies, “in the contradiction between its rhetoric—which depicts the state as a minor player in the open field of
maintaining this open
free capitalist activity—and its reality—in which the state operates as manager, actuary, and cop,
field for transnational business by creating laws, enforcing policy reforms, and controlling
dissent among citizens whose own economic interests run counter to those of industry and
whose social rights impose unwanted and expensive restrictions on transnational industry”.
(Goldstein, 2010, p. 494) This understanding of the neoliberal context for security is increasingly
relevant as more crises arise exposing the fundamental contradiction between the declared
loyalties of state structures to their citizens and those states’ clear collaboration with
transnational capitalist interests to continue to prosper at the expense of those same citizens,
many if not most of whom are already marginalized by the reigning socio-economic system.
Link – Warming
Environmental apocalypticism is a profoundly conservative force which
shuts down deliberation and stultifies environmental movements
Coward ‘14 (Jonathan Coward, MSc in Environment, Culture, and Society from the University of Edinburgh,
2014, “‘How’s that for an Ending?’ Apocalyptic Narratives and Environmental Degradation: Foreclosing Genuine
Solutions, or Rhetorical Necessity?”)
What, then, is the function of the ‘environmental apocalypse’, and how might it be perceived as a rhetorical
necessity? I perceive it to have two core functions. The first is that apocalypse acts as a teleological-critical tool and second, that it
indeed has a political role in environmentalism.
First, environmental literatures, such as those specified above, can be seen to have traditionally served the two primary functions of
criticism: diagnostic, and remedial. The
inclusion of an apocalyptic tone adds a third aspect, oriented to the future. Put
says implicitly or explicitly: Either the status quo must change, or
simply, this teleological-critical function
humanity and nature will end. Second, in uncovering this desire or need to change, the implementation of the
apocalyptic narrative in environmental literature is political. It is employed both to increase the saliency of
environmental issues in the minds of the public and to encourage change on an individual or
collective level. The technique recognizes the fact that although awareness of environmental issues is now
very high, they continue to be low priority for many (Whitmarsh 2011, 691). Killingsworth and Palmer (1996, 22)
succinctly observe that for political change to actually occur, a transformation in consciousness is required to translate awareness
into action. This is achieved through the teleological-critical function of apocalypse, thus indicating the link between its two facets.
From theory to reality?: Criticisms and capitalism’s co-option
although the role of apocalypse in environmentalism appears to be
It is important, however, to state that
useful in theory, this is not necessarily translated into reality. Ultimately, the intended
consequences of framing environmental degradation in an apocalyptic manner do not always
materialize. Instead, the result is not that of transformation, but of a perpetuation of the political
and economic forces that underlie environmental degradation, and thus the possibility of change
becomes its opposite. Criticisms of the apocalyptic tendency in environmentalism go some way towards explaining its
failings. I argue that these are: alarmism; quasi-religious undertones, and anti-progressivism.
The accusation that certain environmental texts—or even that environmentalism itself—tends to exaggerate to the point of alarmism
is a common criticism put forward (Bailey 1993; Simon 1995, 23; Risbey 2008). Arguably, exaggeration has its merits. In a broad,
philosophical sense, Adorno (2003) claims it to be the contemporary “medium of truth,” while in terms of apocalyptic narratives
specifically, Killingsworth and Palmer (1996, 41) claim that, “if the “predicted devastation is extreme in the apocalyptic narrative,
then the change in consciousness of political agenda recommended by the narrator is correspondingly extreme or radical.” In other
words, exaggeration is required, because anything less would result in mere reformism and this simply isn’t enough to protect what’s
empirical evidence shows that the criticism is valid and that
under threat. And although this is a fair rebuttal,
apocalyptic rhetoric can disengages the wider public from partaking in environmental activism. In
Feinberg and Willer’s (2011) study, individuals who were primed with just-world statements,
followed by exposure to dire messages of the severity of global warming, reported higher levels
of climate change skepticism (ibid, 36). These participants were also less likely to change their
lifestyle to reduce their carbon footprint. This indicates a problem with the public perception of environmental
apocalypticism.
Furthermore, through its use of apocalyptic narratives, ecology has been perceived as having quasireligious
qualities. While it is worth questioning some of the ecology-as-religion arguments made by critics such as Simon (1995, 23), the
possibility that the religious qualities of ecology are more than superficial should not be dismissed. One view is that a prophetic
ecology cannot espouse radical change because, like religion, it in fact holds an inherently
conservative worldview. This conservatism comes in two forms. One, of lesser concern, which is neo-luddite in character,
and seeks the return to a less technologically demanding time, and the other which looks to conserve present economic and political
systems because change is perceived as being inherently bad. As Žižek states, although ecologists are all the time demanding that
we change radically our way of life, underlying this demand is its opposite, a deep distrust of change, of development, of progress:
every radical change can have the unintended consequence of triggering a catastrophe. (Žižek 2008) Instead, I would argue that
ecological movements that are framed by catastrophic rhetoric do not distrust progress generally, and where radical change is
argued to be necessary—i.e. Kovel’s (2002) eco-socialist agenda—that there is a genuine commitment to this change. Rather the
opposition is to a highly political ideology of progress based upon the technological domination
of organic life in the name of capitalist productivism and economic growth.
What explains the continuing pervasiveness of the ideology of progress over ecologies which warn of its fatal dangers? It’s worth
considering for a moment, the fact thatit is acknowledged that natural limits and environmental tipping
points exist. Despite this knowledge, production and consumption continue at increasing rates,
while natural resources are depleted, and natural habitats are polluted. This is not merely a case of
knowing ignorance, or Orwellian doublethink, but something greater. It relates to the reality perceived by
humankind in present day capitalism.
As Bill McKibben states: “[I]n some sense, the physical world is no longer as real to us as the economic
world - we cosset and succor to the economy; our politicians gear every decision to speeding further its
growth.” This is the phenomenon of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher 2009), where economy assumes the
role of reality. In capitalist realism, everything in existence is “organized within the horizons of a
capitalist order that is beyond dispute.” (Swyngedouw 2013, 13) It is the failure to see capitalist social
relations as what they truly are: a social construct answerable to humankind, and ultimately to
Earth’s environmental system1.
Applying this to apocalyptic environmental narratives, it’s clear that even with the criticalteleological function bringing to light the
ultimate choice between the end of capitalism and the end of nature, capitalist realism denies the existence of the teleology, hence
the oft repeated statement: It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. But,
having recognized the failure and futility in using imaginaries of apocalypse to bring about change, the question remains, as to how
the rhetoric of catastrophe might serve to foreclose genuine solutions.
A persuasive case is put forward in the article Apocalypse Now! Fear and Doomsday Pleasures by Swyngedouw (2013). His
environmental problems are “commonly staged as
argument consists of two central points. The first is that
universally threatening to the survival of humankind,” and that the apocalyptic environmental
narratives that stem from this, are populist, resisting a proper political framing in the traditional
left-right sense (ibid., 11,13). This results in the insistence that the fear-inducing threat is merely a
technical problem, requiring techno-managers to take charge. Of course, a technocracy in capitalist
society is not politically neutral. Therefore any problem, environmental or otherwise is managed
upon economic terms to ultimately serve capital (ibid., 13). Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine (2008) describes
numerous examples of this tendency, such as the mass privatization of the public school system
in New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina: “The administration of George W. Bush[… provided] tens of
millions of dollars to convert New Orleans schools into[…] publicly funded institutions run by private entities.” (Klein 2008, 5) Here,
the pervasiveness of capitalist realism in the context of catastrophe is evident.
Additionally, the framing of catastrophe as crisis implies that total (environmental) devastation is
something to be managed within current social, political and economic institutions: While catastrophe
denotes the irreversible radical transformation of the existing into a spiralling abyssal decline, crisis is a conjunctural
condition that requires particular techno-managerial attention. (Klein 2008, 10) This has been especially clear
in attempts to manage parts of nature that are likely to be subject to - or subject of - some degree of catastrophe, such as
ecosystems, valorized for the purposes of conservation (i.e. UK National Ecosystems Assessment 2011), and carbon, commodified
using the apocalyptic
as permits to be freely traded within a carbon-market (ibid, 13). Thus, it should be clear that
imaginary to frame issues of environmental degradation isn’t only futile, rather the solutions it
intends are foreclosed by the co-option of the narrative by capitalist institutions.
Finally, could it even be argued that the aforementioned mass-culture of armageddon—an expression of the ongoing, popular
fascination with the end—is free from capitalist realism? I would agree with Fisher (2009) in saying that perhaps it isn’t. Take for
example, Disney Pixar’s 2008 film, Wall-E, premised upon on a lonely robot, charged with the task of
cleaning up an abandoned Earth following the global rule of the ‘Buy 'N Large’ corporation2. Fisher
(ibid.) argues that “we’re left in no doubt that consumer capitalism and corporations[… are]
responsible for this depredation[…] but the film performs our anti-capitalism for us, allowing us to continue to consume
with impunity.” Moreover, in relation to the ideology of progress, the film also espouses the idea of there being a
technological fix to Earth’s ecological tribulations, in the form of Wall-E himself. Even in post-
apocalyptic drama, The Road (2009), motifs of capitalist ideology are present. Despite the fall of society and the wrecking of nature,
ideas of self-interested behavior persist, in the strikingly Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’, for human flesh.3
Impacts
Impact – Turns Case
Arms control fails – it consolidates military power to the West and
provokes insecurity
Cooper 2006 (Neil, Director of the School of Peace and Conflict Studies at Kent State University, “Putting Disarmament
Back in the Frame”, Review of International Studies 32:2, pg 362)
this system of arms limitation is the way in which it is

It is sufficient at this juncture to note that what characterises
structured to consolidate and preserve the military superiority of the US in particular and the
West in general. Moreover, rather than reinforcing security this profound military imbalance
promotes insecurity - both by creating incentives for other actors to pursue asymmetric
technologies (NBC) or strategies (terrorism) that offset the US's conventional superiority,35 and
by diverting resources that could be expended on human security to militarism. At best, the
contemporary arms limitation system aims to keep the lid on such contradictions by setting in place a variety of disciplinary
mechanisms that attempt to constrain asymmetric military responses whilst simultaneously preserving the asymmetrical advantages
of the West. At worst, in
attempting to contain pressures that may ultimately be uncontainable, the
contemporary arms limitation system may promote an illusion of relative security whilst
positively fostering a variety of insecurities. However, a few more comments are in order before we proceed to
consider this system of asymmetrical arms limitation in more
Impact – Environment
The political ontology they invest in guarantees environmental destruction
Collins ‘15 (Sheila D Collins, professor of political science emerita at William Paterson University, May 2015,
“War-Making as an Environmental Disaster,” New Labor Forum Volume 24 Number 2)
militarism itself is a major, but

As a response to political conflict, militarism seems to be the world’s modus operandi. Yet
overlooked contributor to climate change. The Pentagon is the world’s largest industrial
consumer of fossil fuels. Fighter jets, destroyers, tanks, and other weapons systems emit highly
toxic, carbon-intensive emissions, not to mention the GHGs that are released from the
detonation of bombs. To understand the impact of our commitment to militarism, one has to take
into account not only the carbon dioxide equivalent13 of the fuels that are directly used by the
military (for transportation and in the building of military infrastructure, weapons, and so on) but
also those related to the U.S. military’s role in protecting global maritime petroleum distribution,
as well as the wars in the Middle East related to securing global petroleum reserves. Despite the
Pentagon’s decision to include more biofuels in its energy mix, the GHG emissions from the production of
biofuels, as well as their indirect effects, also need to be measured. A study published in 2010
estimated that total emissions from U.S. conventional military fuel use and acquisitions totaled
about 172 million metric tons (MMt) of CO2 equivalent per year. Of that, an estimated 16 MMt of
CO2 equivalent per year may be attributed to the military’s role in securing global oil supplies .14
An additional 43.3 MMt is attributed to the Iraq war. To get some idea of this military contribution to global
warming, consider that 172 million MMt is roughly equivalent to driving an average passenger
vehicle four and a half billion miles a year, or burning almost 185 billion pounds of coal.15 The
Pentagon is the world’s largest industrial consumer of fossil fuels. Moreover, unlike warfare before the twentieth century—where
weapons were used to kill by piercing and crushing human bodies— twentieth-
and twenty-first-century warfare is
designed to kill by destroying and poisoning the enemy’s environment, making such warfare—
even setting aside its contribution to GHG emissions—qualitatively more environmentally
destructive.16 Not only are modern weapons environmentally destructive when used but also the
extraction, production, transporting, storing, and testing of the materials used in them leaves its
own toxic trail. Think of the history of uranium production and testing, or the nine hundred toxic
military production sites that dot the American landscape, turning thousands of acres into
uninhabitable “sacrifice zones.” More than twelve thousand U.S. military sites where weapons
testing takes place have been found to release perchlorate, a toxic chemical that affects thyroid
and respiratory function, into the groundwater.17 More than twelve thousand U.S. military sites where weapons
testing takes place have been found to release [into the groundwater] a toxic chemical that affects thyroid and respiratory function.
The United States and its allies have spent trillions financing anti-terrorist military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The
United States alone spent $2.6 trillion between 2001 and 2014 but has taken obligations to spend as much as $4.4 trillion.18
Moreover, as the largest arms supplier (and importer) in the world, the United States fuels conflicts directly and indirectly. Many of
these weapons fall into the hands of non-state actors like ISIS and Boko Haram, thus multiplying the arenas of military conflict.
Although the terrible social, cultural, and economic costs are publicly discussed, little is said about the environmental costs of such
wars, and little research has been conducted into these costs, leaving the public in ignorance and without the knowledge necessary
to question and challenge the military’s role.19 To make matters worse, the military sector—with the exception of the
military’s domestic fuel use, that is, the emissions related to the military’s use of fossil fuels within the United States but not abroad
—is excluded from UN inventories of national GHG emissions, thanks to intensive lobbying by
the United States at the Kyoto Protocol negotiations.20 The exclusion of much of the military
sector from national GHG inventories thus makes a mockery of the UN climate negotiations
process. The exclusion of much of the military sector from national greenhouse gas inventories makes a mockery of the UN
climate negotiations process. How quickly the world has forgotten the terrible environmental legacies of
past wars! During the Vietnam War, the U.S. army sprayed eighty million liters of the defoliant
Agent Orange—containing the highly toxic chemical dioxin, as well as other herbicides—over
more than 24 percent of the land area of South Vietnam, leaving nearly five million acres of
denuded or heavily defoliated upland and coastal forests—about 36 percent of the total
mangrove forest, an ecosystem rich in biodiversity—and damaging some five hundred thousand
acres of rice and other crops. It will take centuries to reproduce the ecologically balanced mix of
flora and fauna that once thrived there.21 Between 2.1 to 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed to Agent
Orange and other herbicides during the War, as were thousands of U.S. soldiers. As late as 2014, children were still being born with
During the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein set an estimated eight hundred
birth defects from the poison.
Kuwaiti oil wells ablaze. The thick plumes of smoke that rose as high as six kilometers into the
atmosphere produced an estimated three thousand four hundred metric tons of soot per day.
More than twenty times the amount of oil that was spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska flowed into the Persian Gulf,
causing irreparable harm to the Gulf’s ecological integrity.22 Having learned nothing from these disasters, we now have the
spectacle of the United States bombing oil refineries in Syria in an attempt to cripple the oil revenue stream to
ISIS.
Impact – Gender Violence
The 1AC’s fear-driven discourse of global instability is based in gendered
theories of state behavior that reinforces insecurity and violence
Maass 14 (Matthias, Associate Professor of International Relations Ph.D., The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts
University, USA, “Towards Gendering Northeast Asian Traditional Security: The Cases of the USS Pueblo and Juche Policy,” The
Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 26, No. 2, June 2014, 243)
Generally speaking, the gendered approach in IR “interrogates how masculine values and worldviews have shaped
diplomacy.”5 Introducing a larger study, Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland present the broad claim of GS in IR: The exclusion of women’s
experience from the conceptualization of international relations has had negative consequences
both for the discipline and for male and female inhabitants of the real world. A central hypothesis is that this
exclusion has resulted in an academic field excessively focused on conflict and anarchy, and a way of
practising statecraft and formulating strategy that is excessively focused on competition and fear.6 In the paper, the claim is made that when it comes to
Northeast Asian security, both statecraft and scholarship are indeed “excessively focused on competition
and fear.” Hence, in the following investigation, “gender lenses” will be used to look at security dynamics on the Korean Peninsula. The project’s starting assumption is
that the major Northeast Asian security discourses are gender-biased and that the theoretical
paradigm most often used in investigations of this region’s security issues, Realism, keeps
channeling the relevant discourses toward a gender-biased understanding of Northeast Asian
security matters. In response, and in order to probe alternative explanations, “gender glasses” will be put on. The hope is that the investigation below
will contribute to “more robust thinking”7 on security matters in Northeast Asia generally and on the Korean
Peninsula specifically. The hope rests on the impressive scholarship on “gendered dimensions of war, peace, and security”8 which has already been generated by scholars and
students of GS in IR. The Wider Context: Northeast Asian Security In the twenty-first century, Northeast Asia remains a security hotspot. A dependable and stable Northeast
For decades, statesmen and stateswomen, diplomats, and politicians

Asian security arrangement remains elusive.
have been confronted with a multitude of dangerous and destabilizing developments in Northeast Asia, from North
Korean “military-diplomatic campaigns,”9 and nuclear and missile tests conducted by Pyongyang, to the rise of China and a corresponding American “pivot to
Asia,”10 and a possible expansion of Japan’s military posture in the Asia-Pacific.11 IR theory has been used to describe the situation and explain state behavior. Theory has
also been used to guide state action in Northeast Asia. A plethora of perspectives has been applied, from Constructivist Theory, Foreign Policy Analysis, Institutionalism, to non-
Realism has been the dominant IR theory in the discourses on

traditional Security Studies, to name just a few.12 However,
Northeast Asia. The broad Realist paradigm presents the world as anarchical and power-based,
resulting in fear, hostility, and the security dilemma. However, the Realist paradigm tends to privilege
“masculine” behavior, such as demonstrations of power, over alternative actions that are seen
as weak and “female” behavior. Thus, it is proposed to apply GS’s theoretical and conceptual paradigms and work towards a fresh investigation of
Northeast Asian security from a gendered perspective. The hope is that by challenging the Realist discourse on Northeast Asian
security, new insights and policy options can be generated.

Impact – Logistics
Narratives of liberal peace are used to secure a violent system of state
logistics that operates through the biopolitical control of populations
Culp ’09 (Andrew Culp, teaches Media History and Theory in the MA Program in Aesthetics and Politics and the School of
Critical Studies at CalArts, “Producing Pacification: The Disciplinary Technologies of Smart Bombs and National Anti-War
Organizing”, Electronic Thesis or Dissertation. Ohio State University, 2009. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center,
pgs. 9-12)
The key to Reid’s reading of Foucault is his suggestion that most scholars overlook Foucault’s unique formulations that
work to describe the management of populations through war under liberalism. His argument draws
heavily on Discipline and Punish and Society Must Be Defended to argue that liberal regimes reduce society to a
docile population through massive logistical controls. Those controls work on both registers of
biopower: the disciplinary tactics of the body that individuate subjects and establish a
predictable social order, and the biopolitics of the population which create strategies that
regulate collective bodies of population. What Reid accuses others of forgetting is the investment
in a system of logistics that such a system requires to continue operating. Not only are
bodies part of a social order, which Reid argues is deeply rooted in logistics, but they are invested in that
social order as a way of life. Liberalism’s commitment to the population is then less about
ideologically specific socio-historical political forms (like the GOP or identity politics groups) but the
logistical apparatus necessary to keep the population alive (but alive enough only to maximize
reproduction, as Agamben would remind us). And while debates about how best way to secure the
logistical life of the population may be politicized, conflicts are tempered by a higher
principle – the docile peace that maintains a stable enough social order to maximize the
logistical potential of society.
The strategy used to produce and maintain a docile population, argues Reid, deploys the
technologies of pacification invented by the military sciences. Logistics are then a means
to achieve greater pacification, whether by producing subjects that will also contribute to the
pacification of society or by accumulating disciplinary techniques to more effectively wage war
on those not willing to stay pacified (Reid 17-8). Liberal society has inherited the military science
origins of disciplinary power and in the transformation from its purely military context, it has
smuggled in militarism as it generalized the use of disciplinary techniques to perfect the conditions for reproducing
and extending logistical life. War is not the opposite of liberalism then, but rather the task it
is always preparing for and enacting, either in the millions of small disciplinary interventions
of everyday life or through the regular militaristic mobilization of troops and armaments. {‘If we don’t
get them with the internet and video games, we’ll get them with our guns and bombs.’}
war in the age of
By privileging the pacification of the population above the status of any individual subject of a nation-state,
logistical life complicates the conception of inside/outside that is central to classical international
relations. It is not just about capturing the king, as in chess and medieval warfare but securing a way of
life for the whole population. One of these complications involves stripping the exceptional
status of subjects that nationhood or citizenship would usually protect. Since the aim of
biopolitics is the passive survival of collective populations, anything that threatens
logistical life becomes a threat that must be managed. The War on Terror is a clear demonstration of this
logic: it mobilizes a discourse that claims that there are abject bad ubjects – terrorists – whose political expression threatens the
most crucial aspect of liberalism – well-ordered logistical life – and that they therefore must be eliminated from the global logistical
But while terrorists are a paradigmatic case, the
order or threatens the dissolution of the logistical way of life.
variety of subjects that could be classified as a threat to logistical life is almost endless – if a
subject is perceived as too disruptive, too unpredictable or too costly, the protections of
logistical life are withdrawn and the subject is left to fend for itself and potentially die (Open 38). This
leaves us with an unsettling question: how thin is line (or as Agamben would note, the möbius strip) that separates this way of life
from Kafka’s giant bureaucratic assemblages or Terry Gilliam’s Brazil?
A second complication, as Foucault’s genealogy of the emergence of liberalism in Security, Territory, Population indicates, is that
the limits of logistical system of modern nation-states have spread far beyond the territorial
boundaries of the State (51-71). As nation-states work to secure and expand their logistical
potential, wars take on an increasingly administrative function that look more like policing
actions. The official justifications for the war in Iraq barely concealed the fact that the United
States saw Iraq as an impediment to its expanding logistical apparatus – a combination of Iraq being in
control of major geo-strategic resources and the belligerence of Iraqi leader’s refusals to submit to United States hegemony
(Afflicted Powers 102-7). Reid’s definition of logistical life must be expanded in order to discuss the character of how and why wars
are engaged, however. In particular, opening up logistical life to an analysis of the changing political economy would ground
logistical life in the concrete particularities of the changing capitalist mode of production. Despite his very public distance from the
party Marxism of the PCF, Foucault’s recently translated Collége de France lectures show that his later intellectual work was highly
informed by political economy. Especially because liberalism’s form is so intimately tied to the economic subjects it produces, this
may be the most fruitful ground for modifying and extending Reid’s book, especially in light of The Birth of Biopolitics lectures
touched on above.
Impact – Mundane Violence
Western military at its core is built on securitizing specific groups of
people in and out of the state in even mundane/everyday public
experiences that makes liberal militarism an insecurity for many “other”
groups.
Basham 2018 (Victoria, Reader, Senior Lecturer of International Relations at Cardiff University, “Liberal militarism as
insecurity, desire and ambivalence: Gender, race and the everyday geopolitics of war” Militarism and security: Dialogue, possibilities
and limits, 2018, Vol. 49(1-2), pp 38-40)
In accounting for the role of everyday fears in animating militarism, Razack’s (2008) scholarship drawing on Arendt’s concept of
that ‘race-thinking’ pervades contemporary Western
race-thinking has proved especially useful. Razack argues
law and politics, drawing crude differentiations between people of European descent and those
descended from elsewhere. Race-thinking entails that ‘Europeans’ come to understand
themselves as sharing a common humanity with one another, but not with ‘non-Europeans’;
accordingly, in sharing nothing in common with a racialized (enemy) other, many Europeans
have begun to understand themselves as ‘under siege’ (Razack, 2008: 5). Contrary to salient liberal
understandings, neither race-thinking nor its expression in racism requires individuals or social
groups to regard themselves as superior or act in overtly hostile ways towards those deemed
‘different’. For race-thinking and racism to flourish and shape people’s lives, all that is required
is the belief that racialized others constitute some sort of ‘threat to our way of life’ (Martin Barker,
cited in Duffield, 2007: 200). Contemporary state border practices, including those aimed at Syrian
refugees, attempt to manage such risks to ‘our way of life’ at the border, defining at once that
which endangers and the ‘integrity of the inside … the presumed homogeneity and stability of
that community’ (Salter, 2006: 172). This simultaneously produces a knowledge of geopolitics
that evokes the boundedness of the nation-state to be protected and the dangerous
unboundedness of the border that must be reinforced. The revelation that two of the attackers involved in the
Paris attacks might have used refugee routes to enter Europe led to a decline in public support for the resettlement of Syrian
refugees in the UK, with 44% of Britons reported to believe that the UK should close its borders to refugees entirely (Nardelli, 2015).
As Salter (2006: 180) explains, though,it is not simply that states manage subjects but that the price of
‘freedom’, of an everyday life removed from insecurity, is that ‘we come to manage ourselves
through a confessionary complex’. Key to this is that we ‘recognize ourselves as a society, as
part of a social entity, as a part of a nation or of a state’ (Michel Foucault, cited in Salter, 2006: 181) and regard
others as outside this. The desire for this way of life means, therefore, that it is not just existential
insecurity that facilitates war and war preparedness, but the multitude of insecurities that make
up everyday life, from needing to have steady employment to wanting to feel part of a social and
political community. Thus, while global fears are materialized and affective in everyday sites,
other and often more pressing matters also play a role in the reproduction of liberal militarism
(Pain and Smith, 2008). As Dowler (2012: 497) points out, this is why it is vital to consider how ‘militarization takes
root in the banal processes of daily life that are essential to the reproduction of sovereignty’. As
Eastwood (this issue) argues, though, everyday desire for war also animates militarism; fear only gets us so far.
Importantly, however, as Eastwood also contends, desire is not necessarily fervent: it can be
more ambiguous, even unconscious. Anthropologist Gerald Sider (2008: 124–125) sheds further light on this when
describing the everyday as an achievement; as those ways in which people work through and against the chaos, rupture and
discontinuity that shape their lives to ‘try to make and to claim some kind of ordinary – some stability to today, some continuity
between yesterday and tomorrow, in some parts of their lives at least’. Sider (2008: 125) moreover maintains that ‘what we call
everyday life does not name a feature or an aspect of social existence … but a very high-stakes struggle’ – a struggle that is for
many people throughout the world ‘largely unavoidable and often in the medium to long run unwinnable’. The desire for the ordinary
should not be underestimated, therefore; it takes on a profound, if often taken-for-granted, importance not least ‘because it belongs
to the people who have it – it is their time, their space, what makes their moments and their interactions their space and place’
It is not difficult to imagine why this possession of ‘normality’
(Sider, 2008: 129–130, emphasis in original).
would be desirable to liberal populations promised that freedom is the very condition of their
existence. Perceived threats to that freedom might motivate fears and suspicions that foster
militarism. Equally, though, in the example of Syrian airstrikes, and hostility and ambivalence to resettling Syrian refugees, the
desire of British citizens to have everyday lives free from concern about the everyday lives of others may call into question the ability
of Syrians to have not only an everyday but any life at all. While
such effects of desire to protect one’s own
everyday are not always deliberate or callous, the prioritization of some lives and ways of life
over others facilitates biopolitical forms of state power that entail that ‘the liberal way of war is
governed, in part, by the very exercise of such discrimination and the application of lethal
violence to it’ (Dillon and Reid, 2009: 49). You do not have to be a refugee to become abject as an outcome of such desires,
though. Biopolitics circulates within as well as without liberal societies. While most can go about
their everyday lives in relative security, some find it more difficult to socially reproduce
themselves not least ‘because the larger society is rewarded when they don’t make it, and leave
or die’ (Sider, 2008: 132). Although, as Stanko (1990) warns, the potential for violence is something that characterizes the
everyday lives of anyone who has ever stayed alert on the street, there are some lives characterized by more socially and materially
violent everyday struggles. Frequently, these lives are cast as a drain or scourge on society, made
abject by terms such as ‘chav’, ‘scrounger’, ‘benefit dependant’, ‘single mother’, ‘migrant’,
‘asylum-seeker’, ‘ethnic minority’, ‘Muslim’ and ‘refugee’. Each label shapes people’s ‘grounded expectation[s]
of a liveable tomorrow’, which may constitute bigger struggles for some than for others (Sider, 2008: 128). The desires of the
many to carry on regardless elide these gendered, biopolitical and socio-economic struggles,
however, and while the legitimacy of the modern liberal state may still lie in its ability to secure,
practices of ‘making live’ always entail practices of letting die within as well as without (Foucault,
2004). The strong desire for an everyday, for ordinariness, can also facilitate ambivalence, not
just fear and desire. As Stavrianakis (2016) shows, while state rhetorics of sustainable security, human rights and
humanitarianism mean that British involvement in arming illiberal regimes is often presented
more as a tension than a fundamental contradiction, this ‘tension’ can still facilitate ambivalence
about Britain’s militarism. This could explain, in part, why polls of the British public do not always
suggest the kind of militaristic fervour often exhibited by the state (Mortimer, 2015). Bauman (1991) argued
that ambivalence is the condition of our times because, contrary to the promise that modernity would generate clarity about human
life, it is instead defined by uncertainty and insecurities that threaten the orderliness of the world, confounding our ability to calculate
the meaning of practices and events and to see the relevance of our memorized patterns of action .
Ambivalence towards
militarism – war and constantly preparing for it – can thrive in these conditions precisely
because militarism becomes a normalized feature of a chaotic world. In everyday sites and spaces, it will
thus be possible to discern support for British airstrikes existing alongside opposition, and alongside ambivalence and ignorance.
What is most significant, I would suggest therefore, is not what British citizens believe about the airstrikes or wider British military
action or how many of them believe what they believe, but the fact that support, opposition, ignorance, ambivalence, fear and so on
are all possible reactions for most British citizens precisely because they have an everyday. Continuing to pay your taxes, to wave
flags at military and monarchical parades, and to purchase poppies for the ‘fallen’ (Basham, 2016) may not seem like the most
After
deliberate or obvious sites of militarism, but banal does not mean innocuous (Arendt, 1963; Thomas and Virchow, 2005).
all, liberal militarism, as I have argued, produces diffuse and often uneven effects within British
society as well as without. As postcolonial and feminist scholars have long argued, this is why it is vital to look
to the everyday; whereas ‘the construction of a single national identity may seem obvious at a
global scale … it is less clear when viewed by way of sociospatial forces such as gender, race,
and class’ (Dowler and Sharp, 2001: 171). Everyday experiences thus remind us that, despite state
claims to the contrary, liberal militarism is insecurity for many.
Impact – Ontology of War
Current methods of understanding conflict and its underlying causes
leaves underlying systems unexamined, existential and rational ontologies
inevitably generate violence
Burke 2007 (Anthony, Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra ,"Ontologies of War:
Violence, Existence and Reason." Theory & Event, vol. 10 no. 2, 2007)
On 12 July 2006 the Israel Defense Force (IDF) began a month-long air and ground war in Lebanon. After the bombing and firing finally ceased,
1191 Lebanese civilians and 159 Israelis were dead, and 1.5 million people had been driven
from their homes.1 It cost Israel $1.6 billion and, in Lebanon, destroyed at least $4 billion in
homes and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, power plants and airfields.2 Oil spills caused by the Israeli
bombing of the Jiyeh power station and forest fires caused by Hezbollah rockets also created
grave environmental damage that will take decades to repair.3 It was the fifth major Israeli incursion into Lebanon
since 1978, and one well-placed Washington analyst grimly predicted that there will be many more.4 Much of the debate around the
war focused on competing claims about its legitimacy and prosecution -- Hezbollah struck first, Israel acted
disproportionately etc. -- as if these were to be taken as definitive horizons for thought about the conflict
and its underlying causes. However, even as such debate has importance, it remains hostage to
the event and to its most superficial level of description. It leaves the underlying knowledge and
bureaucratic systems that drive and shape actions and choices, especially those which relate to
the use of strategic violence, unexamined. In contrast, in this essay I wish to speculate on two powerful structures of state and
strategic reason that lie beneath such claims, hidden and uncritiqued; structures that drive violence as a social technology and way of being, and for
which events are so much occasion and justification, mere surface effects, like the debris left after a storm. These structures -- which I term
'existential' and 'rationalist' forms of state reason -- are easily discernible beneath the surface of
the recent war. The first is visible in justifications mobilised by the government of Israel and its
western supporters, justifications that invoke the most basic fears about Israel's security and
existence as a state. The then IDF Chief of Staff, Air Force General Dan Halutz, told his troops that they were 'defending the integrity of
their country'; they were 'fighting an extremist Islamic terrorist organisation that denies our right to exist'.5 And after the bombing of an apartment
building in southern Lebanese town of Qana, which killed at least 28 civilians, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that: Citizens of Lebanon, we are sorry
for the pain caused to you, and the fact that you had to pick up and flee your homes, and also the casualties caused among innocents...But we will not
apologise to those who put a question mark on the right of Israel to exist.6 The Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a supporter of Israel and close
strategic and ideological ally of George W. Bush, mobilised a similar explanation in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in July.
He was asked whether, 'in the face of up to 700,000 refugees and billions of dollars in infrastructure destroyed, and a government that is fragile at best,
in terms of the sheer pragmatics, don't you question the ruthless extent of Israel's response?', only to respond: Once you are attacked...and if that
attack is in the context of a 50-year rejection of your right to exist, which is the situation in relation to Iran -- and bear in mind the link between Iran and
Hezbollah; bear in mind the exhortations from the Iranian President that Israel should be destroyed and wiped off the map -- you can understand the
tenacity with which the Israelis have responded.7 He was echoed by a former head of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, who
sought to refute arguments that the real source of the conflict lay with Israel's colonial policies in Gaza and the West Bank. His view was that 'the
Palestinian issue cannot be resolved because a significant part of the Arab and Muslim world still do not accept Israel's right to exist...Until this
changes, Israel will remain as it has for 60 years: under siege.'8 The darker edge to such viewpoints was added by an Israeli Air Force Colonel taking
journalists on a tour of Hatzor airbase, who stated that: 'My mother is a survivor of the Holocaust...I know that at other times in our history, when we did
Thus war and existence are intertwined.
not have a state, or any force to defend ourselves, things happened in a different way.'9
However within such existential imperatives to war lies a more technical, performative (and thus
rationalistic) discourse: that once it is deemed necessary to use force in defence of one's right
to exist it is possible to do so, to translate military means into political ends in a controlled and
rational way. This is the second, rationalist form of state reason that most commonly takes the
name of 'strategy'. Its fundamental tenet was most famously expressed in Carl Von Clausewitz's argument that war 'is a mere
continuation of policy by other means...a pulsation of violent force...subject to the will of a
guiding intelligence'.10 That this is a textbook model of instrumental reason, one that imports Newtonian physics into human relations, is clear
in Clausewitz's influential definition: 'War is an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will'.11 This purposive rationality is expressed by the Israeli
war plan for Lebanon, long in preparation, to which we are not privy. We can however deduce from the IDF's campaign that it had the objective of
confronting Hezbollah: degrading their ability to operate, coercing them to hand over the two captured Israeli soldiers and, indirectly, coercing the
Lebanese government into disarming Hezbollah and removing them from southern Lebanon. Other officials stated that the complete destruction of
Hezbollah was their objective. It is telling that at the cessation of hostilities none of these objectives had been fully achieved.12 The IDF's chosen
weapons, until the last few days when a limited ground operation was conducted, were F-16s and artillery strikes deployed against Hezbollah offices
and facilities along with crucial infrastructure, and against civilians in their homes and vehicles. The doctrinal influences appeared to be Clausewitz and
the generation of twentieth century airpower theorists such as Guilio Douhet. Douhet believed that command of the air would ensure victory 'all down
the line'; he argued that 'modern warfare allows for no distinction between combatants and noncombatants' and, in one analyst's paraphrase, that
nations must 'at the outset be prepared to launch massive bombing attacks against the enemy centres of population, government and industry -- hit
first and hit hard to shatter enemy civilian morale, leaving the enemy government no option but to sue for peace'.13 The mechanistic
quality of their thinking was captured in the statements of Israeli officials that they have struck
'1,000 targets in the last eight days, 20 per cent missile launching sites, control and command
centers, missiles and so forth'14 and that 'we are still working through our original targeting menus'.15 An International Institute of
Strategic Studies' commentary, working again from within the Clausewitzian frame, suggested that 'Israel will acquire gains well
worth the price'16 -- but that crude calculus of costs and benefits must be set against the
enormous loss of civilian life in Lebanon, the hundreds of thousands of refugees, the billions in
property and environmental damage, and the inspiration to a new wave of international
terrorism. Both the Israeli government and the Hezbollah leadership claimed victory, but the
dead may disagree. Two Ontologies of War This essay develops a theory about the causes of war -- and
thus aims to generate lines of action and critique for peace -- that cuts beneath analyses based
either on a given sequence of events, threats, insecurities and political manipulation, or the play of
institutional, economic or political interests (the 'military-industrial complex' ). Such factors are important to be sure, and should not be
discounted, but they flow over a deeper bedrock of modern reason that has not only come to form a powerful structure of common sense but the
In this light, the two 'existential' and 'rationalist' discourses of war-
apparently solid ground of the real itself.
making and justification mobilised in the Lebanon war are more than merely arguments,
rhetorics or even discourses. Certainly they mobilise forms of knowledge and power together; providing political leaderships, media,
citizens, bureaucracies and military forces with organising systems of belief, action, analysis and rationale. But they run deeper than
that. They are truth-systems of the most powerful and fundamental kind that we have in
modernity: ontologies, statements about truth and being which claim a rarefied privilege to state
what is and how it must be maintained as it is. I am thinking of ontology in both its senses: ontology as both a statement
about the nature and ideality of being (in this case political being, that of the nation-state), and as a statement of epistemological truth and certainty, of
methods and processes of arriving at certainty (in this case, the development and application of strategic knowledge for the use of armed force, and the
creation and maintenance of geopolitical order, security and national survival). These derive from the classical idea of ontology as a speculative or
positivistic inquiry into the fundamental nature of truth, of being, or of some phenomenon; the desire for a solid metaphysical account of things
inaugurated by Aristotle, an account of 'being qua being and its essential attributes'.17 In contrast, drawing on Foucauldian theorising about truth and
power, I see ontology as a particularly powerful claim to truth itself: a claim to the status of an underlying systemic foundation for truth, identity,
existence and action; one that is not essential or timeless, but is thoroughly historical and contingent, that is deployed and mobilised in a fraught and
conflictual socio-political context of some kind. In short, ontology is the 'politics of truth'18 in its most sweeping and powerful form. I see such a drive for
ontological certainty and completion as particularly problematic for a number of reasons. Firstly, when it takes the form of the existential and rationalist
ontologies of war, it amounts to a hard and exclusivist claim: a drive for ideational hegemony and closure that limits debate and questioning, that
confines it within the boundaries of a particular, closed system of logic, one that is grounded in the truth of being, in the truth of truth as such. The
the dual ontologies represent a simultaneously social and
second is its intimate relation with violence:
conceptual structure that generates violence. Here we are witness to an epistemology of
violence (strategy) joined to an ontology of violence (the national security state). When we
consider their relation to war, the two ontologies are especially dangerous because each alone
(and doubly in combination) tends both to quicken the resort to war and to lead to its escalation
either in scale and duration, or in unintended effects. In such a context violence is not so much a tool that can be picked
up and used on occasion, at limited cost and with limited impact -- it permeates being. This essay describes firstly the ontology of the
national security state (by way of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of
strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of Henry Kissinger), showing how they crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and
This creates both a profound ethical and pragmatic problem.
justification, especially in the thought of Clausewitz.
The ethical problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a
norm of war -- and because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image of
technology and being in which humans are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and
destruction, and force -- in the words of one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as
a 'power to hurt'.19 The pragmatic problem arises because force so often produces neither the
linear system of effects imagined in strategic theory nor anything we could meaningfully call
security, but rather turns in upon itself in a nihilistic spiral of pain and destruction. In the era of a 'war on
terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,20 the arguments of Hannah Arendt (that violence collapses ends into means) and
Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what
occurs when war and being are made to coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer
recognises themselves, making them betray not only commitments but their own substance'. 21 What I am trying to describe in this essay is a complex
relation between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth,
because in the social field named by security, statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like
charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of knowledge with particular systemic roles and intensities of claim about truth,
political being and political necessity. Positivistic or scientific claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and
political action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them into a common horizon of certainty that is
one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be useful to see ontology as a more totalising and metaphysical set of claims about
truth, and epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology (knowledge as technique) and ontology
(knowledge as being) has analytical value, it tends to break down in action. The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign
policy doctrine) claims positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and coercion to achieve a desired end, an
end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national existence, security, or order. However in practice ,
technique quickly passes
into ontology. This it does in two ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure
national existence which itself admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and
essential, prior to any conflict, and the resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate
of its perpetuation. In this way knowledge-as-strategy claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for an
ultimate purpose (securing being) that it must always assume. Second , strategy as a technique not merely becomes an
instrument of state power but ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as a maker and
user of things, including other humans, which have no essence or integrity outside their value as
objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology immediately becomes technique, immediately being. This combination
could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war, whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis
generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the
IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on
brigade-sized manoeuvres in the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli
commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the "deterrent power" that was lost on
the battlefields of that unfortunate war'.
In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural
phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.' 22 The danger obviously raised here is that these dual ontologies of war
link being, means, events and decisions into a single, unbroken chain whose very process of
construction cannot be examined. As is clear in the work of Carl Schmitt, being implies action, the action that is
war. This chain is also obviously at work in the U.S. neoconservative doctrine that argues, as Bush did in
his 2002 West Point speech, that 'the only path to safety is the path of action', which begs the question of whether strategic practice and theory can be
detached from strong ontologies of the insecure nation-state.23 This is the direction taken by much realist analysis critical of Israel and the Bush
administration's 'war on terror'.24 Reframing such concerns in Foucauldian terms, we could argue that obsessive ontological commitments have led to
especially disturbing 'problematizations' of truth.25 However such rationalist critiques rely on a one-sided interpretation of Clausewitz that seeks to
disentangle strategic from existential reason, and to open up choice in that way. However without interrogating more deeply how they form a
conceptual harmony in Clausewitz's thought -- and thus in our dominant understandings of politics and war -- tragically violent 'choices' will continue to
be made. The essay concludes by pondering a normative problem that arises out of its analysis: if the divisive ontology of the national security state
and the violent and instrumental vision of 'enframing' have, as Heidegger suggests, come to define being and drive 'out every other possibility of
revealing being', how can they be escaped?26 How can other choices and alternatives be found and enacted? How is there any scope for agency and
resistance in the face of them? Their social and discursive power -- one that aims to take up the entire space of the political -- needs to be respected
The need is to critique dominant images of
and understood. However, we are far from powerless in the face of them.
political being and dominant ways of securing that being at the same time, and to act and
choose such that we bring into the world a more sustainable, peaceful and non-violent global
rule of the political.
Impact – Permanent War
Security operates through a system of permanent warfare that proliferates
planetary dangers to fuel the demand for catastrophe. This system makes
their impacts inevitable and ignores ongoing structural violence
Masco 2014 (Joseph, is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago; “The Theater of Operations”; Duke
University Press; 193-200)
Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency must continue in effect beyond
September 14, 2011. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency. —PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, “NOTICE FROM THE PRESIDENT
REGARDING THE CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT TO CERTAIN TERRORIST ATTACKS” The President is authorized to use all
necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attack that occurred on September 11, 2001,
or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. —U.S. CONGRESS,
“AUTHO- RIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE,” SEPTEMBER 12, 2001 In the first decade of its twenty-first-century
emergency, the U.S. security state did nothing less than reinvent itself, imagining and pursuing
a new planetary concept of American power organized around the anticipation and pursuit of
terror. The endless futurity of terror (existing, imagined, emergent) transforms defense into a
war that is boundless in both time and space and that is constantly evolving. The now annual
presidential notice to Congress that the emergency provoked by the attacks on Sep- tember 11,
2001, continues, endows the country’s chief executive with wartime powers, creating a global theater of operations for the
ever emerging U.S. counterterror state apparatus.1 It is also a means of suspending democratic
institutions to enable radical forms of state agency in the hope of eliminating terrors, both real
and imagined. What began as an international response to the suicide-hijacker attacks on New York and Washington organized by a small group identified as Al
Qaeda has evolved into an American vision of planetary engagement that is astonishingly productive and wide-ranging—
constituting simultaneously a new geopolitics and a new domestic social contract. In the name of existential defense, security experts across a vast range of fields and agencies spend each day
trying to anticipate and preempt dangers from the future—hoping to eliminate surprise and thereby engineer a world without events. Multi- disciplinary, creative, hyperactive, gloomy—this
counterterror state apparatus imagines a world without borders but filled with proliferating forms of terror (present, contingent, projected, imagined). It engages the future as a space of endless
logistical need, where the spectrum of possible dangers requires ever new and expanding analytics, institutions, technologies, and forms of mobility. In this way, the counterterror state is not
fighting a specific war that could be won or lost. Instead, it seeks to install technical capacities into the future to deal with terroristic threats both known and unknown, those expected and those
As part of this expanding economy of counterterror, security experts are increasingly
not yet visible.
endowed with the power to imagine—and create—new forms of danger to engineer

countermeasures to combat them. Thus, counterterror becomes terror becomes counterterror in
a recursive system of anticipatory preemption, which focuses experts on engaging potential
existential dangers—the what ifs—rather than on simply rebuilding and expanding nonmilitary
Ameri- can, and international, infrastructures. In the proliferation of dangers and expert calls to build new capacities to meet them, it is
easy to miss the fact that counterterror is naturalized as a permanent war (based on merging real, contingent, and
imaginative practices). Indeed, war has become so deeply installed in everyday Amer- ican life in the first
decade of counterterror that it is no longer actually “war”: the ongoing U.S. military actions (from
troops, to special forces, to drone strikes) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Iraq at the start
of the second decade of counterterror are officially referred to as “overseas contingency
operations.”2 By reframing the longest-running military actions in U.S. history as simply “overseas contingencies,” the violence once known as war
is remade as part of a larger species of planetary governance (merging military, humanitarian,
drug enforcement, and disaster relief activities), becoming radically open-ended, multifronted,
and politically diffuse. This reframing naturalizes U.S. military engagements across scales and types as simply another mode of international relations and announces that—
since contingencies are, after all, contingent (articulating radically different possibilities of what might or might not happen)— the security state claims both
near-term and deep future horizons for counterterror. For when can the contingent ever be truly defeated? How can one ever be fully
prepared for the radically emergent? How does one dispel forever what might happen— let alone permanently and knowingly eliminate the worst-case scenarios of mushroom clouds, biological
Counterterror is, in a key cultural sense, one logical multigenerational
attacks, and terrorists armed with wmds?
outcome of the contradictions installed in American society by the atomic bomb, a technology that remade the
United States as a global superpower but did so only through the systematic application of nuclear terror—directly in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, geopolitically via the Cold War nuclear arms race,
The national security state was empowered, organized, and
and affectively in the domestic form of U.S. civil defense.
psychosocially infused with nuclear terror from day one. Officials have relied on the existential
threat of nuclear war for a wide range of projects since the destruction of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Indeed, the national security state was formally established in 1947 to prevent a nuclear Pearl Harbor, and to advance the international power of the United States as a
nuclear superpower. This new kind of security state used nuclear fear writ large to transform domestic U.S. security into a global project with far-reaching economic, military, and political
consequences. As a mode of global governance, however, the resulting Cold War balance of terror was always unstable in one key domain, as it required two superpower states locked in
perpetual competition and equally committed to avoiding nuclear war from one minute to the next via nuclear deterrence. The War on Terror solves the structural problem of an unstable
bipolarity (and specifically the potential loss of a stabilizing enemy other) by bypassing contemporary politics altogether (i.e., reliance on a specific named other to combat in perpetuity) and
The counterterror state draws its power from identifying a
claiming the future itself as the domain it needs to secure.
proliferating field of potential dangers on a planetary scale and then attempting to build a
security state capable of responding to each contingency. Just note the proliferation of new
securities in the past decade—homeland security, biosecurity, and cybersecurity—each of
which is composed of a new universe of experts and objects that require a complex, global
vision of American power combined with innovative modes of threat assessment and response.
Each of these fields also enables new degrees and forms of militarism, merging new offensive and defensive capabilities through threat designation and affective governance. A concern about
securing the U.S. homeland, for example, accompanies an expanding U.S. campaign of drone bombing in the homelands of Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians (in countries with which the
United States is not formally “at war”). The biosecurity apparatus, as I have argued, is not just preparing for infectious disease outbreaks within the United States but is researching future
bioweapons and using disease eradication campaigns as a cover for covert operations on a global scale. The new official concern about domestic cybersecurity is tied directly to U.S. cyberwar
campaigns (most publicly against Iranian nuclear facilities) as well as unprecedented forms of digital surveillance (as the National Security Agency now captures the bulk of all global digital
communications in the name of counterterrorism, but also spies on government officials and conducts corporate espionage around the world). Importantly, the counterterror state pursues
This commitment to constant revolutionary
technical capacities for the sake of new forms of future agency and is, thus, itself radically emergent.
change across experts, technologies, and administrative abilities is perhaps the chief
accomplishment of the counterterror state and why it will likely have such a deep hold on the
twenty-first century. Moreover, counterterror is not only a highly flexible mode of security, based
on an ever-expanding concept of terror and a highly elastic set of core concerns in the figuration of the wmd. It
also addresses an unwinnable problem, for when can one say that terror—a basic emotional state—has been finally purged from American experience? Counterterror
colonizes the American future by identifying an ever-shifting series of peoples, objects,
technologies, hypotheticals, and contingencies to secure in the name of planetary defense. The fact
that very few of these potentials (people, technologies, finances, microbes) can be perfectly secured on a global basis in practice is part of the recursive structure of counterterror, as both failure
and surprise drive increasing calls for new capacities, increasing securitization, and more aggressive
militarization. Counterterror, thus, thrives on a proliferating insecurity, using vulnerability (past, present, future) and imaginative creativity (scenarios, fears, nightmares) as its raison
d’être. In this regard, counterterror is the perfect conceptual vehicle for a permanent mobilization of the
security state. Infused with proliferating images of existential danger to be fought in perpetuity,
counterterror is highly flexible in its core goals, objects, techniques, and future ambitions. The
transformations in American society during the first decade of terror politics could not be more profound: counterterror has produced a new social contract not through open political
the War on Ter-
deliberation (there has been almost no formal debate about alternative notions of security and costs) but through the constant amplification of threats. Indeed,
ror has fundamentally shifted American values, with the well-publicized illegal practices of the Bush
administration (rendition, indefinite detention, torture, and domestic surveillance) enhanced by the Obama administration’s imperial commitment to cyberwar, digital surveillance, and a global
“targeted killing” (that is, assassination) program using both Spe- cial Forces and drones (see also Constitution Project 2013; Open Society Foundation 2013; Becker and Shane 2012; Sanger
Counterterror has trumped human rights and law at every turn in the first decade of the War
2012).
on Terror, raising very basic questions about U.S. support for international law, the rights of U.S.
citizens, and the limits of war in the twenty-first century. The coherence of these policies across the Bush and Obama administrations and
the absence of any substantial effort by Con- gress or the Department of Justice to adjudicate practices such as water boarding, indefinite detention, warrantless surveillance, and the killing of
the United States 3
U.S. citizens and others with drone attacks are powerful indications of the new counterterror consensus in Washington. As I have argued in this book,
has historically expanded its security apparatus not through careful deliberation but rather in
times of national panic. The War on Terror, however, is unique, in that it is a conflict that cannot
be bounded spatially or temporally, or won. For example, even if Al Qaeda were eliminated from
the planet, that would not be the end of U.S. counterterror because the global future is now
seen as the ultimate domain to secure. This notion of planetary security, as I have argued, is
highly nationalist in orientation and thus remains at odds with collective emergencies like
climate change that cannot be easily militarized for national advantage. Thus, counterterror, despite its proliferating
objects of concern and expansive imaginative practices of threat designation, does not recognize all terrors, or even all of the most immediate and challenging ones. Antici- patory preemption
works to relocate the domain of security from the material world of everyday precarity into the collective imaginary, as experts conjure up images of perfected terrors that overwhelm all lesser
As a
but lived experiences of insecurity, displacing governance from existing forms of violence, suffering, and crisis in favor of combating nightmarish, if largely speculative, what ifs.
result, counterterror has dominated the United States politically, socially, and financially in the early
twenty-first century, a period of multiplying crises across capital, environment, and public institutions. Though the country is not confronted by a high-tech, nuclear-armed, global adversary
like the Soviet Union, the Pentagon’s current annual budget is over 50 percent higher than its average budget during the Cold War (Harrison 2011). The military campaigns in Afghanistan and
Iraq are the longest wars in U.S. history and have so far cost at least $1.3 trillion; only World War II was a more expensive conflict (Belasco 2011; Daggett 2010, 2). By 2012 those who
orchestrated the 2001 attacks (including Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenants in Al Qaeda) were dead or in prison, but yearly U.S. national security expenditures remain at an all-time high
(Hellman 2011), with no change in sight. The cost of the first decade of the War on Terror certainly exceeds $7.6 trillion (National Priorities Project 2011). This expenditure comes in the midst
of recurring global economic crises (including a 2008 recession second in severity only to the Great Depression of the 1930s) that wiped out twenty years of accumulated wealth for the median
U.S. household (Appelbaum 2012). Despite these startling economic facts, the national security system is not subject to calls for substantial economic reform and remains virtually immune to
political criticism or review from elected officials of both major parties. Indeed, counterterror has been the primary growth industry in the United States in the early twenty-first century. New
national infrastructures of homeland security, biosecurity, and cybersecurity sit on top of the national security institutions built during the Cold War, already the largest national security
apparatus in the world. The emerging counterterror infrastructure is staffed with experts and administrators leading lives that are classified secrets: in 2011, over 4.8 million Americans possessed
a security clearance (U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2012, 3). The cost of maintaining government secrets is correspondingly at an all- time high, increasing 12 percent in
2011 alone, to reach a total of $11.3 billion (U.S. Information Security Oversight Office 2012, 3). The American commitment to militarization takes many forms, including maintaining a global
system of over a thousand foreign military bases (Vine 2009, 42; see also Lutz 2009) and monopolizing two-thirds of the global arms trade (Shanker 2009). Increasingly, U.S. police departments
have also been pulled into the national counterterror apparatus, participating in the yearly simulations of terrorist attacks while expanding capabilities via access to federal counterterror funds.
Since 2001 rural as well as urban police departments have armed themselves with everything from military-grade weapons and bomb-detecting robots to drones in anticipation of wmd attacks but
directed increasingly against everyday forms of crime and social protest. To this spectrum of official counterterror agents, we could add the host of new experts in counterterrorism, wmd
4
emergency response, homeland security, and biosecurity that are being produced in universities and col- leges, with at least 350 new degree-granting programs in the United States alone. These
academic programs join the twelve “centers of excellence” funded by the 2002 Homeland Security Act, which link hundreds of educational institutions via counterterror, training new experts in
terrorist risk assessment, microbial hazards, zoonotic disease defense, food safety, catastrophic event response, explosives, immigration, coastal security, transportation, and security
5
visualization sciences. These public counterterror training programs, of course, supplement the vast classified efforts in the Department of Defense and across the U.S. intelligence agencies—
6
creating a new and highly redundant world of public, corporate, military, and classified counterterror expertise. Expertise, as we have seen, is a crucial aspect of the critical infrastructure
Counterterror has produced a new competitive terrain across corporate, academic, military,
concept.
intelligence, and scientific institutions for threat identification, anticipation, and response.
Indeed, few contemporary social institutions or national infrastructures are not in some direct
way now embedded within the larger U.S. counterterror state apparatus.7 In one sense this is a
very American mode of security, a broad mobilization of social institutions to engage an
emerging national danger as first happened during the Cold War. What is new is the radical open-endedness of the concept of
terror, its claim on a deep future, and—precisely because anticipatory preemption is an imaginative enterprise—its self-colonizing nature. During the Cold War, one could debate what was the
right balance of technological systems (missiles, warheads, bombers, submarines) to ensure global nuclear deterrence. In a counterterror state, there can never be enough security, as threat is a
Counterter- ror, therefore, involves linking
potentiality without limit, capable of producing endless new experiences of anticipated menace and danger.
infrastructures of militarism, technoscience, surveillance, and affect in a constantly emerging

fusion of imagination, anticipation, preemption, and violence. It constantly enfolds new
domains— policing, border patrols, public health, transportation, computing, and finance—and
reorients them toward specific feared outcomes by constituting a field of terror that is ever
expanding and affectively overpowering. In this way, counterterror has quickly become the
organizing principle for the U.S. security state, a vast set of institutions and experts who seek to
address the problem of future violence by trying to engineer the global present.
Impact – Preemption
Massumi ‘14 (Brian Massumi, professor in the Communication Department of the University of Montreal, 2013-
war doctrine of the George W Bush administration. But as a formative historical force with a power to regather
itself and follow its own momentum, it overflowed the Bush administration and flowed into the
Obama administration, and will likely flow beyond it. In addition, it can be argued that it overflowed
the borders of the United States, going global.
places. Doctrines must be applied. Tendencies are self-applying. They are self-driving. This makes them a force
to be contended within their own right
characters.
This is the doctrine, Bush's own words: "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long. We must take
the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge. In the world we have entered,
the only path to safety is the path to action."
event like 9-11, it hits collectively, directly riveting a whole population to a situation it is not yet
just happened?" Unlike an emotion, affect at this level it is less something we each have personally,
than it is something that has us collectively. We are taken up together in the terror. We are vaulted
into it together. We are agape, in suspense together. We are all in it together, in the disorientation of terror. We
are swept up by it. We are moved by it
threat is how an uncertain future makes-itself-felt in the present. This has immediate consequences on the
plane of action. Even in paralysis [inaction], it can change how we will be disposed to act. This viscerally felt, affective
presence of an uncertain future has consequences for the future. In a weird way, threat is a way
in which the future affects itself.
otherwise. Threat is a strange animal: a future cause. It comes from the future, to act on the futurity from
which it came. In a sense, threat makes future self-causing. There is a kind of short-circuit in time. A
future cause (the looming of the threat) loops through affect in a way that effectively changes
what goes down. Threat loops through affect to effect, never surrendering the future tense.
effects of the decision flow logically, step-bystep from it. Of course all kinds of accidents can happen. The path
verifiable, empirically present conditions, and that political response begins with deliberation and
is guided by it. Here, the causes of things precede them in time. Their effects feed forward from the empirical past, through the
observable present, and if all goes well, into a better future. It's all nicely ordered, comfortably linear.
All of this gets seriously twisted by threat. Because, once again, it's enough for a threat to be felt to
make it real. It needs no objective validation to have an effect as a future cause. It doesn't
operate in the realm of the objective. The future is precisely what is not yet objectively present.
It's not empirically observable. Preemption operates in the realm of affect. Its concern is threat. If it is enough for threat to
be felt for it to be real and effective, then it's logical that the actions that effectively flow from the feeling of threat are going to be
justified affectively as well. With preemption, the justification for actions, the legitimation of political decision, tends to become
It's
fundamentally affective. It is reasonable to say that a shift of this magnitude marks a threshold where "everything changes."
the death knell of centuries of politics that were supposed to be guided by the "reason of State."
What threat does is shift the mode of political decision from the objective to the conditional – the
"could have / would have" – and treat the conditional as a certainty. And it is a certainty –
affectively speaking. Bush certainly felt that Hussein would have if he could have. This certainty is not an informed judgment
about a set of objective conditions. It's a gut feeling that there is a potential for something to happen. The
thing is, it is impossible to disprove a potential. Even if nothing has happened years later, nothing
is disproven, because it might still happen years after that. There's nothing to say that it couldn't.
No one can know. The only certainty is that you have to act now to do everything possible to preempt the potential. In the
vocabulary of Bush's Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, the only thing certain is that you have to "go
kinetic," even though you don't really know and can't know and know you don't know. There are
known knowns, Rumsfeld famously said and there are known unknowns. But in the post 9-11 era of threat and terror, what
we're dealing with and have to act on are the "unknown unknowns." As Bush put it in the quote cited
earlier, "the only path to safety is the path to action" – against threats have not yet emerged. What has not yet emerged can be
nothing other than an unknown unknown.
All of this short-circuits objective assessment or evidence-based reasoning.
Hair-trigger action replaces deliberation. Rapid-response tactical capabilities replace considered
strategy. Remember the outrage when members of Bush's inner circle were quoted by investigative journalist Ron Suskind
ridiculing what they called the "reality-based" community. While you're off deliberating all nice and civil about what's really real, they
said, we're busy making reality, in our gutsy, preemptive way. The phrase "reality-based" was sarcastic. It's the height of illusion,
they were saying, to treat a looming threat as if it were a clear and present danger that can be responded to in the old-fashioned
No, what's realistic is go kinetic with utmost urgency. And when
way, as if the world were still orderly and linear.
you do that, you're not sitting back reflecting on the reality, you're making it, you're producing it.
Al Qaeda. Yes,the cynic might say. Iraq was a staging ground for Al Qaeda and Al-Qaeda-like
terrorist groupings – but only after the invasion, and as a direct result of that preemptive action. It
was the US invasion that created the conditions for AlQaeda to move in and capitalize on the chaos and resentment the invasion
unleashed. The retort to that, following the logic of preemption, is simple. It happened. That's the reality. Iraq did become a staging
ground for terrorrism – which only goes to show that the potential was there after all.
Impact – Racialization
History proves– rhetoric with an overeager focus on national identity and
suppression of otherness to further political goals paired with emphasis on
security drives genocide and war.
Burke ‘06 (Anthony; Professor in Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra; “Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence:
War Against the Other”; Routledge; pgs. 107-110)
The 1999 crisis between Australia and Indonesia had its roots in a pattern of engagement and
thinking developed during the Cold War, whose basis 1011 was a rigid and violent
deployment of identity. When Suharto came to prominence after the so-called ‘coup attempt’
of October 1965, a powerful image of Australian identity combined an intense anti-communism
with 3111 the fear and suspicion of Asia, present throughout Australia’s colonial history. While
identity was still premised on a hostility towards cultural, political and strategic images of the Other, this previously monolithic image
was fractured by strategic imperatives: Asian trading partners and military allies were subsumed into an economic and geopolitical
image of the Same, which was nonetheless destabilised by continuing anxieties about cultural difference. These ‘friendly’ forms of
otherness, it was hoped, could be slowly modified to allow for economic integration and the cultivation of bourgeois forms of life
and desire; the
more threatening otherness represented by left-wing and nationalist movements
was simply to be eliminated, however violently.17 By the early 1960s the high hopes aroused
by Australia’s support for Indonesia’s independence had given way to a situation in which
Australia and other Western governments were increasingly hostile to the regime of Indonesia’s
President Sukarno because of his closeness to the Indonesian \ Communist Party (PKI) and the
threat this posed to their strategic and economic interests in Southeast Asia. Thus the Menzies and Holt
govern- 30111 ments responded to the Indonesian army’s takeover in 1965–6, during which as many as a million people were
Australia would play a crucial role both in protecting the 3
slaughtered, with enormous relief and admiration.
New Order’s position in Indonesia, and in securing the broader regional 4 order it had
sanctioned. It was in this context, and the uncertainty created 5 by Nixon’s 1969 announcement
that American ground forces would never 6 again be deployed to Southeast Asia, that the
rhetoric of ‘strange neigh- 7 bours’ made an early appearance. An American strategic analyst,
Kathryn 8 Young, wrote in 1970 that if a co-operative relationship between Australia 9 and the
New Order did not develop in the wake of American failure in Vietnam, ‘the prospects for
stability in the wider Southeast Asian area 1 would become quite bleak’.18 2 In this scenario serious
conflicts of interest (and emotional attachment) 3 would develop for Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia – who had deep 4 cultural,
language and religious ties with Indonesia but military, trade and political ties to Australia – along with possible great power
Whatever the growing warmth in relations between 2 Australia and
involvement 111as tensions escalated.
the Suharto regime, Young wrote, sensitivities over the 3 Papua New Guinea border and
differences in ‘modes of thinking, value 4 systems, economies and forms of political
organisation’ left the relation- 5 ship vulnerable to upheaval and misunderstanding: 7 the usual
factors making for a sense of community, or even sympa- 8 thetic mutual relations, between two nations are objectively absent in 9
this case. . . . Yet in spite of this objective dissimilarity a recognised 1011 and increasingly understood relationship has begun to
19
develop. 1 2 Thus the trope of strangeness became integral to a potent blackmail 1 that portrayed the relationship as a stabilising
factor of ‘global’ signifi- 4 cance, in a newly ambiguous and uncertain world. A
drive for sameness 5 coexisted with
continuing anxieties about differences, which Australian 6 policy in particular now sought to
reduce and manage. 7 Although a latent possibility, such differences had not yet emerged 8 as a problem. The vast
slaughter that had accompanied the destruction of 9 the PKI’s social and political infrastructure, and the hundreds of thousands still
held without charge or trial, were more cause for relief than 1 concern; the regime had written a generous new foreign investment
law, 2 was receiving millions of dollars from the new international aid consor- 3 tium, IGGI (Intergovernmental Group on Indonesia),
and had engineered 4 a dramatic pro-Western reversal in foreign policy. Notwithstanding the 5 war in Vietnam, Suharto’s regime
seemed to have singlehandedly trans- 6 formed Southeast Asia into a bulwark of anti-communism and security. 7 Thus at this time
strangeness displayed its Janus-face: growing mutual 8 assumptions of sameness and homogenisation. Assuming the theoretical 9
oneness of Western elites and their publics, the New Order regime took for granted a broad Western acceptance of
authoritarianism; for their part 1 Western elites assumed a long-term convergence of values to match 2 Indonesia’s integration with
the international strategic and capitalist order. 3 Gough Whitlam was moved to say that the region was witnessing the 4 creation of
20
‘a just and prosperous Indonesia . . . an example to our neigh- 5 bourhood of progress and social transformation’. 6 This
shockingly benign image of the New Order was also being incorp- 7 orated into a new
Australian politics of nation-building and identity. 8 Whitlam assumed that the New Order
regime was essential to Australia’s 9 national security, and that acceptance by the New Order
was crucial to the cultivation of profitable and co-operative relations with a region that 1 retained
recent memories of the White Australia policy and a neo-colonial 2 war in Vietnam. Indeed in
1973 he told an audience that ‘our destiny is 3 inseparable from Indonesia’. This cleaved, however
strangely, with Labor’s 4 claims for a new national mission and identity: an Australia, as Whitlam told Suharto, committed to ‘social
justice, human rights and peaceful regional co-operation’, ‘not open to suggestions of racism’, and which 2 could now take ‘her
21
rightful, proud, secure and independent place in the 3 future of our region’. 4 At the same time the New Order was
playing out a more repressive 5 politics of sameness. In 1949, with the aim of welding
thousands of islands 6 and numerous religions, languages and cultures into a single nation, the
7 nationalists had declared the national motto ‘Unity In Diversity’. After 8 1966 the New Order seized on this,
and the five principles of the Pancasila, 9 in an effort to subsume political and cultural differences beneath a unifying model of
22
identity that they could go on to re-interpret and control. 1 However ‘unity in diversity’ was bought at a
frightening cost: before 1970 2 the army fought uprisings and rebellions in Central and West
Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, the Moluccas, and faced strong resistance from the West 4 Papuans.
Likewise the fear engendered by the PKI’s destruction remained 5 a powerful (if rarely stated) factor in the tranquillisation of political
life. 6 Only
18 months before Suharto’s fall the slogan ‘Satu Nusa, Satu Bangsa, 7 Satu Bahasa,
Indonesia’ (One Land, One People, One Language, Indonesia) 8 still hung triumphantly over
Jakarta roadways as a testament to the New 9 Order’s power over national myths and
institutions. These two drives for sameness converged when Portugal announced its 4
intention to decolonise East Timor in 1974. At the same time the politics 5 of their suppression of difference became
more risky, and the contra- 6 dictions contained by the idea of ‘strange neighbours’ more likely to erupt. 7 The Indonesian army’s
paranoia about national unity and stability, and 8 its intense hostility to the Left, ensured it would feel threatened by 9 the
emergence of Fretilin; likewise Cold War geopolitics saw the West turn a blind eye to Indonesia’s brutal December 1975 invasion.
Having 1 argued that Australia’s very destiny lay with the New Order, Whitlam had 2 made an ‘Australian’ politics of identity hostage
to the generals’ whims. 3 In
September 1974 he told Suharto of his preference for an Indonesian 4
rather than an independent East Timor. While he asserted this should occur 5 peacefully, by the outbreak of civil war
23
in August 1975 he had abandoned 6 this opposition to the Indonesian use of force. In the most destructive 7 way
possible, East Timor had now been incorporated into a repressive 8 Indonesian politics of
sameness, which the West encouraged in the cause 9 of its own geopolitical drive for stability
and identity. Australia’s national security was now wagered on the indivisible control 1 of the
New Order regime throughout the archipelago, whatever its violence 2 and cost; likewise the
pursuit of Australia’s ‘national interests’ and the 3 ontological realisation of its larger project – a
renewed and modernised 4 identity – hinged on the preservation of its relationship with the New
Order. The contradictions this would generate were quickly visible, as the 1111 Fraser
government – pushed by outraged public opinion – publicly 2 condemned Indonesia’s full-
scale invasion in December while privately 3 showing understanding. After a meeting with Indonesian
foreign minister 4 Adam Malik six weeks after the invasion, Australian foreign minister 5 Andrew Peacock said that ‘differences of
attitude . . . should be seen in 6 the context of the long-term importance to both countries and the region 7 as a whole of close and
24
co-operative relations’.
Alts
Alt – Ontology of War
Vote neg to reject 1AC – quick fix solutions like reform to arms sales policy
obscures a structural analysis of global militarism. Our alternative rejects
the aff in favor of constructing a new ontology of war that recognizes the
recuperative nature of militarism in reforms such as the plan. Only an
analysis of the structure of liberalism that problematizes academic
investments like the 1ac is able to disrupt the grids of militarized subject
formation
Barkawi and Brighton ’11 (Tarak, Department of IR at University of Cambridge, Shane, Department
of IR at University of Sussex, “Powers of War: Fighting, Knowledge, and Critique”, International Political
Sociology (2011) 5, gender modified)
So, what can be said of the ontology of war, that fundamental character which manifests itself in
each instance of war and is true of war in general? As a phenomenon, war presents itself in
historically specific ways and most writing about it reflects this. Military historians begin with the archive and the
particularity of testimony. Strategic analysts attend to specific alignments of forces and the effect of
engagements on the course of a war. Those who experience a war encounter its particular
violences and their cumulative impact. Despite this, the question of the fundamental character of
war beyond its finite, historical manifestation recurs: just as war poets frequently intimate
transcendent human truth, strategists and policy makers seek to recover eternal verities from
narratives of past battles and campaigns. A proper approach to the ontology of war does not
seek to resolve this discomforting tension, as though some decision were possible between
‘‘war’’ and ‘‘wars’’ as the correct object of inquiry. Rather, we propose to take it as a basic
framework from which to proceed. We are not the first to do so. Clausewitz, tellingly described as both historically
specific to the point of irrelevance (van Creveld 1991:ix; Kaldor 1999:13-30) and a source of timeless insight (Gray 1999:75-112),
also grapples with the universal and the historically contingent character of war, what we call its historicity. We consider his efforts
below and mark the recurrence of this conceptual tension in Etienne Balibar’s recent work (Balibar 2008). He discusses the
continually transformative effect of ‘‘this war’’—the war we are in or may be subject to—upon efforts to think about ‘‘war’’ as such.
The historicity of war, in the first instance, consists of the urgent grasp of ‘‘this war’’ on politics and society, of its ordering effects on
thought and knowledge about war. What
is it about ‘‘this war,’’ most fundamentally, that demands
attention to the exclusion of other perspectives? Note a difference between accounts produced
by strategists, commanders, staff officers, soldier poets, and memorialists, on the one hand, and
much of the academic literature mentioned earlier. Participant perspectives, with varying
degrees of directness, center on fighting, past, current, or potential. Fighting is that which
thematically unifies war in general and in particular—‘‘war’’ with ‘‘wars’’—and no ontology of war
can exclude it. Attention to fighting is that which marks out war-centered analysis from
that reducing war to a secondary effect. Fighting and the violence of war exercise a profound
grasp on the imagination, constituting the practical test to which strategic thought is oriented
and the conventional mode for the achievement of victory. Fighting is dwelt upon in representations of war in
popular literature and cinema. Even Sun Tsu’s aphorism that true strategic excellence consists in ‘‘[subduing] the enemy without
fighting’’ (Sun 1971:77) derives its power from a paradoxical relation to this basic truth, perhaps best articulated in Clausewitz’s
However,
much quoted observation that fighting is as definitive for war as cash exchange for economy (Clausewitz 1976:97).
what fighting is, how it might be understood and positioned within a fundamental theory of war,
cannot be taken for granted. Clearing the ground for a new ontology of war requires recognition
that fighting understood instrumentally, as the Clausewitzian duel, the test of arms, as ‘‘kinetic exchange,’’
misses its wider implication and importance. But as we saw above, fighting, or more broadly military operations, is
the site of a decisive divide in inquiry that can be characterized as ‘‘war or society,’’ between a focus on war as fighting and on its
impact on society. The former’s limitation of focus, we suggest, is not an intellectual failure but, rather, an outcome of the historicity
of war. For those who focus on war as fighting, its reality as an actual and potential
presence compels an instrumental relation to it, such that knowledge about war is never
fully exterior to an order war itself creates. Fighting always entails the problem of how to
survive and prevail, and the question of the appropriate instruments and means by which to do
so occupies the minds of soldiers, strategists, and political leaders who embark on war. The
question is what is occluded by such instrumentalization—by the order of knowing and
being war creates—and what might be said of the wider ontological significance of fighting?
Economics as a discipline after all has not been limited to or necessarily centered upon the study of cash exchange. War
studies as the study of warfighting surely apprehends that most definitive of war, but
rarely escapes from the limits of historic particularity and thereby constrains its own
potential utility for a wider analysis of war. Fully developing our point about the
instrumentalization that fighting demands would require attention to the broad and disparate literatures
concerning the experience of war and its effects, something we do only in a limited fashion here. But it enables a
preliminary observation on the ontology of war: war is defined by fighting or its
immanent possibility and—as an historical, existential, issue in the lives of those who
seek to understand it—this definitive element resists disinterested analysis, while
tending to instrumentalize knowledge about war. One work that describes the powerful grasp of war on
thought is Emmanuel Levinas’s Totality and Infinity. An extended essay on the relationship between ontology and ethics, Levinas’s
work begins from the proposition that the proximity between war and knowing is fundamental, asking
rhetorically whether or not ‘‘…lucidity, the mind’s openness on the true consist[s] in catching sight of the permanent possibility of
war?’’ (Levinas 1969:21) His point is the pervasive, but not always recognized or acknowledged, influence of war on knowledge, the
‘‘truth’’ of which functions within public rationality and institutions as a basis for the flourishing and survival of the polity. War for such
rationality and institutions serves as a reality against which their truths are tested. Despite dissimulations by political figures and
official organs, ‘‘the trial by force is the test of the real’’: a point of vindication or failure for those who might speak truth about the
realities of war (ibid.). So far, Levinas appears to offer an imperative for instrumentalized strategic thought, for getting it right or
facing ruin on the battlefield. But he quickly goes further to suggest there can be no rational comprehension of politics, no political
Vitally, this
calculation at all without understanding how ‘‘in advance [war’s] shadow falls over the actions of men.’’
imbrication of war and truth goes beyond the narrow framework of strategic thought and
public rationality. That it does so is revealed in the reality of war itself, the violence of
which ‘‘does not consist so much in injuring and annihilating persons as in interrupting
their continuity, making them play roles in which they no longer recognize themselves’’
in ‘‘an order from which no one can keep [their] distance.’’ While fighting remains a
kinetic exchange, the Clausewitzian Schlacht, and the most fundamental element of war, it is also an event and
process with the ability to draw in and disrupt wider certitudes and coordinates of human
life, to shape and accelerate the transitory and mutable in human affairs. It is a ‘‘casting
into movement of beings hitherto anchored in their identity… by an objective order from
which there is no escape…’’ (ibid.). War might, as Heraclitus tells us, make kings, gods, and slaves, but it also retains
the power to unmake them, sometimes irrespective of their own actions. This transformative effect, the capacity
to rework the reality of social and political existence, is, of course, the objective of
waging war. War forces change, strategy being both the science of its management and
the means to a putatively superior peace. But Levinas’ point, and the basis of his ethical intervention, is that
irrespective of their being rendered such in strategic calculus and destroyed as such in fighting, people are not only, or even
primarily, brute facts, strategic datum. Rather, they are, among other things, bearers of meaning and manifestations of
Reinvested with full
contemporary truths. They are the authors and outcomes of social, political, and economic processes.
meaning, fighting marks the disruption of this wider order and the people and other entities
which populate it, the unmaking and remaking of certainties, of meaning, of—potentially—the
very coordinates of social and political life. ‘‘Since [Napoleon], all campaigns have produced such comet like
vibrations that they can scarcely be thought of as only military because they involve the whole of society’’ (Clausewitz quoted in
Bucholz 1985:25). As the basic element of the ontology of war then, fighting presents itself as a
duality. First, it drives the intellectual instrumentality of truth about—and in—war, through its
historicity and immediacy. But second, it also exceeds the terms of that immediacy. This
‘‘excess’’ is the capacity of organized violence to be more than kinetic exchange, to be
constitutive and generative, to ‘‘cast into motion’’ subjects who are then alienated from
themselves and come to know themselves and the world in new ways. For us, this
‘‘excess,’’ lying beyond the compelling, immanent socio-political logics of combatants, is
at the core of the ontology of war. It is both that which gives war its status as an ontological
event for politics and society and a problematizing framework from which a critical
approach to war studies might begin. It is an ontology that retains the power of war-centered
analysis without limiting inquiry to a focus on warfighting. We hold on to the ontological primacy of fighting, but
wrest it from the instrumentality its historicity demands. In doing so, we note the material and intellectual importance of this
historicity. War, like a societal centrifuge,
has the power to draw in resources—intellectual, scientific,
social, economic, cultural, and political—and unmake and re-work them in ways that cannot be
foreseen. This disordering and reordering in part determines the dynamics of strategic thought,
the rise and fall of various theories and paradigms of warfighting, as well as the more general
subjective violence, the violence to meaning, to which Levinas testifies. We note also that this violence
undoes many traditional enframements of war: in its contingency and destruction, it
exceeds the strategic calculi of war as an instrument of policy; in its generative power of
re-making, it exceeds reduction to its destructive consequences alone. Having offered these
observations on the ontology of war, we now illustrate and expand upon them with particular reference to the problem of knowledge
in and about war.
Alt – Disarm from Below
Alt – We should engage in a “disarmament from below”, an adaptive
rhizomatic movement to envision and realize radical alternative security
futures.
Back in the Frame”, Review of International Studies 32:2, pp 374-376)
The preceding analysis has attempted to demonstrate how, contrary to the impression given in the mainstream literature on arms
limitation, there has in fact been agreat deal of disarmament - at least in the terms understood in the
disarmament negotiations of the 1950s and 60s. Yet these very successes have been coopted
by arms controllers in ways that function to delegitimise disarmament as Utopian and appear to
confirm realist representations of a world system with limited potential for transformation. This
article has also demonstrated the way in which global civil society has been able to set an
apparently more radical, new arms limitation agenda for the new wars - one in particular which
has emphasised human and economic security rather than state and military security. These factors
then, represent a basis for optimism about the future prospects for further disarmament. However , it is also the case that
the contemporary disarmament and broader arms limitation system is a highly asymmetric one
geared to preserving the military hegemony of the US and its allies. Moreover, even the new arms
limitation agenda is characterised by its own asymmetries. In particular, civil society has manifestly failed to
gain the same level of influence over core military security issues - for example, NBC or the
trade in major conventional weapons that keeps Western defence industries viable. In some
respects then, this analysis shares certain commo- nalities with offensive realist critiques that
emphasise the problematic nature of arms control theory (albeit from a different standpoint) and
the supremacy of politics and power in determining the possibilities for the control of arms.86 One
response, therefore, might be to adopt a similar attitude of resigned cynicism in the face of the overwhelming influence of power and
interest in shaping discourse and practice - and to conclude that a truly emancipatory, as opposed to asymmetric, disarmament
agenda is unrealisable. However, there are both material and ideational factors immanent in the
contemporary international system that suggest a politics of radical emancipatory disarmament
can be constituted. First, the success of existing disarmament initiatives - albeit under asymmetry - highlights the real-
world relevance of disarmament proposals still dismissed as failed and Utopian. This illustrates the
potential for a more radical disarmament agenda to be realised by simultaneously deconstructing
hegemonic framings of the arms limitation problem and developing alternative narratives that
contain inherently transformatory meanings - a powerful political act in itself. Second, the influential
role of global civil society in new arms limitation suggests the possibility of a truly progressive
practice of arms limitation - a kind of disarmament from below.87 In particular, campaigns such as those on
landmines or conflict diamonds demonstrate the (as yet unfulfilled) potential for networked and adaptive
rhizomatic movements to envision and realise radical alternative security futures. This is not to deny
the significant power differentials that exist between states and civil society movements that may themselves have different goals.
However, the flexibility of such movements contrasts sharply with the rigid and sclerotic statist
institutions most immediately geared to dealing with the diplomacy of arms limitation. Moreover,
at their optimal, such swarming resistances to hegemony have
the potential to exploit the uncontrollable spaces and flows of a networked information age88 to
generate focused policy goals and shared understandings; to generate political and cultural
power by exploiting global media tropes (Princess Diana as beatified saint opposed to
landmines) or creating their own (diamonds as blood diamonds);89 to challenge both the threat
discourses that underpin the arms dynamic and the counsels of despair in the face of anarchy
and a supposed military technological imperative that lie at the heart of arms control theory; and
to thus effect change by eroding the legitimacy of institutions and actors upholding militarism.90
Moreover, such movements have the potential to resolve the perennial debate over what has to come first before disarmament is
realised - radical reduction of armaments or radical political change. The inevitable corollary of the
emergence of such rhizomatic social movements is that the very act of campaigning for a
radical disarmament agenda presages radical change in the nature of local-global politics - the
one brings the other into being, and vice versa. Third, it might also be argued that this is precisely the wrong time
to articulate a new disarmament agenda, particularly given the imperatives of the 'war on terror'. However, to the extent
that the threat of 'WMD' terrorism is rooted in material conditions, the safest response is to
eliminate the very weaponry that might be utilised - to move, if you like, from a policy that aims
to prevent loose nukes to a policy that aims simply to lose nukes. Furthermore, rather than
being an inopportune moment to pursue a radical disarmament agenda, it is clear that we are
now facing a range of new and old arms limitation challenges that will require a radically
different kind of arms regulation. These include challenges such as the growing pressure to
weaponise space, the military potential of the new biology, the weapon- isation of
nanotechnology and the challenge of controlling the military uses of cyberspace. A further challenge
is that presented by the growing importance of dual-use technology for the military. This has been compounded by the
simultaneous concentration and globalised integration of the defence industry in a largely
Western-dominated hub and spoke model characterised by the erosion of defence industrial
national identities and increased intra-firm movement of technology and knowledge.91 Finally,
there is the problem presented by the extension and intensification of illicit global arms
networks that exploit porous borders, corrupt officials, lax regulation and the mechanisms of
globalisation to move arms to conflict zones.92 The corollary of all this is that traditional, supply-side non-
proliferation initiatives based around the ability of hermetic nation-states to supervise the physical movement of military technology
will inevitably be subject to declining utility. Such developments then, are likely to require a qualitative step-shift in the application of
end-use monitoring and the kind of intrusive verification of civil industries dealing with dual-use technologies presaged in the CWC;
the innovative adaptation of existing arms limitation methodologies adopted by recipients and the peripheries - such as the
extension of nuclear weapons-free zones to incorporate bans on other military technologies, or the greater use of moratoria/bans on
arms imports; and an enhanced role for local-global civil society as presaged by the role of NGOs in monitoring implementation of
the landmines treaty. In sum, if the challenge of controlling contemporary military technology is to be addressed effectively (and it
may not be, of course), then
the new arms limitation agenda of the current era is likely to represent
merely a half-way house towards a radically novel practice of arms limitation. This will entail a
move away from control primarily based on physical management of objects (finished weapons,
national militaries) and their accumulation and movement within or across borders. Instead,
current trends will require a shift to a form of oversight and limitation characterised by
swarming.93 Such an approach will focus far more on dual-use technologies and thus intrude into the very warp and weft of
socioeconomic life. It will be marked by a move from the asymmetry of hegemon/supplier-dominated control and non- proliferation
It will require such a qualitative
instruments and imply a far greater role for recipients and the peripheries.
intensification and expansion of the network of arms limitation practices that this in itself will
constitute a radically novel approach to arms limitation. And it will require the interactive,
interpenetrated agency of multiple institutions and actors from states, multilateral institutions,
NGOs, industry, media, epistemic communities and society generally.
Alt – New Ontologies
The current ontologies of war have and will always fail, a new ontology
must be created to escape this serial failure
Burke 2007 (Anthony, Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at UNSW Canberra ,"Ontologies of War:
Violence, Existence and Reason." Theory & Event, vol. 10 no. 2, 2007)
the available
I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that
critical, interpretive or performative languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just war
theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform or refuse to place
under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and question
here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately
affirm strategic thought and remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-
state. Both liberal internationalist and just war doctrines seek mainly to improve the
accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral
enormities of war, but (apart from the more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the
ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case of a theorist like Jean Bethke
Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She dismisses Kant's
Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics, which is
the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat
and espouses a moral community that stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to
liberalism and his claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she
implies, requires the resort to war as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of
Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a
performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of
human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war advocates, I suspect that
even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much
unquestioned power to the is. The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of 'human beings as we know them' --
which ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates (indeed
reifies) antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an
ontology of being for one of becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new
possibilities through agonistic relation to others, provides a less destructive and violent way of
acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference.85 My argument here, whilst normatively sympathetic to
Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not
an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and rational instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of
hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action and community -- my analysis does suggest some sobering conclusions about
its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an international society of
republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have described here in fact dominate the
conceptual and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come, against everything
Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress, modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some
credibility, is that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not simply
endanger man in his relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing...the rule of
Enframing threatens man with the possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to
experience the call of a more primal truth.'87 What I take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by
analysing the militaristic power of modern ontologies of political existence and security -- is a view that the challenge is
posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government, technology or policy, but by an
overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our entire space of truth
and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -- militarism,
repression, coercive diplomacy, covert intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and ecological destruction -- derive not
merely from particular choices by policymakers based on their particular interests, but from
calculative, 'empirical' discourses of scientific and political truth rooted in powerful enlightenment
images of being. Confined within such an epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers'
choices become necessities, their actions become inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die.
Viewed in this light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which builds one structure
of truth on another until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained
through that reasoning's very operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices
may simply not be seen as credible or legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing cascade of
discourses and events which then preordain militarism and violence as necessary policy responses,
however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's analysis does, admittedly, tend
towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it is important to allow this possible conclusion to weigh on us.
Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security institutions -- are
utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark ontology of the
friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is
there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the
modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having
choices and making decisions, with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence
that, even in the face of the anonymous power of discourse to produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus
incur responsibilities.88) There seems no point in following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate
ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique. However we can, while refusing Heidegger's
unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the modern system of calculation; that he was searching
for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of
enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and
indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of
policy, the force of this analysis suggests that choice and agency can be all too often limited;
they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security
paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy choices could aim to bring into being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and
peaceful logic of the political. But this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the space
of enframing and utilitarian strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and
activating a very different concept of existence, security and action.90
Alt – Precarity
The alternative is a precarious political mobilization beyond the dominant
scripts of modernity- this act of disobedience is a prerequisite to effective
resistance
Lorey and Butler 15, Dr. Isabell Lorey is a Professor of Social Science, Cultural and
Gender Studies at the University of Basel, Judith Butler is a Maxine Elliot Professor in the
Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of Critical Theory at the University of
California, Berkeley “State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious,” Verso Publications, pp.
vii-xi,
precarity is not a passing or
The important contribution of this thoughtful work is to let us understand finally that
episodic condition, but a new form of regulation that distinguishes this historical time. When one
claims that some populations are more precarious than others, and tries to explain that
difference, one is left with the task of explaining in what precisely precarity consists, where it
begins and ends, and how we understand its scope and its mechanisms. In fact, we can only identify the
instances by seeking recourse to its more general form, and this leads us to a consideration of how precarity has itself
become a regime, a hegemonic mode of being governed, and governing ourselves. Lorey's book
allows us to consider the emergence of a neoliberal form of regulation and power that is at once prefigured by Foucault and exceeds
his own theory of power. The text clearly relies on Foucault for many important considerations, especially the understanding of
it also introduces a new question: how do
power as it produces a subject as well as its relationship with itself. But
we understand precarity and its pervasive sense of 'insecurity' as a dense site of power in
subject formation? In other words, how do we understand the organization of 'security' under
neoliberal conditions as requiring and inducing precarity as a mode of life, as an indefinite
trajectory, as the organizing principle for the process by which we are governed and by which
we come to govern ourselves? Lorey's book works with enormous conceptual clarity to help us to distinguish among
forms of precarity, their social implications, and the particular ways in which precarity names a new form of power and potential for
exploitation. Drawing on the history of political sovereignty, the Marxist idea of reproductive labour, a feminist critique of ideas of
masculine independence, and an analysis of neoliberal forms of induced destitution, Lorey's work offers a historically and politically
nuanced understanding of how new forms of power converge at the present time for new regulatory purposes. Whatever one might
want to say about the transience or precarity of life itself, cast in existential terms, such claims are not separable from the social and
economic organization of needs and, more particularly, the production of 'insecurity' for the purposes of extending securitarian forms
of power.Lorey's work asks us to pay close attention to 'precarization' as a process that produces
not only subjects, but also 'insecurity' as the central preoccupation of the subject. This particular
form of power lays the groundwork for establishing the need for security as the ultimate political
ideal, one that works to amass power within the state and corporate institutions at the same time
that it produces a new kind of subject. In the place of critique and resistance, populations are
now defined by their need to be alleviated from insecurity, valorizing forms of police and state
control, promises of global investment, and institutions of global governance. Just as the
discourse of 'financial crisis' can and does work to shore up the need for greater managerial
control of the market (and the need for an ever more expert set of capitalists), so the discourse of
'precarity' consolidates power among those who wield the power to alternately promise its
alleviation and threaten its continuation. Lorey's work involves a rethinking of the doctrine of sovereignty, offering an
important reformulation of Agamben's recent views on the sovereign exception. Situating her analysis within a critique of liberal
sovereignty itself becomes an
political philosophy and a revised conception of biopolitics, Lorey shows how
instrument in the regulation and self-regulation of populations. In fact, everyone is prekarisiert by
the norms that govern the idea of sovereign citizens. Their sovereignty depends on the
presumption that one's person or property is perpetually threatened by the outside, and that the
exercise of sovereignty thus consists in a demand for security. In a sense, contemporary
securitarian regimes govern populations (and are thus bound up with biopolitics) by amplifying
and redefining this basic dynamic of 'defending against a threat' that defines liberal ideas of
sovereign citizenship. Ironically, if not painfully, the idea of sovereignty implies precarization, which at
once gives the lie to the traditional account of sovereign independence at the same time as it exposes its inner logic. In the terms of
the sovereign people, and the sovereign subject, are threatened by forms of illness,
later modernity,
contagions of sexual panic, waves of criminality, possible invasions of many kinds. Thus, the
need for immunization becomes paramount, and power takes the form of a subjugation by and
through that need. On the one hand, the sovereign subject is markedly singular, and must be distinguished from the masses
by its individualization; and yet, the subject's relation to its own life is clearly managed by large-scale forms of social and political
the more the subject
regulation that it has adopted and now cultivates as its own practice of self-making. Indeed,
regulates [the] him or her self, the more effectively does that broader form of regulation work -
taking the form of a mode of self-management that takes for granted the individuality (and the need
to cultivate the individual) that is its very instrument. This important book challenges us to imagine political
mobilizations that would refuse the lure of 'being threatened' and take a critical distance from
those forms of fearfulness that make us vulnerable to exploitation. In effect, Lorey asks us to think
about the alternatives to accepting fear and insecurity as the basis for a political mobilization,
alternatives to accepting deliberately induced states in which we seek security at all costs. What
would it mean to focus instead on the induced character of precarity, and the exploitation of insecurity? Power
is imposed on the subject, and yet power is the means by which the subject relates to itself, even
cultivates itself. Thus, Lorey opposes a politics of pure victimization (that would see power as only
imposed from the outside) as well as the ultimate value of 'security' (the affective investment of
the regulated subject). Instead, she asks us to consider those forms of political mobilization that
rally precarity against those regimes that seek to augment their power to manage and dispose
of populations - in other words, precarity as activism. New governmental forms engaged in the
precarization of populations work precisely through cultivating forms of subjectivation and
practical possibilities (Handlungsmoglichkeiten) that can, and must be, undone through an activism of
the precarious, one that combats the false promises of security, its managerial tactics, and its
exploitations.
Alt – Refusal
Vote negative to refuse the 1AC – Only through critique and refusal of the
security apparatus can we recognize and rewrite the implications of the
subjection and desires we encounter every day.
Burke 2007 (Andrew, Professor of Politics and International Relations at the University of
New South Wales – Australian political theorist and international relations scholar, “War against
the Other”, Routledge, p52-54)
It is perhaps easy to become despondent, but as countless struggles for freedom, justice and
social transformation have proved, a sense of seriousness can be tempered with the knowledge
that many of the tools are already available – and where they are not, the effort to create a
productive new critical sensibility is well advanced. There is also a crucial political opening within the liberal problematic
itself, in the sense that it assumes that power is most effective when it is absorbed as truth, consented to and
desired – which creates an important space for dissent, critique and refusal. As Colin Gordon argues,
Foucault thought that the very possibility of governing was conditional on it being credible to the
governed as well as the governing.79 This throws weight onto the question of how security works as a
technology of subjectivity. It is to take up Foucault’s challenge, framed as a reversal of the liberal progressive
movement of being we have seen in Hegel, not to discover who what are so much as to refuse
what we are.80 Just as security rules subjectivity as both a totalising and individualising blackmail
and promise, it is at these levels we too can intervene. We can critique the machinic frameworks of possibility
represented by law, policy, economic regulation and diplomacy, while challenging the way these institutions deploy language to draw individual
subjects into their consensual web. This suggests, at least provisionally, a dual strategy. The ﬁrst asserts the space for agency, both in challenging
Pushing beyond security requires tactics that
available possibilities for being and their larger socio-economic implications.
can work at many levels: that empower individuals to recognise the larger social, cultural and
economic implications of the everyday forms of desire, subjection and discipline they encounter,
to challenge and rewrite them, and which in turn contribute to collective efforts to transform the
larger structures of being, exchange and power that sustain (and have been sustained by) these forms. As
Derrida suggests, this is to open up aporetic possibilities that transgress and call into question the boundaries of the self, society and the international
that security seeks to imagine and police. The second seeks new ethical principles based on a critique of the rigid and repressive forms of identity
security has heretofore offered. Thus writers such as Rosalyn Diprose, William Connolly and Moira Gatens have sought to imagine a new ethical
on the basis of a dialogue with the Other that might
relationship, which thinks difference not on the basis of the Same, but
allow space for the unknown and unfamiliar, for what Gatens calls a ‘debate and engagement with the other’s law and the
other’s ethics’ – an encounter which involves a transformation of the self rather than the other.81 (The
potentials and limits of these models of ethics are explored in more detail in Chapter 3, where I critically analyse the political possibilities offered by the
thought of Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber.) In short, while the sweep and power of security must be
acknowledged, it must also be refused: at the simultaneous levels of individual identity, social order and macroeconomic
possibility, it would entail another kind of work on ‘ourselves’ – a political refusal of the One, the imagination of an
Other that never returns to the Same. It is to imagine a world in which alternative possibilities of
society, justice and existence are free to develop, independent of sovereign ontologies and their
animating forms of geopolitical control, desire and violence. It is to ask if there can be a world or
a security after security, and what its shimmering possibilities might be.
Alt – Structural Criticism
‘militarization’, rather than engaging with the underlying ideological nature of militarism. While
this has certainly left their analysis wanting, and reveals an equally unsatisfactory
setting up
Cosmopolitan
For
frameworks that may more accurately reflect the underlying dynamics – concepts such as war
(Barkawi, 2011) or neoliberalism (Montesinos Coleman and Rosenow, 2016) – and that may be more appropriate
for critical ethico-political interventions into phenomena that critical security studies interprets as
security or securitization. My final suggestion is that militarism is yet another concept that risks
being obscured in critical security studies analysis by this tendency to measure rather than
critique. By contrast, I have shown above how a more critical concept of militarism as ideology
can offer a superior starting point for an analysis of the shortcomings of various justifications for
the use of force, including those encountered in critical security studies. Militarism can help us
to think more precisely about the circumstances in which the use of violence to achieve political
objectives (such as ‘security’) can descend into a more generalized and intractable desire for
war and military activity. My hope is that from such an understanding we might also better equip
ourselves to intervene in this process and resist it.
Blocks
2NC Framework
The lenses with which we view war and peace influence the policy options
we consider – academia is a critical space to address these issues
Cady ‘10 (Duane L., prof of phil @ hamline university, From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum, pp. 115-
117)
The very notion of restraint in war— common to all positions along ¶ the full continuum in varying degrees— puts the burden of
These are the activities in ¶ need of justification. The
proof on going to war and on how the fighting is done.
moral presumption should be to peace, positive peace, rather than the pervasive presumption of
warism and negative peace. Recognizing the grip that warism has on dominant culture ¶ may be the
most formidable task of genuine peacemaking for the fore-¶ seeable future because it is warism that
blocks evolution toward more ¶ pacifistic societies. Only occasionally will individuals back into the ¶ most absolute
form of pacifism; the cultural predisposition to warism ¶ confines most of us to a narrow range of options toward the war- realist ¶
end of the scale. This brings us full circle and we end this consideration of a moral continuum on the morality of war and peace
where we ¶ began, confronting warism.¶ The
normative lenses of warism, the spectacles through which
we ¶ in modern culture tend to see and interpret all that happens, turn out ¶ to be as much like
blinders as lenses because they restrict our vision to ¶ a narrow range of options. Nietzsche
said that if the only tool you have ¶ is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail.
Under such conditions it is pretty hard to resist hammering. Analogously, if the only ¶ vision we
have is warist and the only tools we build are weapons, then ¶ every conflict invites military intervention
and it is hard to resist war-¶ ring. Unless we envision a wider value perspective than the warist, we
¶ will not see the nonviolent options before us. But to see more widely ¶ we need to acknowledge and
remove the blinders.¶ Peace education is a small, struggling, but growing segment of ¶ contemporary
education. The dominant presumption of warism has ¶ made it difficult for those committed to peace
education to develop ¶ and establish it as a legitimate discipline devoid of the image of mere ¶ antimilitarist
propaganda. Some scholars call themselves peace educators while many within the traditional disciplines are reluctant to be ¶ so
labeled; they may be sympathetic with genuine peace research and ¶ teaching but afraid of the stigma that goes with the label.
Those scholars
interested in applying their professional training and skills to peace ¶ issues face a
monumental task. Education at all levels must address ¶ warism, just as they have had to
address racism, sexism, ageism, classism, homophobia, and other forms of domination.4 There is
increasing ¶ academic interest in what scholars call “institutional violence”— social ¶ structures like racism, sexism, and poverty that
involve constraints ¶ that injure and violate; systems that have entrapping, coercive effects. Institutional forms of violence tend to be
more covert than overt; ¶ nonetheless pacifists— peacemakers—of various sorts tend to work ¶ toward the recognition and abolition
of these forms of oppression as ¶ the natural manifestation of their commitment to positive peace. Such ¶ work involves recovery of
lost or neglected history, consideration of a ¶ full range of options beyond traditional social constraints holding the ¶ forms of
domination in place, and serious, systematic, and legitimized ¶ study of conditions constituting positive peace. Preparing for war
in
¶an effort to prevent war and preserve the status quo must be distinguished from preparing for
genuine positive peace in an effort to en-¶ courage cooperation and preclude a resort to war. Unless such issues ¶
are entertained routinely across all educational levels— including the ¶ recognition of how the various forms of
domination are entangled in ¶ and reinforced by warism— the presumption of warism will continue ¶ to drive us
toward war realism and prevent progress toward an evolving positive peace.5 Easing the grip of
warism may be unlikely, but ¶ then racial integration in public schools, abolition of slavery,
women ¶ voting and holding public office, the end of apartheid in South Africa ¶ and the Iron Curtain in Europe,
the election of an African American ¶ as U.S. president, all were exceedingly unlikely not long
before they ¶ became realities. People imagine, work for, and sacrifice for important ¶ goals even if
they never are achieved. To the wonder of us all, unlikely ¶ goals are sometimes reached. Martin Luther
King, Jr., believed that “the arc of history bends ¶ toward justice.” He knew that racial segregation would end . . .
some-¶ day . . . so he called on Americans to “plan for the inevitable.”6 Similarly, pacifists envision a broad cultural evolution from
warism toward ¶ (and eventually, to) pacifism, so pacifists ask us to prepare for the inevitable by recognizing and backing away from
warism and by working to ¶ create and sustain the conditions of genuine positive peace. While education is crucial, peace
educators cannot bear the burden of the ¶ wider cultural failure to see beyond warism. Scholars and teachers in ¶ traditional
disciplines must address the relevant warist/pacifist issues ¶ of their fields just as feminist scholarship
has been undertaken by academics in all fields, and just as racist claims have been tested and
dispelled by research in all disciplines. Anti-warism work and positive ¶ peace making cannot be
ghettoized in token departments and journals ¶ and dismissed for pushing an agenda; they must be
undertaken across every curriculum, not marginalized but central, if we are to assist in ¶ preparing for
the inevitable. It is remarkable how low peace research is ¶ among government and foundation priorities. The moral continuum
¶ here may prove useful in eroding warist obstacles to taking peace positively if only because it recognizes
gradual variations among views ¶ within a single moral tradition rather than encouraging polarized ¶ views. Peace research and
study need not lead to any conversion experiences; it would be surprising were they to do so, despite popular ¶ fears.
2NC Framework
Our framework arguments are an independent impact – the affirmative’s
production of knowledge that benefits the military ensures further violence
Chow ‘06 (Rey, Humanities and Modern Culture & Media Studies at Brown, The Age of the World Target: Self-
Referentiality in War, Theory, and Comparative Work, 40-1)
A largely administrative enterprise, closely tied to policy, the new American Orientalism took over from the old Orientalism attitudes
of cultural hostility, among which is, as Said writes, the dogma that “the Orient is at bottom something either to be feared (the Yellow
Peril, the Mongol hordes, the brown dominos) or to be controlled (by pacification, research and development, outright occupation
possible.)¶ Often under the modest apparently innocuous agendas of fact gathering and
documentation, the “scientific” and “objective” production of knowledge during
peacetime about the various special “areas” became the institutional practice that substantiated and elaborated the
militaristic conception of the world as target. In other words, despite the claims about the
apolitical and disinterested nature of the pursuit of higher learning, activities undertaken under the rubric
of area studies, such as language training. Historiography, anthropology, economics, political science, and so forth,
are fully inscribed in the politics and ideology of war. To that extent, the disciplining, research,
and development of so-called academic information are part and parcel of a strategic logic. And yet, if
the production of knowledge (with its vocabulary of aims and goals, research, data analysis,
experimentation, and verification) in fact shares the same scientific and military premises as war—
if, for instance, the ability to translate a difficult language can be regarded as equivalent to the ability to break military codes—is it a
Can “knowledge” that is derived
surprise that it is doomed to fail in its avowed attempts to “know” the other cultures?
from the same kinds of bases as war put an end to the violence of warfare, or is such knowledge
not simply warfare’s accomplice, destined to destroy rather than preserve the forms of lives at which
it aims to focus?¶ As long as knowledge is produced in this self-referential manner, as a circuit of targeting or
getting the other that ultimately consolidates the omnipotence and omnipresence of the sovereign “self”/“eye”—the “I”—that is the
United States, the other will have no choice but remain just that—a target whose existence justifies only
one thing, its destruction by the bomber. As long as the focus of our study of Asia remains by the United States, and as long
as this focus is not accompanied by knowledge of what is happening elsewhere at other times as well as the present, such
study will ultimately confirm once again the self-referential function of virtual worlding that was unleashed by
the dropping of the atomic bombs, with the United States always occupying the position of the bomber, and other cultures
always viewed as the military and information target fields. In this manner, events whose historicity does
not fall into the epistemically closed orbit of the atomic bomber—such as the Chinese reactions to the war from a primarily anti-
Japanese point of view that I alluded to at the beginning of this chapter—will never receive the attention that is due to them.
“Knowledge,” however conscientiously gathered and however large in volume, will lead only to further
silence and to the silencing of diverse experiences. This is one reason why, as Harootunian remark, area studies
have been, since its inception, haunted by the “absence of definable object”—and by “the problem of the vanishing object.”
2NC Alt Framing
An informed analysis of the role of militarism in global arms and its relation
to the state is vital to creating a praxis from which we can develop future
arms sale policies. Any other approach limits the ability of human security
agendas to restrict the circulation of arms.
Stavrianakis ‘19 (Anna Stavrianakis, Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sussex,
07/25/2018, “Controlling Weapons Circulation in a Postcolonial Militarised World,” Review of International Studies
(2019), 45: 1, 57-76)
In the desire to promote the spread of human security practices, there has been little attention to why an initiative such as the ATT
Thinking
might be resisted, beyond narrowly strategic or instrumental concerns or a failure to internalise human security norms.
about modes of militarism, and the ways in which the human security agenda has transformed,
but not necessarily diminished, militarism can help us think more creatively, both analytically
and politically, about what is at stake. We need to understand and explain patterns of militarism
preparation on social relations, institutions and values more generally reduces the likelihood of violent responses to political
But militarism has been
the opportunity costs associated with high levels of military spending, to name a few reasons.
pushed off the agenda, precisely because it strikes at the core issues around war preparation
and the constitution of political community and political economy, and because the maintenance
of coercive capacities in the South is central to aid donors’ and Southern elites’ interests, not to
mention the entrenched coercive orientation of Northern states’ foreign policies.
For these reasons a human security agenda is limited in terms of its ability to generate more
restrictive weapons transfer practices.
AT: Pragmatism
The characterization of our alternative as Utopian is used by realists to
maintain their intellectual hegemony and perpetuate their effects on arms
policy, the alternative is necessary and isn’t mindlessly Utopian
Back in the Frame”, Review of International Studies 32:2, p)
This categorisation of disarmament highlights part of the problem with the way in which arms control theory frames both arms
control and disarmament. First,
in framing disarmament as failed and Utopian it downplays the progress
made in realising the disarmament agenda of the 1950s and 60s that structural disarmament
combined with a series of partial disarmament treaties has brought, and thus the extent to which
even Utopia might be realistic for future generations. Second, in enveloping a succession of really
existing disarmament initiatives within the essentially realist/neorealist framework of the arms
control perspective it undermines the claim of disarmament as a practice and set of goals with
real-world relevance. In combination this amounts to a very powerful discursive strategy that works
to maintain the intellectual hegemony of arms control theory in particular and realist academia
and policymaking more generally. To invert Ken Booth, what is at work here is what might be termed realist
utopianism33 - the capture and suborning of Utopian achievements in ways that work to shore up the realist view of a world long on
dangers and short on peaceful strategies to confront them.In contrast, when the various types of disarmament
(some of which have a decidedly non-utopian flavour to them) are reclaimed under the
disarmament rubric, then it becomes clear that the world has, and is, experiencing a
tremendous amount of disarmament - some of it relatively successful. This also has profound implications
for the supposed distinction between arms control and disarmament around which arms control theory is based . Once we
move from framing (successful) partial disarmament as merely one variant of arms control, and
instead frame both GCD and partial disarmament as variants of disarmament practice; once we
understand disarmament as an activity that is advocated by both Utopians and hyper-realists
alike (albeit in different ways) then both the empirical and philosophical distinctions between
arms control and disarmament fall away. As will be noted below, this implies that we need to
develop an alternative way of conceptualising the different strategies of arms limitation and the
structure of the contemporary arms limitation system.
AT: Arc of History
The 1AC’s securitized narrative of history is based on fictionalized reality
and leads to threats and securitized violence
Melley 2012 (Timothy, Professor of English and Affiliate of American Studies at Miami University, “The Covert Sphere:
Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State,” Cornell University Press, 143-147) *edited for clarity*
The defense of imaginative writing against the claims of history and other “serious” discourses dates back at least to Philip Sidney’s
late sixteenth- century Defence of Poesy. But when did the defense of poetry begin to invoke the deceptions of the state? When,
that is, did novelists begin to trumpet the value of fiction over history and nonfictional discourse as a corrective to state secrecy? The
answer seems to be during the 1960s.1 Consider, for instance, Norman Mailer’s groundbreaking narrative of the 1967 anti-Vietnam
march on the Pentagon, Armies of the Night. Trying to narrate the event first as fiction and then as history, Mailer eventually decides
that “the mystery of the events at the Pentagon cannot be developed by the methods of history— only by the instincts of the
novelist.”2 To some extent, this assertion rests on the familiar notion that the novel can render the “interior experience” (i.e., the
Mailer also finds traditional
individual human experience) of events in a way traditional historical narrative cannot. But
history blocked by new features of the Cold War public sphere: “Journalistic information
available from both sides is so incoherent, inaccurate, contradictory, malicious, even based on
error that no accurate history is conceivable” ( Armies of the Night, 284). This critique echoes Habermas’s account
of the mass cultural transformation of the public sphere. But it also links the transformation of the public sphere to Cold War state
deception. The
march on the Pentagon, Mailer asserts, was a protest against “the authority, because
the authority lied. It lied through the teeth of corporation executives and Cabinet officials and
police enforcement officers and newspaper editors and advertising agencies, and in its mass
magazines” (104). The “authority” and the “corporation” are Mailer’s shorthand for a vast apparatus of media structures, corporate
interests, and state institutions whose headquarters is the Pentagon but which also includes the CIA, the FBI, and even “the Warren
Commission” (104). The chief effect of this apparatus is a national “state of suppressed
schizophrenia”—a contradiction between religious fervor and technological rationality—which
makes “the average good Christian American secretly [love] the war in Vietnam” (212). In a
dysfunctional public sphere, Mailer suggests, “misinformation in systematic form tends to create mass
schizophrenia” (161). Mailer’s account of this problem is among the most influential historiographic experiments of the postwar
era. As Linda Hutcheon points out, it illustrates that the “basic postmodernist stance—of a questioning of authority—obviously is a
result of the ethos of the 1960s.”3 The wave of postmodern historiographic metafiction that followed The Armies of the
Night has similarly asserted the value of fiction over history—not only the sense that fiction offers
something history cannot but also the sense that history is at some level indistinguishable from
fiction.4 This shift itself is not primarily a result the Cold War. It is part of a larger, twentieth-century attack on the empiricist
historiography of the nineteenth century, a critique that has troubled the notion of “facts,” stressed the
creative power of the historian, and emphasized the literary qualities of historical narrative.5 As history has come to
seem more like fiction and canonical history [have] been critiqued as an ideological vehicle, many
novelists have argued that the truth-value of fiction sometimes trumps that of narrative history. It
is nonetheless striking how many U.S. authors understand the postmodern historiographic crisis as a
specific consequence of the National Security State. For the novelist Charles Baxter, state deception
transformed the nature of U.S. narrative, making it “dysfunctional.” “The greatest influence on American
fiction for the last twenty years,” Baxter writes, is Richard Nixon, “the inventor, for our purposes and for our time, of the concept of
deniability”: What difference does it make to writers of stories if public
figures are denying their responsibility for their own
create a climate in which social narratives are designed to be
actions?...Well, to make an obvious point, they
deliberately incoherent and misleading. Such narratives humiliate the act of storytelling [for] only a
coherent narrative can manage to explain public events. . . . Every story is a history . . . and when there is no
comprehensible story, there is, in some sense, no history; the past, under those circumstances,
becomes an unreadable mess.6 Baxter here finds the narratives of an entire society transformed by the official duplicity
of the Cold War state. The covert operations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, for instance—particularly their “efforts to acquire
deniability on the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran”—produced “public befuddlement about facts, forgetfulness under oath, and
constant disavowals of political error and criminality” (“Dysfunctional Narratives,” 396). While Baxter lays this problem at Nixon’s
feet, it is in fact an institutional feature of the Cold War. Richard Nixon may still be the most enduring public face of deniability, but
he was certainly not its “inventor,” as Baxter claims. If deniability can be said to have an author, then it was George Kennan, whose
1948 National Security Council memorandum NSC-10/2 gave the CIA its charter to covert actions so long as “the U.S. government
can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.”7 This concept anchored other major secret policy documents long before Richard
Nixon ever took office. In National Security Action Memorandum 273, for instance, the Kennedy administration laid out its plan for a
secret war in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia that could be conducted only if the president were assured “plausibility of denial.”8 The
real problem, then, is an institutionally supported “culture of disavowal” that Baxter believes has trickled down from presidents to
every corner of U.S. culture, from the lurid blame game of the afternoon talk- show circuit to prizewinning novels by Jane Smiley and
Don DeLillo. The major quality of “narrative dysfunction,” as Baxter describes it, is a lack of causal explanation. In a dysfunctional
narrative, the narrator uses the passive voice and “gathers around herself a cloak of unreliability” (“ Dysfunctional
Narratives,” 398). Such narratives fail to identify “the agent of the action” or “why it was done” (397). “One of the
signs of a dysfunctional narrative is that we cannot leave it behind, and we cannot put it to rest, because it does not, finally, give us
the explanation we need to enclose it” (397). In all of these ways, Baxter describes features scholars commonly associate with
postmodern “antinarrative” sometimes resembles a
postmodern narrative. According to Marie-Laure Ryan,
sketch under constant revision, “where represented events never gel into ‘facts’ and never fit into...a stable
and comprehensible narrative.” Brian McHale describes a similar strategy called “weak narrativity,” which involves “telling
stories ‘poorly,’ distractedly, with much irrelevance and indeterminacy, in such a way as to evoke narrative coherence while at the
same time withholding commitment to it and undermining confidence in it.”9 Significantly, however, while Ryan and McHale describe
the deliberate construction of a “poor,” weak, or (to return to Baxter’s term) “dysfunctional” narrative, Baxter views narrative
dysfunction as a symptom, and not a critique, of official obfuscation. For instance, while he
calls the Kennedy
assassination “the narratively dysfunctional event of our era” (because “no one really knows who’s
responsible for it”), he also singles out De- Lillo’s Libra as one of his major examples of dysfunctional narrative (“Dysfunctional
Narratives,” 397). This seems misguided to me. What Libra so brilliantly reveals about the Kennedy case is the dysfunction of the
public sphere itself.
AT: Authors Get Fired
There’s no marketplace of ideas in security studies – repetition makes
discourses of danger lucrative
Oren and Solomon 15 (Ido Oren, associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the
University of Florida, PhD in political science from the University of Chicago, Ty Solomon, lecturer in international relations at the
University of Glasgow, PhD in international relations from the University of Florida, April 2015, “WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitization
through ritualized incantation of ambiguous phrases,” Review of International Studies Volume 41 Issue 2)
Prominent American scholars have conceptualised national security policymaking in terms of a

‘marketplace of ideas’.25 In this conceptual framework, government officials communicate fact-based (if often exaggerated)
arguments that depict external threats and propose measures to tackle these threats. The media and academy serve
as watchdogs that debate the accuracy of the facts and help ‘weed out unfounded, mendacious,
or self-serving foreign policy arguments’.26 In the wake of the debate the public decides whether to ‘buy’ the
argument.
The ‘marketplace of ideas’ framework evokes a bygone era – if there ever was such an era – in
which sellers communicated largely descriptive information about their products to potential
buyers with pre-existing tastes. In contemporary mass society, however, the ‘marketplace’ is
characterised less by selling goods than by the aggressive marketing of ‘brands’, less by providing fact-based
arguments about a product than by fostering consumer identification with values symbolised by a
brand.27 Arguably the principal characteristic of modern mass marketing campaigns – a
characteristic ‘so obvious’ that its significance is ‘sometimes neglected’ – is repetition.28 Advertisers
continually bombard us with symbols such as brand logos (the Nike swoosh), icons (Marlboro Man; Mr. Clean), and taglines (‘Just
do it’; ‘We try harder’; ‘Intel Inside’). These
images and words are repeated over and over again because,
as political and corporate consultant Frank Luntz put it, ‘companies learned an important rule of successful brands: Message
consistency builds customer loyalty … Finding a good message and sticking with it takes extraordinary discipline but it
pays off tenfold in the end.’29
AT: Chandler
Chandler’s argument is that global war is no longer about direct control,
rather a decentralized system of violence. That’s our argument
Chandler ‘09 (David Chandler, department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster,
“War Without End(s): Grounding the Discourse of ‘Global War’” UK SAGE Publications, 2009, KB)
The policy frameworks of global war attempt to make sense of the implosion of the framework of international order at the same time
as articulating the desire to recreate a framework of meaning through policy activity. However, these projections of Western power,
even when expressed in coercive and militarized forms, appear to have little connection to strategic or instrumental projects of
hegemony. The concept of ‘control’, articulated by authors such as Carl Schmitt and Faisal Devji, seems to
be key to understanding the transition from strategic frameworks of conflict to today’s unlimited
(i.e. arbitrary) expressions of violence. Wars fought for control, with a socially grounded telluric character, are
limited by the needs of instrumental rationality: the goals shape the means deployed. Today’s
Western wars are fought in a nonstrategic, non-instrumental framework, which lacks a clear
relationship between means and ends and can therefore easily acquire a destabilizing and
irrational character. To mistake the arbitrary and unlimited nature of violence and coercion
without a clear strategic framework for a heightened desire for control fails to contextualize
conflict in the social relations of today.
AT: Chandler
Chandler’s argument merely plays into existing ontologies of domination
by maintaining that what we need is simply more knowledge, more tactics,
more strategy, all the while ignoring that this form of hubristic aim at
mastery reifies metaphysical domination
Burke ‘07 (Anthony Burke, associate professor of international and political studies at the University of New
South Wales, PhD in political science and international relations from the Australian National University, 2007,
“Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason,” Theory and Event Volume 10 Issue 2, modified)
By itself, such an account of the nationalist ontology of war and security provides only a general
insight into the perseverance of military violence as a core element of politics. It does not explain why
so many policymakers think military violence works. As I argued earlier, such an ontology is married to a
more rationalistic form of strategic thought that claims to link violent means to political ends
predictably and controllably, and which, by doing so, combines military action and national
purposes into a common -- and thoroughly modern -- horizon of certainty. Given Hegel's desire to
decisively distil and control the dynamic potentials of modernity in thought, it is helpful to focus on the modernity of this ontology
-- one that is modern in its adherence to modern scientific models of truth, reality and technological
progress, and in its insistence on imposing images of scientific truth from the physical sciences
(such as mathematics and physics) onto human behaviour, politics and society. For example, the military theorist
and historian Martin van Creveld has argued that one of the reasons Clausewitz was so influential was that his 'ideas seemed to
Set into
have chimed in with the rationalistic, scientific, and technological outlook associated with the industrial revolution'.54
this epistemological matrix, modern politics and government engages in a sweeping project of
mastery and control in which all of the world's resources -- mineral, animal, physical, human --
are made part of a machinic process of which war and violence are viewed as normal features.
These are the deeper claims and implications of Clausewitzian strategic reason. One of the most revealing contemporary examples
comes from the writings (and actions) of Henry Kissinger, a Harvard professor and later U.S. National Security Adviser and
U.S. foreign policy was based 'on the
Secretary of State. He wrote during the Vietnam war that after 1945
assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the
international system and to bring about domestic transformations in emerging countries'. This
'scientific revolution' had 'for all practical purposes, removed technical limits from the exercise of power in foreign policy'.55
Kissinger's conviction was based not merely in his pride in the vast military and bureaucratic apparatus of the
United States, but in a particular epistemology (theory of knowledge). Kissinger asserted that the West is
'deeply committed to the notion that the real world is external to the observer, that knowledge consists of recording and classifying
data -- the more accurately the better'.This, he claimed, has since the Renaissance set the West apart
from an 'undeveloped' world that contains 'cultures that have escaped the early impact of
Newtonian thinking' and remain wedded to the 'essentially pre-Newtonian view that the real
world is almost entirely internal to the observer'.56 At the same time, Kissinger's hubris and hunger for
control was beset by a corrosive anxiety: that, in an era of nuclear weapons proliferation and
constant military modernisation, of geopolitical stalemate in Vietnam, and the emergence and
militancy of new post-colonial states, order and mastery were harder to define and impose. He
worried over the way 'military bipolarity' between the superpowers had 'encouraged political
multipolarity', which 'does not guarantee stability. Rigidity is diminished, but so is manageability...equilibrium is
difficult to achieve among states widely divergent in values, goals, expectations and previous experience' (emphasis added). He
mourned that 'the greatest need of the contemporary international system is an agreed concept
of order'.57 Here were the driving obsessions of the modern rational statesman based around a
hunger for stasis and certainty that would entrench U.S. hegemony: For the two decades after 1945, our
international activities were based on the assumption that technology plus managerial skills gave us the ability to reshape the
international system and to bring about domestic transformations in "emerging countries". This direct "operational" concept of
international order has proved too simple. Political multipolarity makes it impossible to impose an American design. Our deepest
challenge will be to evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world, to base order on political multipolarity even though overwhelming
Kissinger's statement revealed that such cravings for
military strength will remain with the two superpowers.58
order and certainty continually confront chaos, resistance and uncertainty: clay that won't be
worked, flesh that will not yield, enemies that refuse to surrender. This is one of the most powerful lessons
of the Indochina wars, which were to continue in a phenomenally destructive fashion for six years after Kissinger wrote these words.
Yet ashis sinister, Orwellian exhortation to 'evoke the creativity of a pluralistic world'
demonstrated, Kissinger's hubris was undiminished. This is a vicious, historic irony: a desire to control
nature, technology, society and human beings that is continually frustrated, but never
abandoned or rethought. By 1968 U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the rationalist policymaker par excellence,
had already decided that U.S. power and technology could not prevail in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissinger's refusal to accept this
conclusion, to abandon their Cartesian illusions, was to condemn hundreds of thousands more to die in Indochina and the people of
Cambodia to two more decades of horror and misery.59 In 2003 there would be a powerful sense of déja vu as another Republican
Administration crowned more than decade of failed and destructive policy on Iraq with a deeply controversial and divisive war to
remove Saddam Hussein from power. In this struggle with the lessons of Vietnam, revolutionary resistance, and rapid geopolitical
transformation, we
are witness to an enduring political and cultural theme: of a craving for order,
control and certainty in the face of continual uncertainty. Closely related to this anxiety was the way that
Kissinger's thinking -- and that of McNamara and earlier imperialists like the British Governor of Egypt Cromer -- was
embedded in instrumental images of technology and the machine: the machine as both a tool of
power and an image of social and political order. In his essay 'The Government of Subject Races' Cromer
envisaged effective imperial rule -- over numerous societies and billions of human beings -- as best achieved by a central authority
working 'to ensure the harmonious working of the different parts of the machine'.60 Kissinger analogously invoked the
virtues of 'equilibrium', 'manageability' and 'stability' yet, writing some six decades later, was anxious that
technological progress no longer brought untroubled control: the Westernising 'spread of
technology and its associated rationality...does not inevitably produce a similar concept of
reality'.61 We sense the rational policymaker's frustrated desire: the world is supposed to work like a
machine, ordered by a form of power and governmental reason which deploys machines and
whose desires and processes are meant to run along ordered, rational lines like a machine.
Kissinger's desire was little different from that of Cromer who, wrote Edward Said: ...envisions a seat of power in the
West and radiating out from it towards the East a great embracing machine, sustaining the
central authority yet commanded by it. What the machine's branches feed into it from the East --
human material, material wealth, knowledge, what have you -- is processed by the machine,
then converted into more power...the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful
substance.62 This desire for order in the shadow of chaos and uncertainty -- the constant war
with an intractable and volatile matter -- has deep roots in modern thought, and was a major
impetus to the development of technological reason and its supporting theories of knowledge. As
Kissinger's claims about the West's Newtonian desire for the 'accurate' gathering and classification of 'data' suggest, modern
strategy, foreign policy and Realpolitik have been thrust deep into the apparently stable soil of
natural science, in the hope of finding immovable and unchallengeable roots there. While this
process has origins in ancient Judaic and Greek thought, it crystallised in philosophical terms most powerfully during and after the
Renaissance. The key figures in this process were Francis Bacon, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and René Descartes, who all combined a
a positivist epistemology and a naïve faith in the goodness of
hunger for political and ontological certainty,
invention. Bacon sought to create certainty and order, and with it a new human power over the world, through a new empirical
methodology based on a harmonious combination of experiment, the senses and the understanding. With this method, he argued,
we can 'derive hope from a purer alliance of the faculties (the experimental and rational) than has yet been attempted'.63 In a similar
move, Descartes sought to conjure certainty from uncertainty through the application of a new method that moved progressively out
from a few basic certainties (the existence of God, the certitude of individual consciousness and a divinely granted faculty of
judgement) in a search for pure fixed truths. Mathematics formed the ideal image of this method, with its strict logical reasoning, its
quantifiable results and its uncanny insights into the hidden structure of the cosmos.64 Earlier, Galileo had argued that scientists
should privilege 'objective', quantifiable qualities over 'merely perceptible' ones; that 'only by means of an exclusively quantitative
Such doctrines of mathematically verifiable truth
analysis could science attain certain knowledge of the world'.65
were to have powerful echoes in the 20th Century, in the ascendancy of systems analysis,
game theory, cybernetics and computing in defense policy and strategic decisions, and in the
awesome scientific breakthroughs of nuclear physics, which unlocked the innermost secrets of
matter and energy and applied the most advanced applications of mathematics and computing
to create the atomic bomb. Yet this new scientific power was marked by a terrible irony: as even Morgenthau understood,
the control over matter afforded by the science could never be translated into the control of the
weapons themselves, into political utility and rational strategy.66 Bacon thought of the new scientific method
not merely as way of achieving a purer access to truth and epistemological certainty, but as liberating a new power that would
enable the creation of a new kind of Man [human]. He opened the Novum Organum with the statement that 'knowledge and human
power are synonymous', and later wrote of his 'determination...to lay a firmer foundation, and extend to a greater distance the
boundaries of human power and dignity'.67 In a revealing and highly negative comparison between 'men [and women]'s lives in the
most polished countries of Europe and in any wild and barbarous region of the new Indies' -- one that echoes in advance Kissinger's
distinction between post-and pre-Newtonian cultures -- Bacon set out what was at stake in the advancement of empirical science:
anyone making this comparison, he remarked, 'will think it so great, that man [humanity] may be said to be a god unto man
[humanity]'.68 We may be forgiven for blinking, but in Bacon's thought 'man [humanity]' was indeed in the process of stealing a new
fire from the heavens and seizing God's power over the world for itself. Not only would the new empirical science lead to 'an
improvement of mankind's estate, and an increase in their power over nature', but would reverse the primordial humiliation of the
Fall of Adam: For man [humanity], by the fall, lost at once his [its] state of innocence, and his empire over creation, both of which
can be partially recovered even in this life, the first by religion and faith, the second by the arts and sciences. For creation did not
become entirely and utterly rebellious by the curse, but in consequence of the Divine decree, 'in the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat
bread'; she is now compelled by our labours (not assuredly by our disputes or magical ceremonies) at length to afford mankind in
some degree his [humanity’s] bread...69 There
is a breathtaking, world-creating hubris in this statement --
one that, in many ways, came to characterise western modernity itself, and which is easily
recognisable in a generation of modern technocrats like Kissinger. The Fall of Adam was the Judeo-
Christian West's primal creation myth, one that marked humankind as flawed and humbled before God, condemned to hardship and
This truly was the death of God, of
ambivalence. Bacon forecast here a return to Eden, but one of man's own making.
putting man [humanity] into God's place, and no pious appeals to the continuity or guidance of
faith could disguise the awesome epistemological violence which now subordinated creation to
man [humanity]. Bacon indeed argued that inventions are 'new creations and imitations of divine works'. As such, there is
nothing but good in science: 'the introduction of great inventions is the most distinguished of human actions...inventions are a
blessing and a benefit without injuring or afflicting any'.70 And what would be mankind's 'bread', the rewards of its new 'empire over
creation'? If
the new method and invention brought modern medicine, social welfare, sanitation,
communications, education and comfort, it also enabled the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust
and two world wars; napalm, the B52, the hydrogen bomb, the Kalashnikov rifle and military
strategy. Indeed some of the 20th Century's most far-reaching inventions -- radar, television, rocketry,
computing, communications, jet aircraft, the Internet -- would be the product of drives for national security and
militarisation. Even the inventions Bacon thought so marvellous and transformative -- printing, gunpowder and the compass --
brought in their wake upheaval and tragedy: printing, dogma and bureaucracy; gunpowder, the rifle and the artillery battery;
slavery and the genocide of indigenous peoples. In short, the legacy of the new empirical
navigation,
science would be ambivalence as much as certainty; degradation as much as enlightenment;
the destruction of nature as much as its utilisation. Doubts and Fears: Technology as Ontology If Bacon could not
reasonably be expected to foresee many of these developments, the idea that scientific and technological progress could be
destructive did occur to him. However it was an anxiety he summarily dismissed: ...let none be alarmed at the objection of the arts
and sciences becoming depraved to malevolent or luxurious purposes and the like, for the same can be said of every worldly good;
talent, courage, strength, beauty, riches, light itself...Only let [hu]mankind regain their rights over nature, assigned to them by the gift
of God, and obtain that power, whose exercise will be governed by right reason and true religion.71 By the mid-Twentieth Century,
after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such fears could no longer be so easily wished
away, as the physicist and scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer recognised. He said in a 1947
lecture: We felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting and in the end in large measure achieving the
realization of atomic weapons...In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no over-statement can quite extinguish,
the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge they cannot lose.72 Adam had fallen once more, but into a world which
refused to acknowledge its renewed intimacy with contingency and evil. Man’s [Humanity's] empire
over creation -- his
[its] discovery of the innermost secrets of matter and energy, of the fires that fuelled the stars --
had not 'enhanced human power and dignity' as Bacon claimed, but instead brought destruction and
horror. Scientific powers that had been consciously applied in the defence of life and in the hope
of its betterment now threatened its total and absolute destruction. This would not prevent a legion of
scientists, soldiers and national security policymakers later attempting to apply Bacon's faith in invention and Descartes' faith in
mathematics to make of the Bomb a rational weapon. Oppenheimer -- who resolutely opposed the development of the hydrogen
the weapons resisted control, resisted utility, that 'with
bomb -- understood what the strategists could not: that
the release of atomic energy quite revolutionary changes had occurred in the techniques of
warfare'.73 Yet Bacon's legacy, one deeply imprinted on the strategists, was his view that truth and utility are 'perfectly
identical'.74 In 1947 Oppenheimer had clung to the hope that 'knowledge is good...it seems hard to live any other way than thinking
it was better to know something than not to know it; and the more you know, the better'; by 1960 he felt that 'terror attaches to new
Heidegger questioned this
knowledge. It has an unmooring quality; it finds men unprepared to deal with it.'75 Martin
mapping of natural science onto the social world in his essays on technology -- which, as 'machine',
has been so crucial to modern strategic and geopolitical thought as an image of perfect function and order and a powerful tool of
intervention. He commented that, given that modern technology 'employs exact physical science...the deceptive illusion arises that
modern technology is applied physical science'.76 Yet as the essays and speeches of Oppenheimer attest, technology and its
relation to science, society and war cannot be reduced to a noiseless series of translations of science for politics, knowledge for
there
force, or force for good. Instead, Oppenheimer saw a process frustrated by roadblocks and ruptured by irony; in his view
was no smooth, unproblematic translation of scientific truth into social truth, and technology was
not its vehicle. Rather his comments raise profound and painful ethical questions that resonate with terror and uncertainty. Yet
this has not prevented technology becoming a potent object of desire, not merely as an instrument of power but as a promise and
conduit of certainty itself. In the minds of too many rational soldiers, strategists and policymakers, technology brings with it the truth
of its enabling science and spreads it over the world. It
turns epistemological certainty into political certainty; it
turns control over 'facts' into control over the earth. Heidegger's insights into this phenomena I
find especially telling and disturbing -- because they underline the ontological force of the
instrumental view of politics. In The Question Concerning Technology, Heidegger's striking argument was that in the
modernising West technology is not merely a tool, a 'means to an end'. Rather technology has
become a governing image of the modern universe, one that has come to order, limit and define
human existence as a 'calculable coherence of forces' and a 'standing reserve' of energy.
Heidegger wrote: 'the threat to man [humanity] does not come in the first instance from the
potentially lethal machines and apparatus of technology. The actual threat has already affected
man [humanity] in his [its] essence.'77 This process Heidegger calls 'Enframing' and through it
the scientific mind demands that 'nature reports itself in some way or other that is identifiable
through calculation and remains orderable as a system of information'. Man [Humanity] is not a being who
makes and uses machines as means, choosing and limiting their impact on the world for his ends; rather man [humanity] has
imagined the world as a machine and humanity everywhere becomes trapped within its logic.
Man [Humanity], he writes, 'comes to the very brink of a precipitous fall...where he himself [it itself] will
have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile Man [humanity], precisely as the one so
threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth.'78 Technological man [humanity] not
only becomes the name for a project of lordship and mastery over the earth, but incorporates
humanity within this project as a calculable resource. In strategy, warfare and geopolitics human
bodies, actions and aspirations are caught, transformed and perverted by such calculating,
enframing reason: human lives are reduced to tools, obstacles, useful or obstinate matter. This
tells us much about the enduring power of crude instrumental versions of strategic thought,
which relate not merely to the actual use of force but to broader geopolitical strategies that see,
as limited war theorists like Robert Osgood did, force as an 'instrument of policy short of war'. It was from within this
strategic ontology that figures like the Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling theorised the strategic role of threats and
coercive diplomacy, and spoke of strategy as 'the power to hurt'.79 In the 2006 Lebanon war we can see such thinking in the remark
of a U.S. analyst, a former Ambassador to Israel and Syria, who speculated that by targeting civilians and infrastructure Israel aimed
'to create enough pain on the ground so there would be a local political reaction to Hezbollah's adventurism'.80 Similarly a retired
Israeli army colonel told the Washington Post that 'Israel is attempting to create a rift between the Lebanese population and
Hezbollah supporters by exacting a heavy price from the elite in Beirut. The message is: If you want your air conditioning to work
and if you want to be able to fly to Paris for shopping, you must pull your head out of the sand and take action toward shutting down
Hezbollah-land.'81
AT: Discourse =/= Reality
Securitization assimilates subjects through speech repetition
Oren and Solomon 15 (Ido Oren, associate professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the
University of Florida, PhD in political science from the University of Chicago, Ty Solomon, lecturer in international relations at the
University of Glasgow, PhD in international relations from the University of Florida, April 2015, “WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitization
through ritualized incantation of ambiguous phrases,” Review of International Studies Volume 41 Issue 2)
In this article, we
want to push back against the retreat from a speech act-centered understanding
of securitisation. It is not that we reject the criticisms articulated by the scholars who champion more process-oriented and/or
nonlinguistic approaches to securitisation. We share their concerns that the Copenhagen School has ‘undertheorized’ the role of the
audience and that the Copenhagen School ‘would need a clearer and more elaborated theory of the securitizing act’, a theory that
would ‘say more about the relative status of the idea of a security utterance or speech act event as opposed to the idea of an
rather than join the critics in moving
intersubjectivity of actor and audience or the process of securitization’.16 Yet
‘beyond the speech act’, we instead seek to reinvigorate Wæver's insight that ‘the utterance
[“security”] itself is the act’.17 We seek, in other words, to rise to the challenge of providing a ‘clearer and more elaborated
theory of the securitizing act’.18
securitisation can be
In the bulk of the article we thus present a novel theoretical account demonstrating how
understood as an illocutionary act even as it entails a social process. We conceptualise the speech of
securitising actors as consisting not in ‘an argument about the priority and urgency of an existential threat’ so much as in repetitive
spouting of ambiguous phrases such as ‘weapons of mass destruction’.19 We propose, further, that the acceptance of this
oft-repeated utterance by an audience consists not in becoming ‘convinced’ or ‘persuaded’ so
much as in the audience echoing the phrase, joining in a chorus-like fashion with the
securitising actor to produce a repetitive, ritualised chant.20 In our formulation, then, the audience is not
being performed to – it is not akin to theater spectators who sit inertly in their seats during the play before applauding the
stage performers at the end of the evening. The audience rather partakes in the production of a ‘political
spectacle’;21 it comes to actively participate in the performance in the manner in which the hearers of a
percussion ensemble are moved to tap their fingers and sway their bodies along with the drumbeat. Just as the rhythmic beating of
the
drums creates a sense of unity even as the minds of individual hearers/performers may wander in diverse directions, so does
collective incantation of ambiguous phrases by speakers and audiences construct a sense of
social oneness even as (or rather because) the chanters lack consensus about the meaning or policy
implications of the phrase. Successful securitisation, we argue, may be performed through the
collective chanting of a phrase that becomes itself the existential threat it ostensibly refers to. In
sum, we conceptualise securitisation as a ritual process involving the simultaneous interweaving
of linguistic repetitions with speakers' and audiences' material performance, collectively
‘chanting’ the phrase to construct a securitised threat.
To illustrate our theoretical account we discuss an empirical case we have already alluded to: the securitisation of Iraq in the United
States in 2002–3, that is, the elevation of the Iraqi issue to the level of ‘panic politics’ or of ‘supreme priority’ that calls for
‘extraordinary means’, including war.22 During
the run-up to the invasion of Iraq the Bush administration
spouted forth, as US Senator Lincoln Chafee (Republican, Rhode Island) put it, a ‘steady drumbeat of weapons of
mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction’.23 Soon enough this
phrase became contagious, ceaselessly reverberating throughout the US media. Even as the meaning
of the term was historically variable, ambiguous, and multivocal, and even as many Americans have not heard it before, ‘weapons of
The ritualistic choral
mass destruction’ became so ubiquitous that it was selected America's 2002 ‘word of the year’.24
chanting of this phrase by the administration, the media, and the public constructed, we argue, a
heightened generalised sense of danger even as many of the chanters did not necessarily
support the invasion of Iraq. The collective incantation of the utterance ‘weapons of mass
destruction’ ultimately produced the grave Iraqi threat that it ostensibly described.
AT: “Master’s Tools”
Using the master’s tools to bring down the master’s house is ineffective,
because in the era of globalization, the master has an infinite number of
houses through a network of colonization that has no center.
Koopman ’11 (Sara, Assistant prof of Geography at York University, “Let’s Take Peace to Pieces”, Political
Geography Volume 30 Issue 4)
Megoran calls for political geographers to not simply to study but to build peace, and offers eight examples of ways that geographers are
already doing so – yet these seem limited to me. There is a great deal of work done in geography that is for peace if we understand peace as
more than not-war (e.g. geographies of responsibility, of solidarity, or of struggles for the right to the city). But if peace is broad enough to
encompass all of this, is the term useful? Geographers have not seemed to think so. Peace is not one of the ‘Key Concepts in Geography’
(Holloway, Rice, & Valentine, 2003), nor even one of the ‘Key Concepts in Political Geography’ (Gallaher, Dahlman, Gilmartin, Mountz, &
Shirlow, 2008) – nor is it defined in the ‘Dictionary of Human Geography’ (Gregory, Johnston, Pratt, Watts, Whatmore, 2009), nor the
‘International Encyclopedia of Human Geography’ (Thrift & Kitchin, 2009), nor the recent ‘SAGE Handbook of Geographical Knowledge’ (Agnew
& Livingstone, 2011). Peace is not to be found in the index of most geography textbooks, even critical ones on geopolitics and political
geography ( [Agnew et al., 2007] and [Ó Tuathail et al., 2006] ). To be fair, there would not be much for review texts to cite, for little work has
been done by geographers directly using the word peace – though a great deal of critical geography is both about and for peace, understood
more broadly. Is it worth attaching the term peace to that sort of work? Yes and no. If
the term peace is used but left
undefined it is too often assumed as a universal across time and place, and sentimentally
idealized as either simply not-war, or all that is good. Megoran argues that peace is more than the antonym of war,
but does not speak to how the two are entangled. Life goes on in the midst of violent conflict. Children go to school, people fall in love – and
they organize for justice. Foucault (2003, p. 50) argues that war is inside peace, that war is the motor of institutions
and order. But peace too is inside war. The two are intertwined, and we cannot understand one
without the other. If ever there was a clear line between war and peace, it is all the more
blurred, Gregory (2010) argues, by ‘late modern war’, which has no clearly defined beginning or end in
place or time. Seeing peace and war as all-or-nothing opposites is the sort of thinking that either makes people give up on ever achieving
peace or focus just on studying war, thinking that all it takes for peace is to end war. To unsettle ‘peace’ by exposing how it
is both portrayed and visualized, as well as practiced and materialized, is not just an intellectual
exercise but an integral part of creating peace itself. I fully agree then with Megoran that is important to question
how peace is and has been defined, though I am far more interested in how peacemakers have defined it than how geographers have. I am
afraid that Megoran himself leans to reproducing the idea that there is one right definition of peace out there if we just dig hard enough to find
it, even as he looks at how it has been defined differently. He gives more attention to Biblical Studies than to Peace Studies, and implies that
there is one overarching definition of peace in the bible. Of course religion and philosophy have been asking what peace is for millennia, but
after the Second World War the field of peace studies was formed to focus entirely on this issue. There are now encyclopedias ( [Cuéllar and
Cho, 1999] and [Kurtz, 2008] ) of the major concepts in the field. These include various sorts of peace, from liberal to feminist to Gaia peace
(Groff, 2010). Megoran gives the breadth of the field of peace studies short shrift. Megoran does focus on the “father” of Peace Studies: Johan
Galtung, who founded the Peace Research Institute of Oslo in 1958. Galtung first argued that negative peace was the
absence of direct violence, i.e. bodily harm, and positive peace was the absence of structural
violence, i.e. social structures with life-shortening consequences . What Megoran fails to mention is that twenty
years later Galtung added a third type of violence, cultural violence, i.e. the ideas used to legitimize
both direct and structural violence. Positive peace, Galtung (1996) now argues, is the absence of both structural and cultural
violence. Ironically though, even in Galtung’s ‘positive peace’ peace is defined by what it is not. Other arguments about what peace means have
been advanced in peace studies. Goetschel and Hagmann (2009) argue that a
‘peacebuilding consensus’ has formed in
diplomatic circles which uses technocratic interpretations of positive peace that impose a top-
down liberal peace as a benevolent response funded by Western countries. They call this ‘donor
peace’ and argue that it is not only paternalistic but hides an economic liberalization agenda
that links peace to capitalist development. Not defining peace makes it susceptible to these uses. They argue for
re-politicizing the term by facing the “thorny question of what peace means for different social
groups in a particular place and time” (2009, p. 64). Dietrich and Sützl (1997) put forward “A Call for Many Peaces” in which
they argue that without being based in concrete places peace is simply an abstraction, and that to argue for just ‘one peace’ is intellectual
violence. They imply that peace can only be conceived, and achieved, on a small scale. I disagree that peace can only be achieved on a small
scale, but it seems clear that peace means different things at different scales, as well as to different groups, and at different times and places.
Peace is not the same everywhere anymore than war is. When peace is portrayed as a mythical
singular it becomes so abstract as to be unobtainable, an issue best left to philosophers. Or
perhaps it becomes so unspecified that it is open to manipulation by politicians and attached to
violent pacification. I want to argue for taking peace to pieces, not just by place, but also space.
Peace(s) are always shaped in and through the spaces and times through which they are made.
Peace is not a static thing, nor an endpoint, but a socio-spatial relation that is always made and
made again (Agnew, 2009). Is peace made through a network, a hierarchy, or in rooms? If we
imagine peace as something delivered by men in suits in a negotiation room, what role can we
play? If we imagine space as simply a container, what can we do to, and in, it? To take peace to
pieces requires both understanding space as a doing, and grounded contextual definitions of
peace. This has become particularly clear to me in my own research on international protective accompaniers in Colombia (Koopman, 2011).
Accompaniers are generally people with citizenship privilege (i.e., from North America and Europe) who, as they put it, ‘make space for peace’
by walking alongside Colombian peacemakers who are under threat. I have been discussing with accompaniers their practices and productions
of space, how these use privilege, and how they understand that their work produces peace. Accompaniment is a very particular form of
peacemaking, but I want to learn from different, as McConnell and Williams (in press) put it, situated knowledges of peace. They call for
geographers to research more “sites and scales, to show how peace is differentially
constructed, materialized and interpreted through space and time”. Geographers are
particularly well placed to connect the various experiences and experiments in peacemaking
around the world in ‘non-innocent conversations’ (Haraway, 1992) that acknowledge that peace(s)
are shaped by the spaces they are made in. As geographers we can draw counter-topographical
contour lines (Katz, 2001) that see connections and weave the peace(s) together. But do these experiments
have to actually use the word ‘peace’? Williams and McConnell (in press) “propose a more expansive and critical focus around ‘peace-full’
concepts such as tolerance, friendship, hope, reconciliation, justice, humanitarianism, cosmopolitanism, resistance, solidarity, hospitality, care
and empathy”. But do these words stand in for peace? The
terms human rights, human security, and human
development likewise are used instead of peace. Perhaps this is because the term peace can be vague, broad,
amorphous and mythical. So then is it worth using the term peace? I want to argue that it is, if we define it as more than not-war, and always in
grounded contextual ways. Rather than using it instead of other terms, I want to argue for adding it to existing conversations. Though it
overlaps, it is a wider concept than justice or security or solidarity – one that can encompass these and more. Using the term peace also allows
for a different sort of thinking. Security
is traditionally understood to be kept at the national scale, and
human security is measured at the individual scale, but generally understood to be kept by
nations, IGOs and NGOs. Peace, meanwhile, can be experienced as both intimate and global.
Peace can be created at an individual, family, neighborhood, community, and other scales, and
using the term can foster seeing these scales as intertwined and mutually constitutive. One of
the best ways we can work for peace is to recognize that much of what critical geographers are
already looking at is about peacemaking, broadly understood. Using the term peace, even with
various definitions of the term, allows us to connect these peacemaking projects around the
world. As geographers we are well placed not only to take peace to pieces, but also to connect
the peace(s).
AT: Paradigm Wars
Our method doesn’t devolve into paradigm wars but rather creates space
for the creation of counterhegemonic practices
Calkivik 10 (Emine Asli Calkivik, PhD in political science from the University of Minnesota, October 2010, “Dismantling
In the following section, I will turn to a discussion of four proposals offered by critical security scholars who have voiced deep
discontent with security and who have engaged with the question of thinking past security. Through an exegesis of these proposals,
I will try to expose the way in which these critics end up securing security’s foundational status
while suggesting ways beyond or out of security. This exercise is not intended to be another attempt to
outperform critical critics.97 Rather, my aim is to point out to “a problem of imaginative
incapacity”98 that afflicts these debates and to highlight the striking paradox of always re-inscribing security as a foundation for
thought and action—all the while problematizing the way in which it leads to exclusions, entrenches
existing hierarchies, and reproduces relations of power and domination. I want to clarify what dismantling
security entails as a call that attempts to take the critical security project to its conclusion by asking a question that haunts the
debates, yet, is never posed.
AT: Particularity Good
Their appeal to contingent explanations of conflict displaces the violent
imperative at the heart of civil society in which the biopolitical positioning
of bodies serves as an omnipresent condition for the destruction of bodies
marked outside of the model of proper citizenship – only the alternative’s
structural account of military subject formation can solve
Deer ’16 (Patrick, Associate Professor of English at New York University, “Mapping Contemporary American War
Culture”, College Literature Volume 43, Number 1, Winter 2016)
The greatest challenge for cultural critics or writers seeking to understand this slippery terrain, I would
suggest, comes with equating war culture with a dominant culture defined by militarism, rather
than as a more uneven process of militarization of the general culture. Militarism, as historian John
Gillis has observed, is an older concept typically “defined as either the dominance of the military over
civilian authority, or, more generally, as the prevalence of warlike values in a society” (1989, 1). For
this reason, militarism is a term that tends to be applied to the other side in wartime, becoming a
convenient “way of displacing responsibility and blame” (1–2). To understand America’s recent
war culture, I would suggest, we are better served by thinking in terms of the more recent and
messier concept of militarization, which “does not imply the formal dominance of the military or
the triumph of a particular ideology” (1). Militarization, by contrast, has been influentially defined by Michael
Geyer as “the contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organizes itself
for the production of violence” (1989, 79). The advantage of the idea of militarization is that it challenges
our conventional ideas about the relationship between the state, its military institutions, and civil
society, which see them as separate spheres into which war erupts from the outside from
particular sources or at particular moments (Geyer 78–79). For this reason, Geyer argues, “in order to
avoid these mystifications we must move from the delineation of the ‘sites’ of militarization to the
analytic recovery of the ‘process’ of militarization” (78). As Catherine Lutz has argued, this social
process has far reaching implications: Militarization is intimately connected not only to the
obvious—the increasing size of armies and the resurgence of militant nationalisms and militant
fundamentalisms—but also to the less visible deformation of human potentials into the
hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping of national histories in
ways that glorify and legitimate military action. (Lutz 2004, 320) As Lutz persuasively argued in Homefront, her
remarkable study of Fayetteville, NC, and its vast US Army base Fort Bragg, militarization also depends on the
masking and censoring of longer historical continuities: Much of the history and contemporary
reality of war and war preparation has been invisible . . . to people both inside and outside the military—
because it has been shrouded behind simplified histories or propaganda, cordoned off by
secrecy laws, or been difficult to assess because so many consequences of running our military
institutions are not obviously war-related. And so we have looked away from the costs of being a country ever ready
for battle. The international costs are even more invisible as Americans have looked away from the face of empire and been taught
to think of war with a distancing focus—“freedom assured” or “aggressors deterred”—rather than the melted, exploded, raped and
Because of its voracious claims upon us as
lacerated bodies and destroyed social world at its center. (Lutz 2001, 2)
citizens and its struggle to monopolize the cultural field, tracing the logic of militarization and
war culture inextricably involves us in wider questions of politics and economics, of
biopolitics and neoliberalism. As Matt Davies and Simon Philpott have argued: Militarization impacts every aspect of
daily life, enriching and rewarding some individuals, interests, regions and nations, immiserating and punishing others. It
it is also highly productive of
reconfigures relations of class, gender and sex, and is profoundly racist. However,
abstract notions of citizenship and patriotism and is a powerful producer of historical narratives, particularly
those that serve to justify and legitimize not just the use of violence in global affairs but also
the economic and social organization of the polity required to produce the capability for
such violence. (Davies and Philpott 2012, 49)
AT: Perm
The perm proves the link – creating legal limitations on the modes and
actors of war clings to the myth of distinct times of peace and war and
maintains cruel optimism in the plan as an act of disarmament
Margulies 12 (Joseph, Northwestern University, Humanities and Social Science Online, The Myth of
Wartime, http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=35306)
After the attacks of September 11, it became popular to describe what was thought of as the typical
American response to war: the nation is thrown off course at the onset of a military emergency
but gradually steers back to a peacetime norm once the threat recedes.[1] It is the great myth of
deviation and redemption. It imagines a sudden and violent storm, when the Ship of State is tempest-toss’d by buffeting
gales of savage hatred, until such time as the seas finally calm and the country begins the long, difficult journey back to more
familiar waters.Like any national myth, this one serves an important purpose in American life. It
allows Americans to comfort themselves that whatever transgressions may occur during these
periods are both aberrational and temporary. Wartime is a cosmic Get Out of Jail Free card, when
all is forgiven because everything has changed, which comes in handy if you go to war a lot. But
like any myth, the myth of deviation and redemption suffers if we study it too closely. For one thing, it
cannot account for continued forays into a repressive wilderness even after the threat has subsided. Yet what one scholar has
called “the terrorism narrative” is at least as potent today as it was immediately after September 11, even though the consensus of
the threat from transnational jihad in general and al Qaeda in particular, while
the intelligence community is that
always overblown, has now been substantially reduced.[2] Nor does the myth take into consideration the
possibility that partisan pressures might nourish and sustain wartime impulses long past the point justified by any sober assessment
of the risk to national security. Yet we know the Cold War lasted far longer and cut far deeper into the fabric of American life
precisely because of partisan pressure, and that the same thing is taking place during the war on terror.[3] In other words, the myth
requires that we suspend what we know to be true in just about every other aspect of our lives--viz., that our understanding of reality
the myth’s essential flaw. It
is largely constructed and that partisanship matters. These illustrations help train our thinking on
imagines that wartime is a fixed and recognizable period, that it is a statement of fact rather
than a state of mind. And this is indeed the widely held belief. To be sure, the courts have recognized for
many years that the transition from war to peace is better imagined as a dimmer than a light
switch. The issue arises now and again when someone complains that he should not be subject to this or that wartime rule
because the shooting stopped a long time ago. Courts do not take kindly to these claims. The case law includes a lot of throat-
clearing about “winding down,” along with the occasional observation that love and war apparently have at least this much in
people seem to think they
common: it’s usually easier to know when things start than when they end. But apart from this,
know when the country is “at war” and when it is not. Wartime is a condition that comes round
now and again. We all know when it begins, when it ends, and where it happens, or so the story goes. But for at least two
generations in the United States, “wartime” has been nothing like what the myth imagines it to be, and grows less so as the seasons
pass and the wars accumulate. In Wartime: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, the legal historian Mary Dudziak has taken a
closer look at the entire conceptual category. A slim and engaging volume, wonderfully written and carefully wrought, Wartime is a
fascinating meditation on the perils of clinging to a myth of national identity that increasingly bears only a glancing resemblance to
modern life. Particularly since
the Cold War, “wartime” has been pretty near all the time. It is, as Dudziak
writes, “not an exception to normal peacetime, but an enduring condition” (p. 4). And at least since
President George W. Bush launched the “war on terror,” it’s also everywhere, unbounded not only in time (since no one knows what
Many
victory over an ideology looks like) but also in space (since ideologies have a way of taking root in the darnedest places).
writers have made a similar point and the concern that wartime initiatives will last beyond the
emergency that summoned them forth is a familiar complaint. But Professor Dudziak, a professor of law, history,
and political science at the University of Southern California, goes significantly beyond prior discussions by
focusing our attention not on the risk of normalization, which is serious enough, but on the very
idea that wartime remains an identifiable category, recognizably separate from whatever
might be its opposite. The problem is not simply that we may come to accept roving wiretaps
as part of the “normal” landscape of life (i.e., that we will tolerate them even when we are “at peace”), but
that we will come to tolerate the idea that we are always “at war” and therefore eternally
prepared to accept all manner of ostensibly exceptional measures because we cling to the myth
that war is temporary and aberrational. The concern, in short, is that the myth to which we have
grown so attached has outlasted its relevance to the American experience. It has decayed from myth
(which has at least a passing resemblance to the truth), to fantasy (which is nothing more than truth as we would wish it).
Though Professor Dudziak does not put things in precisely these terms, that is the implication of her account, and it is an
exceptionally valuable insight.
AT: Perm
Distraction DA - Militarism cannot be attacked one piece at a time –
overarching structural criticism is key
Lichterman ‘03 (Andrew, Program Director of the Western States Legal Foundation, Missiles of
Empire: America’s 21st Century Global Legions, WSLF Information Bulletin, Fall 2003,
http://www.wslfweb.org/nukes.htm)
Criticizing the Hubcaps while the Juggernaut Rolls On The U.S. military-industrial complex today is so immense
as to defy comprehension. Even those few paying attention tend to focus on one small piece at a time.
One month it may be proposals for nuclear weapons with certain new capabilities. Then the attention may
shift to missile defense– but there too, only a small part of the program attracts public debate, with immense
programs like the airborne laser proceeding almost invisibly. Proposals for the intensive
militarization of space like the Space Plane come to light for a day or two, attracting a brief flurry of
interest; the continuing, broad development of military space technologies, from GPS-aided guidance to radiation hardened
microchips to space power generation, draw even less scrutiny. There is so broad a consensus among political elites supporting the
constant refinement of conventional armaments that new generations of strike aircraft, Navy ships, and armored vehicles attract little
notice outside industry and professional circles, with only spectacular cost overruns or technical failures likely to draw the occasional
headline. A
few Congresspeople will challenge one or another particularly extreme new weapon
(e.g. the “Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator”), but
usually on narrow pragmatic grounds: we can accomplish the
same “mission” with less risky or cheaper weapons. But the question of “why,” seldom is asked,
only “how,” or “how much does it cost?” Most of the programs that constitute the military machine glide
silently onward undisturbed, like the body of a missile submarine invisible below the deceptively small surfaces that rise
above the sea. The United States emerged after both World War II and the Cold War as the most powerful state on earth-- the one
with the most choices. The first time, all of this was still new. We could perhaps understand our ever deeper engagement with the
machinery of death as a series of tragic events, of the inevitable outcome of fallible humans grappling with the titanic forces they
had only recently unleashed, in the context of a global confrontation layered in secrecy, ideology, and fear. But this time around,
since the end of the Cold War, we
must see the United States as truly choosing, with every new
weapon and every new war, to lead the world into a renewed spiral towards catastrophe. The
past is written, but our understanding of it changes from moment to moment. The United States began the nuclear age as the most
powerful nation on earth, and proclaimed the character of the “American Century” with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a
cryptic message written in the blood of innocents. Its meaning has come clear over fifty years of technocratic militarism, punctuated
by the deaths of millions in neo-colonial warfare and underscored always by the willingness to end the world rather than share
The path ahead still can be changed, but we must begin with an understanding
power with anyone.
of where we are, and how we got here. In the United States, there is a very long way to go before we have a debate
about the uses of military force that addresses honestly the weapons we have and seek to develop, much less about the complex
social forces which impel the United States to maintain its extraordinary levels of forces and armaments. Most Americans don’t
know what their government is doing in their name, or why. Their government, regardless of the party in power, lies about both its
means and its ends on a routine basis. And there is nothing the government lies about more than nuclear weapons, proclaiming to
the world for the last decade that the United States was disassembling its nuclear facilities and leading the way to disarmament,
while rebuilding its nuclear weapons plants and planning for another half century and more of nuclear dominance.74 It is clear by
now that fighting violence with yet more violence, claiming to stop the spread of nuclear weapons by threatening the
use of nuclear weapons, is a dead end. The very notion of “enforcement,” that some countries have the right to
judge and punish others for seeking “weapons of mass destruction,” has become an excuse for war making, a
cover and justification for the power and profit agenda of secretive and undemocratic elites. The
only solution that will increase the security of ordinary people anywhere is for all of us, in our
respective societies, to do everything we can to get the most violent elements in our cultures– whether
in or out of uniform– under control. In the United States, this will require far more than changing a few
faces in Washington. We will need a genuine peace movement, ready to make connections to
movements for ecological balance, and for social and economic justice, and by doing so to address the
causes of war. Before we can expect others to join us, it must be clear that we are leaving the
path of violence.
AT: Perm
Militarism may be a central value of modern Western culture, but it can be
changed through analysis – multiple empirical examples prove
Cady ‘10 (Duane L., prof of phil @ hamline university, From Warism to Pacifism: A Moral Continuum, pp. 23-24)
The slow but persistent rise in awareness of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual- orientation, and
class oppression in our time and the beginning efforts of liberation from within oppressed
groups offer hope that even the most deeply held and least explicitly challenged predispositions of culture
might be examined. Such examinations can lead to changes in the lives of the oppressed. Perhaps
even those oppressed by warism will one day free themselves from accepting war as an
inevitable condition of nature. Two hundred years ago slavery was a common and well- established
social institution in the United States. It had been an ordinary feature of many societies dating to ancient and perhaps
prehistoric times. Slavery was taken for granted as a natural condition for beings thought to be
inferior to members of the dominant group. And slavery was considered an essential feature of our
nation’s economy. Within the past two centuries, attitudes toward slavery have changed dramatically.
With these fundamental shifts in normative lenses came fundamental shifts in the practice and
legality of slavery. These changes have been as difficult as they have been dramatic, for former slaves, for former slave-
holders, and for culture at large. While deep racial prejudices persist to this day, slavery is no longer
tolerated in modern societies. Slavery- like conditions of severe economic exploitation of labor have become embarrassments
to dominant groups in part because slavery is universally condemned. The point is that the most central
values of cultures— thought to be essential to the very survival of the society and allegedly
grounded in the natural conditions of creation—can change in fundamental ways in relatively
short periods of time with profound implications for individuals and societies. John Dewey beautifully links
this point to the consideration of warism: “War is as much a social pattern [for us] as was the domestic slavery
which the ancients thought to be immutable fact.”9 The civil rights movement has helped us see that human
worth is not determined by a racial hierarchy. Feminism has helped us realize again that dominant attitudes about people are
more likely values we choose rather than innate and determined features of human nature. It is historically true that men have been
more actively violent and have received more training and encouragement in violence than have women.10 Dominant attitudes of
culture have explained this by reference to what is “natural” for males and “natural” for females. By questioning the traditional role
models for men and women, all of us become more free to choose and create the selves we are to be; we need not be defined
Parallel to racial and gender liberation movements, pacifism
by hidden presumptions of gender roles.
questions taking warism for granted. Pacifists seek an examination of our unquestioned
assumption of warism to expose it as racism and sexism have been examined and exposed.
Just as opponents of racism and sexism consider the oppression of nonwhites and women, respectively, to be wrong, and thus to
require fundamental changes in society, so opponents of warism— pacifists of various sorts— consider war to be wrong, and thus
to require fundamental changes in society.
AT: Public Checks
Bottom-up securitization means the public is a multiplier not a check – also
proves try or die for the alt because only contesting subjectivity at a micro-
level solves
Perhaps just as alarming is the proliferation of the phenomenon of vigilante-citizens, as subjects

around the globe take the law into their hands to secure themselves against gangs, drugs, and
“illegal aliens.” One of the paradigmatic examples of this “statecraft from below” is civilian border
patrol groups such as the Minutemen Project, founded in California in 2004 by a retired businessman to
police the U.S.-Mexico border against the so-called invasion by immigrants.9 As Doty explains, with
undocumented migration becoming an increasingly prominent issue and the filling up of media outlets with news of humans referred
to as “aliens” being trafficked across borders, ordinarycitizens respond to calls from private groups to take
action and form their own unofficial, unauthorized, but not necessarily illegal patrolling of
borders. The global army that security enlists in its service is not situated merely at the borders
of national territories and identities, however. Across the globe, there are many private patrol
groups that are formed to clamp down on local crime, monitor other illicit and unwanted
behavior. Depicting this trend as “both a logical response and an integral aspect” of the global political order wrought by
neoliberalism, Pratten and Sen provide ample proof of the rising tide of vigilante-style justice and violence as a global
phenomenon.10
the obsession with security is democratized to the extent that it has become a
It could be said that
common language, a “vernacular”11 shared across topographies of global hierarchies. The post-Cold
War jubilation in countries that have witnessed political liberation and economic liberalization has been accompanied by the
emergence of an overwhelming fear of crime and a desire for security.12 As
the global security agenda was
transmogrifying toward an obsession with securing the life of the species,13 eagerness to
criminalize dystopic social phenomenon such as poverty became a global phenomenon: zero
tolerance policies turned into wars on urban squatters, practically evolving into an active
“dictatorship over the poor.”14
AT: Reactionary Security Worse
The aff’s claim to shift from reactionary to structural security is non-unique
and disavows the omnipresent nature of global control as the motor of the
modern political economy- they participate in the ultimate failure of critical
security studies and are invest in violent process of Western subject
formation
Richmond ’15 (Oliver, International Relations prof at University of Manchester, “Security cosmopolitanism or
‘securitopia’: an ontological trap and a half-hearted response to structural war?” Critical Studies on Security 2015 Vol.
3, No. 2, pgs. 182-184)
Anthony Burke has written an important piece: yet it is one of which security communities around the world probably will not take
much note. Perhaps, in future historical or theoretical retrospectives of early-twenty-first-century security praxis his voice will be
noted as a marginal example of both common sense and important insight, but one that was ignored as hegemonic and elite power
performed its tragic, historical, self-interested, and resilient insensitivity towards the phenomena of direct and structural violence. As
Burke notes towards the end of his essay, power
often prefers nationalism, imperialism, racism, or
neoliberalism in order to inculcate its version of progress together with material accumulation
(Burke 2013, 25). Increasing war, conflict, and political violence are being replaced with structural
war, which is hybrid in strategy and designed to maintain ‘naturalised’ and structural,
comparative inequalities in the lives of peoples across the world, often whilst simultaneously
speaking of progress. In modernity, power prefers this version of progress to pluralism, equity, and
justice across time and space. This underlying preference of power is, of course, contrary to the obvious historical evidence
about the dangers and weaknesses of such oppressive strategies, which are simultaneously the target of many forms of resistance.
Burke’s article joins a long tradition in European political thought aimed at reining in power, making it accountable and answerable to
the needs of society, inducing cooperation and highlighting relationality. It points to historical processes, and their impact on modern
networks of agency, identity, and norms, as well as a subaltern understanding from below about what social and local claims for
security (and indeed politics) might be. Burke has drawn together a range of critical perspectives and reapplied them to security in
an attempt to restructure its ontological foundations (Burke 2013, 14) in order to move towards a new understanding of
cosmopolitan security. He argues that this
evolution does not represent a new security utopia (or what I
term securitopia). It balances the architecture of security with the subjects of security, placing
the already secured in league with the unsecured subaltern. His approach attempts also to
accept the agonism that goes with the impossibility of fully reconciling security preferences
(Burke 2013, 19) and explains what this means for cosmopolitan thought concerned with
universal norms, or alternatively, for global solidarity. He also builds a longer-term perspective of
some considerable complexity, including future generations, and a multidimensional awareness
far beyond the standard two-dimensional political analysis often connected with binary-code
versions of security in the mainstream securitised, territorialised, nationalistic yet globalised,
policy environment. Burke’s approach also acknowledges the certainty of unintended and
unknowable consequences (Burke 2013, 23). Yet, I still suspect that his argument reproduces
another securitopia because the already secure (ontologically and/or epistemologically) have
such an enormous head start over the insecure subaltern. Much of what Burke offers draws on and
refreshes a 1990s era understanding of Critical Security theories, updated in view of new
understandings about mobility, networks, technology, environmental issues, and the capillary
circulation, rather than immobility and capture of power. His attempt to bring together (whilst taming) post-
structuralist insights with post-English School debates on critical security uses the common critical theory gambit of retaining a long-
standing liberal international expectation that universality and globality are necessary (though perhaps ‘thin’) and may yet offer
ethical and epistemological perspectives (Burke 2013, 14) about a deeper understanding of universal security capable of
incorporating subaltern claims. However, this is despite much evidence throughout history that concepts of universality tend to follow
hegemony rather than the subaltern, merely to knock off its rough edges and domesticate it. His argument of course retains a strong
hint of the other critical internationalist mode of thought – Marxist structural accounts of power and its impact on the social, taken up
by many critical and post-structural theorists. Thus, he touches upon the contradiction between any universal understandings of
security and the social implications of insecurity, which any subaltern rendering of security immediately lay bare. What he argues
bears repetition as an example of the potential for incremental development in our understanding of the relationship between
it may start from a
security and emancipation. Emancipation might be understood in Balibarian terms. More or less,
subaltern positionality in order to represent and balance rights, material equality, environmental
sustainability, identity, culture, norms, through social and transversal consensus, law,
institutions, the state, regional and international institutions. It may be described as ‘equa-liberty’
(Balibar 2014), and is significant especially where contemporary radical thought has become
increasingly wary of even discursively offering suggestions for deep, structural reform (Burke 2013,
14). There are hints of such thinking throughout his argument (such as with the questions of
normative principles, future cohabitation, and difference) (Burke 2013, 17), but they seem to
remain in submission to cosmopolitan versions of power, emancipation, and subjectivity (which
can be seen as liberal-vanguardist version of liberty). Though cosmopolitan thought often
conjures up an image of global polycentricity, and confederal forms of global governance, in
practice it is often centred on the historical emergence of Western power, the relationship
between liberal subjects, legitimate governance at state and international levels, and global
capital: it is grounded in a shaky liberal international order, in other words. As Mazower’s recent work on
the historical evolution of international institutions implies, cosmopolitanism points to an anti-Copernican, post-Cold War dynamics in
which ethical politics are centred on the west, and spiral out into the rest of the world as it emerges from colonialism and
communism. This makes the brute force upon which the postcolonial/post–Cold War, and now
neoliberal world, has emerged appear to be ethically plausible (Mazower 2012). Does security
cosmopolitanism perform the same function, hiding the dark side of securitopia’s continuing ‘use
of slaves’? Regardless of the problem of whether ontology is freely reshaped, is polycentric, or
dispersed, hegemonic power across the ages has done its best to ignore arguments about the
equal weight of humans, and implications for their material, abstract, and identity rights.
Similarly, it ignores the scale of solidarity across political communities, about the de-centring of
power, and about the superiority of the underlying ethical systems that might make such a
milieu possible. Yet, who could not agree with such ethics, apart from the most ardent of liberals, the most conservative of
realists, or the most brutal authoritarian moderniser? Even so, concessions have been slow in coming throughout history, and
grudging when they arrive. Power – even a variant of liberal power – justifies its reluctance to concede
on the grounds of divine right translated in modern stratification, leadership, economy, and
management based upon epistemic superiority, and ultimately as the guardians of the security
of the less capable. It has been well documented that power legitimates itself by maintaining
blind spots about the unintended consequences of its approaches. Direct and structural violence
tend to naturalise themselves through governance, militarism, social organisation, and capital,
hiding away in their opaque corners. We are confronted with increasing empirical evidence that
power adopts security perspectives that prettifies and preserves its structures and privileges,
regardless of their rhetoric of the ‘liberal peace’ or of noting scientific, evidence bases,
normative and ethical, or social and anthropological concerns. Security and capital have
together become the modern basis for the preservation of unfair privilege simultaneous to their
other functions of safety and wealth distribution. They provide the modern basis for the many
exceptions to equality under norms of democracy and human rights. Reform in the security
structure of the state and the international system cuts to the heart of existing and historic power
structures, their allocation of resources, their biases, and objectives. They will not dismantle
themselves, but they claim to incorporate ‘the evidence’ and ‘best practice’ into their ongoing
practices. Thus, resistance to power and flatter forms of political (as well as bureaucratic, professional, and
social) organisation will always be seen as a security problem, rather than constituent of
increasing security (Burke 2013, 21) according to power holders, however they justify their position (and being relatively more
secure than their subjects). Note how, after a lengthy valourisation of globalisation and its benefits for
human freedom, it is now being termed a danger for security in many such quarters, and
globalisation itself is becoming a venue for the strengthening of the ‘security communities’ which
patrol the existing world order. Security itself is constituted by power relations, definitions of
normality and estimations of priorities and objectives across the full range of human activity,
with the loudest voices maintaining the discourse and the structure. Even where freedom and
liberty is the goal, the growth of security is ontologically predicated on a growing awareness of
insecurity for an existing or ideal order and concurrent hierarchy intent on balancing present
with future, and power with norms. Insecurity is ever expanding, refined, mixed with ideals (often
for others) and embedded into the existing political order in order to maintain its ‘progressive’,
interventionary power structures and the exceptions that enable its vanguardism. It is a very complex,
perhaps impossible task to logically reconcile these different elements in a world that is at least socially intent on making its own
democratic futures. Yet the alternative is to merely submit to fate as determined solely by power.
AT: Reps Not First – War
Framing issue – the way we discuss and represent war should come first –
the language surrounding violence has direct, concrete effects
Collins & Glover ‘02 (John, Assistant Prof. of Global Studies at St. Lawrence University, Ross,
Visiting Professor of Sociology at St. Lawrence University, Collateral Language, p. 6-7)
As any university student knows, theories about the “social construction” and social effects of language have become a common
feature of academic scholarship. Conservative critics often argue that those who use these theories of
language (e.g., deconstruction) are “just” talking about language, as opposed to talking about the “real
world.” The essays in this book, by contrast, begin from the premise that language matters in the most concrete,
immediate way possible: its use, by political and military leaders, leads directly to violence in the
form of war, mass murder (including genocide), the physical destruction of human communities, and the devastation of the
natural environment. Indeed, if the world ever witnesses a nuclear holocaust, it will probably be because
leaders in more than one country have succeeded in convincing their people, through the use of political
language, that the use of nuclear weapons and, if necessary, the destruction of the earth itself, is justifiable.
From our perspective, then, every act of political violence—from the horrors perpetrated against Native Americans to the
murder of political dissidents in the Soviet Union to the destruction of the World Trade Center, and now the bombing of Afghanistan
—is intimately linked with the use of language. Partly what we are talking about here, of course, are the
processes of “manufacturing consent” and shaping people’s perception of the world around
them; people are more likely to support acts of violence committed in their name if the recipients of the violence have been defined
as “terrorists,” or if the violence is presented as a defense of “freedom.” Media analysts such as Noam Chomsky have written
eloquently about the corrosive effects that this kind of process has on the political culture of supposedly democratic societies. At the
risk of stating the obvious, however, the most fundamental effects of violence are those that are visited upon the objects of violence;
the language that shapes public opinion is the same language that burns villages, besieges
entire populations, kills and maims human bodies, and leaves the ground scarred with bomb
craters and littered with land mines. As George Orwell so famously illustrated in his work, acts of violence can
easily be made more palatable through the use of euphemisms such as “pacification” or, to use an
example discussed in this book, “targets.” It is important to point out, however, that the need for such language derives
from the simple fact that the violence itself is abhorrent. Were it not for the abstract language of “vital
interests” and “surgical strikes” and the flattering language of “civilization” and ‘just” wars, we would be less
likely to avert our mental gaze from the physical effects of violence.
AT: Security possible
Security is self-negating
Security,” https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/99479/Calkivik_umn_0130E_11576.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y,
modified)
Before elaborating further the notion of processual structure of time by visiting Marx and Foucault’s critical theory of modernity, I
want to take a brief pause to reflect upon what such reflections on political temporality reveal in relation to the faith based
investment in security that I touched upon in the opening lines of this section. Formulating the contradictory nature of security
Security is contradictory, as
slightly differently than Spitzer’s analysis of this faith, I want to articulate it along temporal terms.
Spitzer suggests; and I would add that it is an
im-possible goal.250 While interlinked, this im-possibility can be analytically
disaggregated into two senses. On the one hand, security is im-possible because discourses of security are
constructed through discourses of danger and safety;251 politics of security puts to work a
power/knowledge nexus that designates which lives are livable and which ones are to be ended
with impunity.252 Security thus emanates from an economy of violence, a dialectics of security
and insecurity, which can never be resolved in the final instance. Hence, its im-possibility, or, as
described by some scholars, its aporetic nature.253
Yet, security is also im-possible in another sense, which speaks directly to the temporal structure of politics of security. As a goal,
security constitutes an infinitely deferred promise precisely because it is a goal that can never
be attained: security is im-possible because there is no way to ultimately ascertain that we are
finally secure—thereby redeemed. It is this impossibility of final redemption that gives security its own perverse logic.
Security takes its own limit—its own im-possibility— as its driving force, turning it into its
condition of possibility. It enacts a temporal structure characterized by a diachrony of an eternally deferred end. Hence, the
politics of security is a politics construed as—quoting Nancy—“an endless, autistic process.”254
Aff Answers Section
2AC Framework
2AC FW – Policy
Debate over international policy is necessary to solve global crises and provides
an essential counterweight to government propaganda that enables a reckless
foreign policy
Walt ‘11 (Stephen, Profess of IR at Harvard, International Affairs and the Public Sphere,
publicsphere.ssrc.org/walt-international-affairs-and-the-public-sphere/)
There is today no shortage of global problems that social scientists should study in depth: ethnic
and religious conflict within and between states, the challenge of economic development,
terrorism, the management of a fragile world economy, climate change and other forms of
environmental degradation, the origins and impact of great power rivalries, the spread of
weapons of mass destruction, just to mention a few. In this complex and contentious world, one might think that
academic expertise about global affairs would be a highly valued commodity. Scholars would strive to produce useful knowledge,
students would flock to courses that helped them understand the world in which they will live and work, and policymakers and the
broader public would be eager to hear what academic experts had to say. One might also expect scholars of international relations
to play a prominent role in public debates about foreign policy, along with government officials, business interests, representatives of
special interest groups, and other concerned citizens. Social scientists are far from omniscient, but the rigor of the scientific process
and the core values of academia should give university-based scholars an especially valuable role within the broader public
discourse on world affairs. At its best, academic scholarship privileges creativity, validity, accuracy, and rigor and places little explicit
value on political expediency. The norms and procedures of the academic profession make it less likely that scholarly work will be
tailored to fit pre-conceived political agendas. When this does occur, the self-correcting nature of academic research makes it more
likely that politically motivated biases or other sources of error will be exposed. Although we know that scholarly communities do not
always live up to this ideal picture, the existence of these basic norms gives the academic world some important advantages over
think tanks, media pundits, and other knowledge-producing institutions. Yet the precise role that academic scholars of international
affairs should play is not easy to specify. Indeed, there appear to be two conflicting ways of thinking about this matter. On the one
hand, there is a widespread sense that academic research on global affairs is of declining practical value, either as a guide to
policymakers or as part of broader public discourse about world affairs. Former policymakers complain that academic writing is
“either irrelevant or inaccessible to policy-makers. . . locked within the circle of esoteric scholarly discussion.” This tendency helps
explain Alexander George’s recollection that policymakers’ eyes “would glaze as soon as I used the word theory.”[1] As Lawrence
Mead noted in 2010: “Today’s political scientists often address very narrow questions and they are often preoccupied with method
and past literature. Scholars are focusing more on themselves, less on the real world. . . . Research questions are getting smaller
and data-gathering is contracting. Inquiry is becoming obscurantist and ingrown.”[2] Within the field of international affairs, this trend
has led to repeated calls to “bridge the gap” between the ivory tower and the policy community.[3] Consistent with that aim, a
number of prominent scholars have recently organized workshops or research projects seeking to challenge this “cult of irrelevance”
and deprogram its adherents, although it is not clear whether these efforts will succeed in reversing the current drift.[4] This online
symposium reflects a similar concern: how can the academic world contribute to a healthy public conversation about our collective
fate, one that leads to more effective or just solutions to contemporary problems and helps humankind avoid major policy disasters?
On the other hand, closer engagement with the policy world and more explicit efforts at public outreach are not without their own
pitfalls. Scholars who enter government service or participate in policy debates may believe that they are “speaking truth to power,”
but they run the risk of being corrupted or co-opted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the same individuals and institutions that
they initially hoped to sway. Powerful interests are all-too-willing to use the prestige associated with academic scholars to advance
particular policy goals, and scholars are hardly immune to temptations that may cloud their judgment or compromise their objectivity.
Furthermore, scholars who embrace the role of a “public intellectual” may be tempted to sensationalize their findings to attract a
larger audience or find themselves opining on topics on which they have no particular expertise. Instead of improving the quality of
public discourse, such behavior may actually degrade it. The remainder of this essay explores these themes in greater detail. I begin
by discussing the unique contributions that academic scholars could make to public discourse on world affairs—at least in theory—
highlighting their capacity to serve as an authoritative source of knowledge about the world and as an independent voice in debates
about contemporary issues (→Why Is Academic Scholarship Valuable?). I then consider why there is a growing gap between
university-based scholars and both the policy world and the public sphere, and suggest that this trend is due largely to the
professionalization of academic disciplines and the concomitant rise of a quasi-academic community of think tanks with explicit
political agendas (→Why Is There a Gap between Academia and the Public Sphere?). Next, I identify some of the pitfalls that
scholars face when they become more active participants in the public sphere (→The Pitfalls of Engagement). I conclude by
proposing several reforms that could help the social sciences make a more vital contribution to public understanding and policy
formation in the broad domain of global affairs (→What Is To Be Done?). Why Is Academic Scholarship Valuable? Academics can
make at least three distinct contributions to public discourse on global affairs. First, although the digital revolution has made a wealth
of information from around the world accessible on a near real-time basis, most of us still lack both extensive direct data on events
in far-flung areas and the background knowledge necessary to understand what new developments mean. If our town’s school
district is troubled or the local economy is suffering, we can observe that for ourselves and make reasonably well-informed
judgments about what might be done about it. But if the issue is the war in Afghanistan, an uprising in Yemen, a naval confrontation
in the South China Sea or the prospects that some battered economy will be bailed out successfully, most of us will lack the factual
knowledge or conceptual understanding to know what is really going on. Even when basic information is readily available, it may be
hard for most of us to put it in the appropriate context or make sense of what it means. When citizens and leaders seek to grasp the
dizzying complexity of modern world politics, therefore, they must inevitably rely upon the knowledge and insights of specialists in
military affairs, global trade and finance, diplomatic/international historians, area experts, and many others. And that means relying
at least in part on academic scholars who have devoted their careers to mastering various aspects of world affairs and whose
professional stature has been established through the usual procedures of academic evaluation (e.g., peer review, confidential
an independent
assessments by senior scholars, the give-and-take of scholarly debate, etc.). Second, and more importantly,
academic community is an essential counterweight to official efforts to shape public
understanding of key foreign policy issues. Governments enjoy enormous information
asymmetries in many areas of political life, but these advantages are especially pronounced
when dealing with international affairs. Much of what we know about the outside world is ultimately derived from
government sources (especially when dealing with national security affairs), and public officials often go to considerable lengths to
shape how that information is reported to the public. Not only do governments collect vast amounts of information about the outside
world, but they routinely use secrecy laws to control public access to this information. Government officials can shape public beliefs
by leaking information strategically, or by co-opting sympathetic journalists whose professional success depends in part on
maintaining access to key officials.[6] Given
these information asymmetries and their obvious interest in
retaining public support for their preferred policies, it is hardly surprising that both democratic and non-
democratic leaders use their privileged access to information to build support for specific policies,
at times by telling outright lies to their own citizens.[7] This situation creates few problems when the policies
being sold make good strategic sense, but the results can be disastrous when they don’t. In such cases, alternative
voices are needed to challenge conventional wisdoms and official rationales, and to
suggest different solutions scholars are protected by tenure and cherish the
to the problem(s) at hand. Because
principle of academic freedom, and because they are not directly dependent on government support for their livelihoods, they are
uniquely positioned to challenge prevailing narratives and policy rationales and to bring
their knowledge and training to bear on vital policy issues . If we believe that unfettered debate
helps expose errors and correct missteps, thereby fostering more effective public
policies , then a sophisticated, diverse and engaged scholarly community is essential to a
healthy polity. Third, the scholarly world also offers a potentially valuable model of constructive political disagreement. Political
discourse in many countries (and especially the United States) has become increasingly personal and ad hominem, with little
attention paid to facts and logic; a trend reinforced by an increasingly competitive and loosely regulated media environment. Within
academia, by contrast, even intense disputes are supposed to be conducted in accordance with established canons of logic and
evidence. Ad hominem attacks and other forms of character assassination have no place in scholarly discourse and are more likely
to discredit those who employ them than those who are attacked. By bringing the norms of academic discourse into the public
it is
sphere, academic scholars could help restore some of the civility that has been lost in recent years. For all of these reasons,
highly desirable for university-based scholars to play a significant role in public discourse about key
real-world issues and to engage directly with policymakers where appropriate. As I have argued elsewhere, academic
research can provide policymakers with relevant factual knowledge, provide typologies and frameworks that help
policymakers and citizens make sense of emerging trends, and create and test theories that
leaders can use to choose among different policy instruments. Academic theories can also be useful
when they help policymakers anticipate events, when they identify recurring tendencies or obstacles to
success, and when they facilitate the formulation of policy alternatives and the identification of
benchmarks that can guide policy evaluation. Because academic scholars are free from daily
responsibility for managing public affairs, they are in an ideal position to develop new concepts
and theories to help us understand a complex and changing world.
2AC Pragmatism Good
Taking action to solve problems is good.
Kratochwil ‘08 (Friedrich, professor of international relations – European University Institute “The Puzzles of
Politics,” pg. 200-213)
The lesson seems clear. Even at the danger of “fuzzy boundaries”, when we deal with “practice” ( just as
with the “pragmatic turn”), we would be well advised to rely on the use of the term rather than on its
reference (pointing to some property of the object under study), in order to draw the bounds of sense and
understand the meaning of the concept. My argument for the fruitful character of a pragmatic
approach in IR, therefore, does not depend on a comprehensive mapping of the varieties of
research in this area, nor on an arbitrary appropriation or exegesis of any specific and self-
absorbed theoretical orientation. For this reason, in what follows, I will not provide a rigidly specified definition, nor will I
refer exclusively to some prepackaged theoretical approach. Instead, I will sketch out the reasons for which a
pragmatic orientation in social analysis seems to hold particular promise. These reasons pertain both to
the more general area of knowledge appropriate for praxis and to the more specific types of investigation in the field. The following
ten points are – without a claim to completeness – intended to engender some critical reflection on both areas. Firstly, a
pragmatic approach does not begin with objects or “things” (ontology), or with reason and
method (epistemology), but with “acting” (prattein), thereby preventing some false starts. Since, as
historical beings placed in a specific situations, we do not have the luxury of deferring
decisions until we have found the “truth”, we have to act and must do so always under time
pressures and in the face of incomplete information. Pre- cisely because the social world is
characterised by strategic interactions, what a situation “is”, is hardly ever clear ex ante,
because it is being “produced” by the actors and their interactions, and the multiple possibilities
are rife with incentives for (dis)information. This puts a premium on quick diagnostic and cognitive shortcuts
informing actors about the relevant features of the situation, and on leaving an alternative open (“plan B”) in case of
unexpected difficulties. Instead of relying on certainty and universal validity gained through abstraction and
controlled experiments, we know that completeness and attentiveness to detail, rather than to generality,
matter. To that extent, likening practical choices to simple “discoveries” of an already independently existing “reality” which
discloses itself to an “observer” – or relying on optimal strategies – is somewhat heroic. These points have been made vividly by
“realists” such as Clausewitz in his controversy with von Bülow, in which he criticised the latter’s obsession with a strategic “science”
(Paret et al. 1986). While Clausewitz has become an icon for realists, only a few of them (usually dubbed “old” realists) have taken
seriously his warnings against the misplaced belief in the reliability and usefulness of a “scientific” study of strategy. Instead, most
of them, especially “neorealists” of various stripes, have embraced the “theory”-building based on the epistemological project as the
since
via regia to the creation of knowledge. A pragmatist orientation would most certainly not endorse such a position. Secondly,
acting in the social world often involves acting “for” someone, special responsibilities arise that
aggravate both the incompleteness of knowledge as well as its generality problem. Since we owe
special care to those entrusted to us, for example, as teachers, doctors or lawyers, we cannot just rely on what is
generally true, but have to pay special attention to the particular case. Aside from avoiding the foreclosure
of options, we cannot refuse to act on the basis of incomplete information or insufficient know-
ledge, and the necessary diagnostic will involve typification and comparison, reasoning by analogy rather than generalization or
deduction. Leaving out the particularities of a case, be it a legal or medical one, in a mistaken effort to become “scientific” would be
there still remains the crucial element of “timing” – of knowing when to act.
a fatal flaw. Moreover,
Students of crises have always pointed out the importance of this factor but, in attempts at
building a general “theory” of international politics analogously to the natural sciences, such
elements are neglected on the basis of the “continuity of nature” and the “large number”
assumptions. Besides, “timing” seems to be quite recalcitrant to analytical treatment.
2AC Fiat Good
The aff’s role experimentation is a useful heuristic for engaging with the
world and jumpstarts larger political change
Connolly ‘13 (William, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science @ Johns Hopkins, The Fragility of
Things, 2013, pg. 181-189)
It is tempting for critics to forgo

We begin by noting a dilemma haunting electoral politics in several countries. (1)
electoral politics because it is so dysfunctional. But to do so cedes too much independent
power to corporate action and the radical right with respect to state power. The right loves to
make politics dysfunctional to make people lose confidence in it and to transfer their confidence
to the private sector. (2) Yet the logic of the media-electoral-corporate system does spawn a confined grid of electoral
intelligibility that makes it difficult to think, experiment, and act outside its parameters. Think of the market initiating/state veto power
of corporations, of media talking heads concentrating on differences between candidates, of the primacy of electoral strategists, of
focus groups, of the role of scandal in the media and electoral politics, of the strategic location in elections of inattentive “undecided
The electoral grid cannot be ignored or ceded to the right , but it
voters,” of billionaire super PACs, and so on.
also sucks experimental pursuits and bold ventures out of politics. How can we renegotiate this
dilemma of electoral politics? That is the problematic within which I am working. I do not purport to have a perfect
response to it. Perfect answers are suspect. It may be wise to start with the positive possibilities
of micro-experimentation on several fronts. One thing that connects individuals, constituencies,
and institutions is the roles that constitute an institutional matrix. The word connection is actually too weak.
We are partly constituted by the array of roles we perform, and those performances resonate
with the larger institutions in which they are set. You are, say, a teacher, an athlete, a lover, a parent, a middle-aged child of
an aging parent, a student, a worker, a voter, a churchgoer, a film addict, a citizen, a consumer, a member of a political party, an investor, a blogger, a
musician, an artist, and so on endlessly. You are, in part, a composite of the roles in which you participate, even though you overflow that composite.
Subcategories, of course, multiply within each abstract category. A “worker” may repair computers, cook hamburgers, serve tables, advise clients on
investments, sell furniture, teach elementary school kids, give Sunday sermons, be a TV producer, be a film director, and so on. As a devotee, you may
be an evangelical Christian, a Catholic, a reform Jew, an orthodox Jew, a Unitarian, a devotee of nontheistic reverence, a Muslim, a Hindu, or a
follower of the kind of Buddhism that eschews a personal God. The degree of intensity within each of these modes of identification will also vary. Many
role performances are tacit, as when you follow accepted rules of eye contact on an urban street, stop automatically at a red light on the way to work,
chew your food a set number of times before swallowing, unconsciously participate in a settled practice of consumption, watch and listen quietly to a
film at the theater, glance at an attractive gym partner through the mirror rather than staring directly, close the door when you are in the bathroom,
adopt a distinctive stride during casual walks, or never pick your nose in public. To break that last restraint would be disgusting, reminding us how tacit
role performances are infused with affective judgments. Such practices have become habitual, often in ways that condense previous relations of overt
power. Other role performances are more clearly laden with degrees of power, as when you obey an order from a boss, pay your taxes on time, arrive
at work punctually, bow your head during prayer to minimize family tensions, avoid eye contact with a cop, give your earnings to the pimp who
oppresses you, obey the terms of your probation, buy a car because no other mode of transportation is available, conform to the pace of work on an
assembly line, or conceal drugs from prison officials. Erving Goffman is brilliant at disclosing the tacit character of many shared role performances, as
Judith Butler is in thinking about how they help to constitute a culture of gender practices. Here is one statement from Goffman, as he collects
examples from multiple sources, exposing a series of tacit role performances that define and secure the modern sense of bodily integrity: How very
intimate the bodily sense is can be seen by performing a little experiment in your imagination. Think first of swallowing the saliva in your mouth, or do
so. Then imagine expectorating it into a tumbler and drinking it! What seemed natural and “mine” suddenly becomes disgusting and alien. Or picture
yourself sucking blood from a prick in your finger; then imagine sucking blood from a bandage around your finger! What I perceive as separate from my
body becomes, in the twinkling of an eye, cold and foreign. 2 “In the twinkling of an eye.” Butler, in Gender Trouble, focuses on how experimental
performances bring out tacit practices that constitute the dominant experience of gender. Here is what she says in an early book about the ambiguity of
drag: “In imitating gender, drag implicitly reveals the imitative structure of gender itself—as well as its contingency. Indeed, part of the pleasure, the
giddiness of the performance is in the recognition of a radical contingency in the relation between sex and gender in the face of cultural configurations
of causal unities that are regularly assumed to be natural and necessary…; we see sex and gender denaturalized by means of a performance.” It is of
course debatable how far such denaturalization proceeds, and drag does not guarantee, as Butler knows, which responses will be made to its strategy
of denaturalization. But denaturalizing performances do open the door to new possibilities of enactment, as they disclose inner, nuanced relations
between cultural performance and gender constitution. As another quote from Butler in a later edition of the same book reveals, the culturally infused
sense of bodily integrity and disgust in Goffman's example carries implications for the unconscious norms of sexual experience historically built into this
culture: “Those sexual practices in both heterosexual and homosexual contexts that open surfaces and orifices to erotic signification or close down
others effectively reinscribe the boundaries of the body along new cultural lines. Anal sex among them.” 3 To reinscribe the cultural play of disgust and
pleasure with respect to bodily fluids and orifices is to participate in the micropolitics of gender and sexual practice. As these two thinkers reveal,
there are significant relays between role performance, self-identity, and the formation of larger
political constellations. Not in the sense that minor shifts in a series of role performances could by itself transform an entire
political regime but in the sense that large-scale cultural investments in a set of role expectations tend to express and support the
priorities of an established regime, while large-scale role
experimentations can both make a difference on their
own and help to set preconditions for constituency participation in more robust political
movements . The domains of gender and sexuality are important on their own, and recent success in these domains carries suggestions of how
to act in others as well. The creative politics of gender and sexuality during the past forty years displays how potent the play back and forth can be
among role experimentations, occupational practices, local assemblies, teaching routines, church struggles, state policies, judicial decisions, and
legislative enactments. Here I focus on protean connections between role experimentation, self-identity, economic performance, and macropolitical
actions. To condense the flow chart, an institution is an organized hierarchy of roles in relation to energies and activities that overflow them, such as
gossip, backdoor deals, confusion, whistle-blowing, care, revenge, and secrecy; roles mediate between identities and institutions; there is often a
degree of slack within institutions as to how a role is to be performed; an accumulation of role experimentations in several venues can make a direct
difference in politics; role experimentations by some can also set examples for others; and such experiments can filter into the sensibilities, beliefs,
identities, and larger political activities of those who initiate and respond to them. 4 A series of shifts on this register, for instance, may dispose you to
listen attentively to new proposals for large-scale political action. Powerful subterranean currents thus flow back and forth between role performance,
existential orientation, belief, and larger political actions. Indeed as such oscillations proceed, moments of stuttering, unfocused shame, laughter, and
hesitation periodically arise, drawn from the element of noise that inhabits the spaces between roles and role bearers. There is no zone of complete
neutrality in a world of role performances. Obedient performances in cumulative effect tend to support the existing regime as they insinuate its dictates
into our collective habits of perception, judgment, and action. Unless a dissident group of workers meticulously “works according to rule” to disrupt
production through excruciating obedience in a way that discloses how tangled formal rules can become. Or a group creatively improvises on the
performance of Bartleby the Scrivener, posing endless questions about the orders given to it until the machine overflows itself or is jammed. These
indeed are creative role experimentations. So was the practice in Eastern Europe during the late stages of Soviet rule to clap endlessly when a Soviet
stooge spoke, until the bewildered speaker was moved to sit down amid the roar around him. I recently attended a faculty meeting with the president of
my university at which the entire faculty remained silent after his CEOstyle talk ended and he departed slowly up the aisle. Sometimes silence sends a
message to power. Our lives are messages. 5 Role experimentation can disrupt and redirect the flow of
authority, habit, institutional regularity, and future projection . It can also encourage others to look more
closely at their own performances in this or that domain. Such experiments can also set the stage for more
adventurous and larger scale actions. My examples will be limited to constituencies who are the most apt to read this
book, though they could easily be adjusted to a broader array. Suppose a constellation of students, studying to enter professional
life, forms study groups to explore more closely how those professions presuppose and enforce a set of practices that contribute to
the fragility of things as they simultaneously draw attention away from that contribution. The students may pose untimely questions
in their political science, economics, engineering, medical, business, legal, and biology classes. If in a secular institution, they may
seek out courses that complicate the assumptions of secularism. If in a religious school, they may organize a group to explore the
history of atheism or of minority faiths that eschew the theme of a personal God. They can engage experimental artistic work that
stretches their habitual patterns of perception and judgment. The nature- and soundscape compositions of John Luther Adams have
Such activities can also prime you to experiment with other role
salutary effects on many in this respect.
performances once you enter professional life. If a lawyer, you may organize to rethink your
connections to the ugly prison system and to adjust your practice to protest its ugliness. Or you may
give a portion of your time to challenge corporations, localities, and states that defile the environment. If a doctor, you may organize
experimentations make a
voluntary medical care for the poor and publicize what you are doing. In both cases these
modest difference on their own, prime our capacities for more sensitive perception in other
domains of life, and may prepare us to participate with others in yet more adventurous activities.
These are minor moments, but an accumulation of minor moments can jostle settled habits of perception; they can encourage a readiness to become
more exploratory; and they can extend the time horizon within which we think and act. Suppose, now, you are middle- or upper-middle-class citizens in
a polity that has competitive elections. You have become increasingly dissatisfied with the course your society is taking. Voting, while pertinent, seems
radically insufficient to the issues involved. Its time horizon is too short and the strategic place of ill-informed undecided voters in electoral politics
skews campaigns too sharply. Inequality has been extended. The lower reaches of society are left out in the cold and often blamed for the suffering
they undergo. The news media are organized around scandal and a brief time horizon. Racial differences are exploited to break up potential coalitions
on the left. A large slice of the population is periodically susceptible to war fever. Climate change is widely subjected to deferral, denial, or formal
acceptance disconnected from action. And the right wing actively promotes filibusters and legislative stalemates to encourage more and more people
to withdraw from citizenship and to tolerate the privatization of more and more of life. The sciences and professions with which you are familiar are
often too narrowly defined. Too many churches either provide refuges from the world or serve as sites of aggressive attack on ecological concerns,
homosexuality, carriers of alternative faiths, or poor minorities. You know what political party you support; you vote regularly; and you give time and
money to your party. But you also find it difficult to connect the sentiments you profess to the role expectations sedimented into your practices of work,
church, consumption, neighborhood association, investment portfolio, children's school, artistic pursuits, and local news reporting. Now is the time to
join others in becoming role experimentalists. You may actively support the farm-to-table movement in the restaurants you visit; you may support the
slow food movement; you may frequent stores that offer food based on sustainable processes; you may buy a hybrid or, if feasible, join an urban zip-
car collective, explaining to friends, family, and neighbors what effect such choices could have on late modern ecology if a majority of the populace did
one or the other; you may press your neighborhood association and workplace to buy solar panels and install them yourself; you may use writing and
media skills developed in school to write for a blog; you may shift a large portion of your retirement account into investments that support sustainable
energy; you may withdraw from aggressive investments that presuppose an unsustainable growth pattern, threaten economic collapse, and/or
undermine the collective future; you may bring new issues and visitors to your church, temple, or mosque to support rethinking about
interdenominational issues and the contemporary fragility of things; you may found, join, or frequent a repair club, at which volunteers collect and repair
old appliances, furniture, and vehicles to cut back on urban waste and increase the longevity of these items; you may probe and publicize the
multimodal tactics by which twenty-four-hour news stations work on the visceral register of their viewers, as you explore ways to counter those
techniques; you may travel to places where unconscious American assumptions about world entitlement are challenged on a regular basis; you may
augment your pattern of films and artistic exhibits attended to stretch your habitual powers of perception and to challenge some affectimbued
prejudgments embedded in them; you may seek out new friends who are also moving in these directions. You may regularly relay pregnant essays you
encounter to friends, colleagues, and relatives. A series of minor role experiments As we proceed our aspirational selves may now begin to exceed our
operational selves, and the shame we feel about the discrepancy between these two aspects of the self may generate energy to enter into yet new
modes of role experimentation. 6 We thus begin to make ourselves and our engagements more experimental rather than simply falling into a ready-
made set of role expectations. We have begun to become what Nietzsche calls “our own guinea pigs” rather than merely being the guinea pigs of those
As such experiments accumulate, the ice in and around us begins to crack.
in charge of these institutions.
First, the shaky perceptions, feelings, and beliefs with which we started these experimentations now become more refined and more
we are now better situated to forge connections with yet larger constituencies
entrenched. Second,
engaging in similar experiments. Third, as these connections accumulate we may be more
inspired to join macropolitical movements that speak to the issues. Fourth, as we now join protests,
slowdowns, and confrontational meetings with corporate managers, church leaders, union officials, university officials, and
neighborhood leaders, we may now become more alert to the institutional pressures that propel these constituencies forward too.
They are also both enmeshed in a web of roles that enable and constrain them and often more than mere role bearers. These roles
too exhibit varying degrees of pressure and slack as they link the details of daily conduct to the strategic practices of the larger
political economy. One advantage of role experimentation by several constituencies at multiple sites
is that it speaks to a time in which the drive to significant change must today be mobilized by a
large, pluralist assemblage rather than by a single class or other core constituency. Such an
assemblage must be primed and loaded by several constituencies at many sites. Role
experimentations and the shape of a pluralist assemblage thus inflect one another. We must
condense some of the steps involved. But perhaps the multidimensional pluralist assemblage in which you have now
begun to participate approaches a tipping point—crystallized, say, by movement back and forth
between role experiments, shifts in the priorities of some strategic institutions, and a change in
the contours of electoral politics. Now a surprising event may occur, allowing these emergent
energies to be crystallized. At this point some will enter the scene to say that no kind of
“reformism,” no matter how extensive, is acceptable. We must wait for a bigger, more total transformation, they
will say. Such an account will be offered at precisely this tipping point as the only sophisticated reading of
the world. But it is not. Yes, roles, institutions, events, constitutive acts, and larger structures are
interinvolved, with each enabling and limiting others. Yes, we do inhabit a world of multiple entanglements and
interconnections. Yes, the primacy of capitalist markets and private ownership does give owners and high-rolling
investors key advantages in setting the agenda of the state. Yes, states subject to public
elections are also limited by systemic relations to corporate structures and the threat of capital strikes. Yes,
extreme inequality, combined with legislative and court decisions inspired by neoliberal ideology, do disenfranchise many as they
release billions of dollars to right-wing electoral campaigns. Yes, private ownership of the media does give great advantages to the
Yes, the
corporate establishment. Yes, dependent workers do face uphill battles in limiting capital through labor organization.
limited reach of semisovereign states in the global economy exerts corporate pressure on them,
just as, inside the United States at least, the right-wing Supreme Court's devolution of authority to states in a federal system forces
states to compete with each other for corporate favors. Yes, elected representatives are dependent on campaign money and their
desires to find jobs as lobbyists after they leave office. Yes, there are pressures on many in the lower middle class to identify with
the vision of the future publicized by those above them. It
may therefore appear that there are no cracks and
fissures in these interconnected processes. It may seem that you must either embrace the
system with fervor, withdraw as much as possible from it, or wait for an explosion that changes
everything rapidly. The hegemony of neoliberal ideology reinforces such a reading of the
alternatives , in its way, even as it otherwise emphasizes our inability to have a bird's-eye view of the system. It offers a bird's-
eye view of the whole whenever it insists that market self-organization means impersonal market rationality. But repeated
experience belies such an equation. There are numerous examples of surprising economic meltdowns, often ushered into being by
submission to that very ideology. And periodically critical movements emerge, as if from nowhere, to
challenge existing priorities at vulnerable sites. There is, for starters, the surprise of the Arab
Spring, with its ambivalent possibilities; the emergence of a New Left in Euro-American countries in the
1960s and 1970s; the birth of feminist and gay rights movements in those same countries that have probed
soft spots in churches, the media, corporate benefit packages, universities, state policy, and families; there is the “slut walk” by
there is
which young women challenged the idea that how they dress determines whether they deserve sexual assault;
Tiananmen Square, which revealed currents of energy and protest in China that are still
festering; there is the Occupy movement, springing as if from nowhere, to galvanize previously
isolated pockets of dissatisfaction and unrest; there is the civil rights movement, which has
reenergized itself several times; there are several ecological movements, mobilizing diffuse
Each of these events and movements exposes
dissatisfactions with the direction neoliberal regimes have taken.
soft spots, cracks, uneven edges, and leakages in “the system,” through which new lines of
creative activity can form and pass.
2AC AT Affect 1st
Affect studies cannot translate into political change
Martin ‘13 (Emily, Professor in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, “The Potentiality of
Ethnography and the Limits of Affect Theory,” Current Anthropology: Vol. 54, No. S7)
Many scholars in the humanities have recently engaged with research in neuroscience to posit a
view of a precognitive, preindividual stage of human perception that promises unrealized
dimensions of potentiality. Here are some descriptions of affect in the words of two theorists from quite different
disciplines. Nigel Thrift, a geographer, writes, In this paper I want to think about affect in cities and about affective cities … and,
above all, about what the political consequences of thinking more explicitly about these topics might be—once it is accepted that the
political decision is itself produced by a series of inhuman or pre-subjective forces and intensities. (Thrift 2004:58) Eric Shouse, a
cultural critic, states, An affect is a non-conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and
unstructured potential. … Affect is always prior to and/or outside of consciousness. (Shouse 2005) There are a number of
importantly different varieties of affect theory. Some are indebted to Silvan Tomkins’s (2008) writing and others to Francisco
Varela’s work on open systems, often in the style of Deleuze and Guatarri (1987; Varela 1999). But taking into account their
differences, historian Ruth Leys (2011) summarizes some of the main assumptions they hold in common: “For the theorists in
question, affects are ‘inhuman,’ ‘pre-subjective,’ ‘visceral’ forces and intensities that influence our thinking and judgments but are
separate from these. Whatever else may be meant by the terms affect and emotion … the affects must be non-cognitive, corporeal
processes or states” (437).7 For such theorists, affect is, as Brian Massumi (2002) asserts, “irreducibly bodily and autonomic” (28).
Other enthusiastic contributors to affect theory from a wide range of fields, include Eve Sedgwick, Patricia Clough, Lauren Berlant,
Elizabeth Grosz, Rosie Braidotti, Kathleen Stewart, Lawrence Grossberg, Elizabeth Wilson, and Antonio Damasio.8 This work
relates directly to the theme of potentiality. Massumi, one of the most widely read writers on affect theory, stresses its connection
with “potential” in a chapter called “Autonomy of Affect.” Something that happens too quickly to have happened, actually, is virtual.
The body is as immediately virtual as it is actual. The virtual, the pressing crowd of incipiencies and tendencies, is a realm of
potential. In potential is where futurity combines, unmediated, with pastness, where outsides are infolded and sadness is happy
(happy because the press to action and expression is life). (Massumi 2002:30–31; italics in original) The definition Massumi gives to
the concept of potential here seems to be “unlimited.” In particular, the affective realm is not limited by what he sees as the
What motivates these scholars? They do not all agree on every point, and I will
constraints of sociolinguistic meaning.
they claim that the role of
be glossing over their differences here, but Leys identifies some common motivations. Centrally,
reason and rationality in politics, ethics, and aesthetics has been overvalued. It is too disembodied and
“unlayered” an account of the way people actually form opinions (Leys 2011:436). Given this, they adopt the position that
humans are corporeal creatures with important subliminal affective intensities and resonances
that are decisive in the way we form opinions and beliefs. They share an insistence that we ignore affects at
our peril because they can be manipulated deliberately and because they contain the potential for creativity and transformation. In
sum, the affects are independent of and before language. They are before “intentions, meanings, reasons, and
beliefs”; they are “non-signifying, autonomic processes that take place below the level of conscious awareness and meaning”; they
are “‘inhuman,’ ‘pre-subjective,’ ‘visceral’ forces that influence our thinking and judgments” even though they are noncognitive and
corporeal (Leys 2011:437, 443). Among the affects, at the physiological level, categories that are cognitively separate (such as sad
or pleasant) get connected, and this is one way the affects are thought to open up new and creative potential (Massumi 2002:29).
Massumi—following Deleuze—considers that the affects are characterized by “intensity” rather than content. Affective states,
characterized by intensity, are nonsemantic, nonlinear, autonomous, vital, singular, indeterminate, and disruptive of fixed
(conventional) meanings. Hence the affects provide a rich reservoir of unpredictable potentiality. All this means there is a gap
between the signifying order (content, meaning, convention) and the affective order. What exactly is the gap? According to Leys
(2011), there is “a constitutive disjunction between our emotions on the one hand and our knowledge of what causes and maintains
them on the other, because … affect and cognition are two separate systems” (437). These theorists generally argue that affect is
independent of meaning and signification; they deny the role of intentionality and meaning at the affective level (Leys 2011:450).
There is a gap or “radical dichotomy between the ‘real’ causes of affect and the individual’s own
interpretation of these causes” (Tomkins, quoted in Leys 2011:437). In Tomkins’s view, affects are “phylogenetically old,
automatic responses of the organism that have evolved for survival purposes and lack the cognitive characteristics of the higher-
order mental processes and are separate from them” (Leys 2011:437). The affects are located subcortically in the brain, in the part
of the brain that processes universal, natural kinds (such as the so-called basic emotions). The “basic emotions” or “ affect
programs” are genetically hardwired responses, products of human evolution, that are expressed in
autonomic behavioral patterns (such as characteristic facial expressions for fear or disgust) (Damasio 1994; Leys
2011:438–439; Sedgwick 2003). There is one part of affect theory that relates directly to the theme of potentiality. This is the
supposition that there is no way to include both mind and body in an account of meaning, making it necessary to posit a level below
the gap where bodily aspects of affect go on; it is the unformed, precognitive aspects of the lower level of the affects that make them
seem filled with potential. This move separates intentionality or meaning from affect and assumes that intentionality and meaning
are purely mental or cognitive. There
are many points at which this argument can be criticized.9 Some
critics have shown in detail how the psychological evidence that is the basis for the tenets of
affect theory is questionable and out of date (Leys 2010). Others have detailed the ways affect theorists
sometimes misread biological and psychological research (Papoulias and Callard 2010). For example, in a 1985
experiment by Benjamin Libet, subjects were asked to decide to flex a finger at will and to note the exact time they made the
decision. The experimenters also measured the exact time of any rise in the subject’s brain activity and the exact time of the
subject’s finger flexing. The results showed that there was a 0.2-second delay between the brain’s activity spike and the subject’s
decision, then a 0.3-second delay between the subject’s decision and his finger flexing. In all, there seemed to be a half-second
delay between the subject’s brain’s initial activity and the subject’s finger actually flexing (Libet 1985). This half-second gap provides
Massumi (2002:29) with the evidence of a gap between (lower) brain activity and (higher) decision,
intentionality and action. He concludes that material processes of the brain generate our thoughts; conscious thoughts,
decisions, and intentions come too late to be very significant. At most they are reflections after the fact. No one
would doubt that the brain is necessary for thought and action. But Massumi and other affect theorists place
too much weight on this experimental evidence. Other studies have shown that Libet’s evidence is open to contrary interpretations
from its publication in 1985 up until the present (Banks and Isham 2009, 2010; Gomes 1998). At the very least, before drawing such
far-reaching conclusions, one would hope scholars of cultural phenomena would consider the experimental structures that generate
psychological data. As I noted earlier, the psychological subject becomes a particular kind of stripped down entity, a data-emitting
being whose subjective experience is outside the frame of the experiment. Perhaps this is not the most adequate model for
The mistakes and confusions in this position are laid bare by the
understanding human intentionality.
approach pioneered in the Cambridge Expedition and later pursued in Wittgenstein’s account of
intention, remembering, and other psychological terms. That account argues that our criteria for whether they
have happened are normative and conventional. These criteria are located in use, not in the interior psyche.
Saying that criteria for meaning are normative and conventional does not mean that everyone must agree, that there is harmony, or
that there is not conflict or change. It means that criteria for meaning cannot arise from the mind of a single, isolated individual or
from a primitive part of the brain. Drawing on Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Anscombe argued for a social account of intentional actions.
Anscombe was arguing against the common-sense view of an intention as composed of an action plus an interior mental state.
Looking at the ways we speak of an action as done “intentionally,” she concluded that “intention” in everyday language means
something done as an action of a whole person, a moral agent, “under a description.” The relevant description would include the
What is at
past and present social contexts relevant to the person as much as his or her interior states (Anscombe 1957).
stake is whether we understand intentional human action as gaining its meaning in an interior,
hidden, and thus socially inaccessible space instead of in the light of social experience. Anscombe
worked in a Wittgensteinian mode to move intentionality away from the private interiority of the mind into the space of social
I tell
interaction, where meaning in language is constituted. Wittgenstein conveyed this message through many homely examples:
someone: “I’m going to whistle you the theme …” It is my intention to whistle it, and I already
know what I am going to whistle. It is my intention to whistle this theme: have I then already, in
some sense, whistled it in thought? (Wittgenstein 1967:2e) One would like to ask: “Would someone who could look into
your mind have been able to see that you meant to say that?” Suppose I had written my intention down on a slip of paper, then
someone else could have read it there. And can I imagine that he might in some way have found it out more surely than that?
Certainly not. (Wittgenstein 1967:8e; italics in original) The point is that intentionality emerges from the whole structure of events
We decide whether someone had a certain
from the inception of the notion to the execution of the action.
intention not by referring to an event or template in the mind but by whether his or her gestures,
postures, words, and actions fit with a socially defined notion of being about to whistle a tune or
meaning to say something. Sometimes a mental event (whistling the tune or saying the words in one’s head)
might precede the action and sometimes not, but in any case, that interior event could not
constitute a usable criterion for whether someone was intending to whistle or meaning to speak.
Removing any interest in intentionality—conceived as a social process, as affect theory does—removes socially
produced contexts of use as a necessary and sufficient basis for what actions and words mean
to people. Tackling mathematics, the realm of symbolic life perhaps most difficult to regard as contingent on social norms,
Wittgenstein commented that people found the idea that numbers rested on conventional social understandings “unbearable”
Why is there resistance to allowing the meaning of human acts to rest on social
(Rhees 1970).
understandings all the way down? Why such an idea is unbearable returns us to the Cambridge Expedition. Rivers and the
others thought that plunging into a different social and physical environment would make them different people, comparable in many
ways to the islanders. In this view there is a vast reservoir of potential for change and creative adaption. But this view also entails
that there are limits to human experience set by whatever social contexts are relevant. It does not compare with Massumi’s (2002)
virtual realm, the “pressing crowd of incipiencies and tendencies” (30). Perhaps it is any limitation that seems unbearable in the
present era, where the drumbeat of the necessity for constant growth is heard and felt everywhere. Saying that social context limits
what is relevant does not close off experiences that are unconscious, inchoate, or unspeakable. Anthropologists and sociolinguists
have long found ways to address the entirely social meanings of things that are repressed from speech or action but nonetheless
contain powerful kinds of potentiality. Years ago Gayle Rubin (1975) analyzed the “sex/gender system” as a “set of arrangements by
which a society transforms biological sexuality into products of human activity” (159). More recently, in Brainstorm, Jordan-Young
(2010) rephrases this: “Gender … is a social effect, rather than the result of human biology. Sex in this regard is conceived as the
remainder—the material body, and those bodily interactions that are necessary to reproduce it” (13). Borrowing from this way of
putting it, we could say that like the sex/gender system, the
affect/intentionality system is a set of arrangements
by which a society transforms neurological processes into products of human activity. Affects
are a social effect rather than the result of human biology. Intentions in this regard are conceived
as the remainder—the material brain and those neurological interactions that are necessary to
reproduce it.
2AC AT Epistemology 1st
Evaluate the plan before epistemology – knowledge is always contextual
and fractured which means specificity is key – focusing debate on abstract
assumptions is intellectual hubris.
Lake ‘14 (David, Poli Sci Prof @ University of California San Diego “Theory is dead, long live theory: The end of
the Great Debates and the rise of eclecticism in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations
19(3) 567–587, https://quote.ucsd.edu/lake/files/2014/02/Lake-EJIR.pdf)
I prefer progress within paradigms rather than war between paradigms,

*ableism corrected In the end,
especially as
the latter would be inconclusive. The human condition is precarious. This is still the
age of thermonuclear weapons. Globalization continues to disrupt lives as countries realign their economies on the
basis of comparative advantage, production chains are disaggregated and wrapped around the globe, and financial crises in one
Transnational terrorism threatens to turn otherwise local
country reverberate around the planet in minutes.
disputes into global conflicts, and leave everyone everywhere feeling unsafe. And all the while, anthropomorphic
change transforms the global climate with potentially catastrophic consequences. Under these
circumstances, we as a society need all the help we can get. There is no monopoly on knowledge.
And there is no guarantee that any one kind of knowledge generated and understood within any
one epistemology or ontology is always and everywhere more useful than another. To assert
otherwise is an act of supreme intellectual hubris. This is not a plea to let a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand
intellectual flowers bloom. Scholars working in cloistered isolation are not likely to produce great insights, especially when the social
problems besetting us today are of such magnitude. All knowledge must be disciplined. That is, knowledge must be shared by and
with others if it is to count as knowledge. Positivists and post-positivists are each working hard to improve and clarify the standards
of knowledge within their respective paradigms. This is an important turn for both, as it will facilitate progress within each even as it
raises barriers to exchange across approaches. So, if not a thousand flowers, it is perhaps better for teams of scholars to tend a
small number of separate gardens, grow what they can best, and share when possible with the others and, especially, the broader
societies of which they are part. Do not mourn the end of theory, if by theory we mean the Great Debates in International Relations.
Too often, the Great Debates and especially the paradigm
wars became contests over the truth status of
assumptions. Declarations that ‘I am a realist’ or pronouncements that ‘As a liberal, I predict …’
were statements of a near quasi-religious faith, not conclusions that followed from a falsifiable
theory with stronger empirical support. Likewise, assertions that positivism or post-positivism is a
better approach to understanding world politics are similarly [misleading] blinding. The Great
Debates were too often academic in the worst sense of that term. Mid-level theory flourished in
the interstices of these debates for decades and now, with the waning of the paradigm wars, is
coming into its own within the field. I regard this as an entirely positive development. We may be witnessing
the demise of a particular kind of grand theory, but theory — in the plural — lives. Long may they
reign
2AC AT Links
2AC AT War=Structure
Their theory of global war is oversimplified – it’s a result of a lack of
strategic objectives
Chandler ‘09 (David, Professor of International Relations at the Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Westminster “War Without End(s): Grounding the Discourse of ‘Global War’,” Security Dialogue, Vol. 40(3): 243–262)
Rethinking Global War)
Western governments appear to portray some of the distinctive characteristics that Schmitt attributed to ‘motorized partisans’, in that
the shift from narrowly strategic concepts of security to more abstract concerns reflects the fact that Western states have tended to
fight free-floating and non-strategic wars of aggression without real enemies at the same time as professing to have the highest
values and the absolute enmity that accompanies these. The government policy documents and critical
frameworks of ‘global war’ have been so accepted that it is assumed that it is the strategic
interests of Western actors that lie behind the often irrational policy responses, with ‘global war’
thereby being understood as merely the extension of instrumental struggles for control. This perspective seems unable
to contemplate the possibility that it is the lack of a strategic desire for control that drives and
defines ‘global’ war today.
Very few studies of the ‘war on terror’ start from a study of the Western actors themselves rather
than from their declarations of intent with regard to the international sphere itself. This methodological
framing inevitably makes assumptions about strategic interactions and grounded interests of
domestic or international regulation and control, which are then revealed to explain the proliferation
of enemies and the abstract and metaphysical discourse of the ‘war on terror’ (Chandler, 2009a).
For its radical critics, the abstract, global discourse merely reveals the global intent of the hegemonizing
designs of biopower or neoliberal empire, as critiques of liberal projections of power are ‘scaled up’ from the international to the
global.
Radical critics working within a broadly Foucauldian problematic have no problem grounding
global war in the needs of neoliberal or biopolitical governance or US hegemonic designs. These critics have
produced numerous frameworks, which seek to assert that global war is somehow inevitable, based on their view of the needs of
late capitalism, late modernity, neoliberalism or biopolitical frameworks of rule or domination. From the declarations of global war
and practices of military intervention, rationality, instrumentality and strategic interests are read in a variety of ways (Chandler,
2007). Global
war is taken very much on its own terms, with the declarations of Western
governments explaining and giving power to radical abstract theories of the global power and regulatory
might of the new global order of domination, hegemony or empire.
The alternative reading of ‘global war’ rendered here seeks to clarify that the declarations of
global war are a sign of the lack of political stakes and strategic structuring of the international
sphere rather than frameworks for asserting global domination. We increasingly see Western diplomatic
and military interventions presented as justified on the basis of value-based declarations, rather than in traditional terms of interest-
based outcomes. This was as apparent in the wars of humanitarian intervention in Bosnia, Somalia
and Kosovo – where there was no clarity of objectives and therefore little possibility of
strategic planning in terms of the military intervention or the post-conflict political outcomes – as it is in the ‘war on terror’
campaigns, still ongoing, in Afghanistan and Iraq. There would appear to be a direct relationship between the
lack of strategic clarity shaping and structuring interventions and the lack of political
stakes involved in their outcome. In fact, the globalization of security discourses seems to reflect the lack of political
stakes rather than the urgency of the security threat or of the intervention. Since the end of the Cold War, the central
problematic could well be grasped as one of withdrawal and the emptying of contestation from
the international sphere rather than as intervention and the contestation for control. The
disengagement of the USA and Russia from sub-Saharan Africa and the Balkans forms the backdrop to the policy debates about
sharing responsibility for stability and the management of failed or failing states (see, for example, Deng et al., 1996). It is the lack of
political stakes in the international sphere that has meant that the latter has become more open to ad hoc and arbitrary interventions
as states and international institutions use the lack of strategic imperatives to construct their own meaning through intervention. As
Zaki Laïdi (1998: 95) explains:
war is not waged necessarily to achieve predefined objectives, and it is in waging war that the motivation needed to continue it is
found. In these cases – of which there are very many – war is no longer a continuation of politics by other means, as in Clausewitz’s
classic model – but sometimes the initial expression of forms of activity or organization in search of meaning. . . . War becomes not
the ultimate means to achieve an objective, but the most ‘efficient’ way of finding one.
The lack of political stakes in the international sphere would appear to be the precondition for
the globalization of security discourses and the ad hoc and often arbitrary decisions to go to
‘war’. In this sense, global wars reflect the fact that the international sphere has been reduced to
little more than a vanity mirror for globalized actors who are freed from strategic necessities and
whose concerns are no longer structured in the form of political struggles against ‘real enemies’. The mainstream critical
approaches to global wars, with their heavy reliance on recycling the work of Foucault, Schmitt and Agamben, appear to invert this
reality, portraying the use of military firepower and the implosion of international law as a product of the high stakes involved in
global struggle, rather than the lack of clear contestation involving the strategic accommodation of diverse powers and interests.
Conclusion
International law evolved on the basis of the ever-present possibility of real war between real
enemies. Today’s global wars of humanitarian intervention and the ‘war on terror’ appear to be
bypassing or dismantling this framework of international order. Taken out of historical context, today’s period
might seem to be analogous to that of the imperial and colonial wars of the last century, which evaded or undermined frameworks of
international law, which sought to treat the enemy as a justus hostis – a legitimate opponent to be treated with reciprocal relations of
Such analogies have enabled critical theorists to read the present through past
equality.
frameworks of strategic political contestation, explaining the lack of respect for international
law and seemingly arbitrary and ad hoc use of military force on the basis of the high
political stakes involved. Agamben’s argument that classical international law has dissipated into a ‘permanent state of
exception’, suggesting that we are witnessing a global war machine – constructing the world in the image of the camp and reducing
its enemies to bare life to be annihilated at will – appears to be given force by Guantánamo Bay, extraordinary rendition and Abu
Ghraib.
Yet, once we go beyond the level of declarations of policy values and security stakes, the
practices of Western militarism fit uneasily with the policy discourses and suggest a different dynamic:
one where the lack of political stakes in the international sphere means that there is little
connection between military intervention and strategic planning. In fact, as Laïdi suggests, it would be
more useful to understand the projection of violence as a search for meaning and strategy
rather than as an instrumental outcome. To take one leading example of the ‘unlimited’ nature of liberal global war: the treatment of
terrorist suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, in legal suspension as ‘illegal combatants’ and denied Geneva Red Cross conventions
and prisoner-of-war status. The ‘criminalization’ of the captives in Guantánamo Bay is not a case of reducing their status to criminals
but the development of an exceptional legal category. In fact, far from criminalizing fundamentalist terrorists, the USA has politically
glorified them, talking up their political importance. It would appear that the designation of ‘illegal combatants’ could be understood
as an ad hoc and arbitrary response to the lack of a clear strategic framework and ‘real enemy’. In this context, the concept of
criminalization needs to be reconsidered. Guantánamo Bay can be seen instead as an attempt to create an enemy of special status.
In fact, with reference to Agamben’s thesis, it would be better to understand the legal status of the ‘illegal combatants’ as sacralizing
them rather than reducing them to the status of ‘bare life’. In acting in an exceptional way, the USA attempted to create a more
coherent and potent image of the vaguely defined security threat.
This approach is very different, for example, from the framework of criminalization used by the British government in the fight against Irish republicanism, where the withdrawal
of prisoner-of-war status from republican prisoners was intended to delegitimize their struggle and was a strategic act of war. Ironically, whereas the criminalization of the
republican struggle was an attempt to dehumanize the republicans – to justify unequal treatment of combatants – the criminalization of global terrorists has served to humanize
them in the sense of giving coherence, shape and meaning to a set of individuals with no clear internally generated sense of connection. Far from ‘denying the enemy the very
quality of being human’, it would appear that the much-publicized abuses of the ‘war on terror’ stem from the Western inability to cohere a clear view of who the enemy are or of
how they should be treated.
The policy frameworks of global war attempt to make sense of the implosion of the framework of
international order at the same time as articulating the desire to recreate a framework of meaning
through policy activity. However, these projections of Western power, even when expressed in coercive
and militarized forms, appear to have little connection to strategic or instrumental projects of
hegemony. The concept of ‘control’, articulated by authors such as Carl Schmitt and Faisal Devji, seems to be
key to understanding the transition from strategic frameworks of conflict to today’s unlimited (i.e. arbitrary)
expressions of violence. Wars fought for control, with a socially grounded telluric character, are limited by the needs of instrumental
rationality: the goals shape the means deployed. Today’s Western wars are fought in a nonstrategic, non-instrumental
framework, which lacks a clear relationship between means and ends and can therefore easily acquire a destabilizing and irrational
character. To mistake the arbitrary and unlimited nature of violence and coercion without a
clear strategic framework for a heightened desire for control fails to contextualize conflict in
the social relations of today.
2AC AT Global Local
Don’t just focus on the US – forming transnational linkages is key
Gassama ‘99 (Ibrahim, JD, Associate Professor, University of Oregon School of Law, “TRANSNATIONAL
CRITICAL RACE SCHOLARSHIP: TRANSCENDING ETHNIC AND NATIONAL CHAUVINISM IN THE ERA OF
GLOBALIZATION,” Michigan Journal of Race & Law, Vol. 5:133)
Today, as we are reminded time and again, the United States is the world's sole remaining
superpower with a superheated economy that is the envy of the rest of the world. Yet, with less than
five percent of the world's population, the United States unapologetically consumes far more than a
proportionate share of the world's resources. '9 The American economy, largely dependent on an
apparently irrepressible demand for cheaply made foreign consumer goods, propels along as the twentieth century
comes to an end even as most of the rest of the world-Europe, Japan, China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin
America--struggles to stay afloat.2 American economic supremacy is not new and neither are some of the governmental policies
and practices that proceed along with it: pitifully small amounts of economic assistance to the world's poor, an unbridled military-
industial complex that leads the world in the export of arms, and a propensity to employ military force against foreigners 22 who
challenge its dominance.
There are, of course, domestic parallels to all these examples of fundamental injustices and these,
perhaps understandably, dominate the thinking of most American activists and scholars engaged in
antisubordination work. Nonetheless, it appears from my particular vantage point23 that significant within
every oppressed community in the United States is a perspective that could be summarized as
follows: if the United States is going to be the world's principal enforcer of a global regime of
inequality, our members should at least get equal opportunity to participate in this imperial enterprise
whether it is to command military forces in Iraq or Korea; to run C.I.A. stations in Paris or Kuala Lumpur; to
negotiate drilling rights in Ogoniland or Baku; to deny visas to "economic immigrants" in Bangkok or Freetown; or to win
scholarships endowed by some dead imperialists. This is what I observe as the many "firsts" that are celebrated and we dutifully
keep count of the numbers of representatives of this or that excluded community recruited into higher levels in the machinery of
global supremacy. The fights over which disadvantaged groups get seats at the imperial dinner table, or get to taste some of the
dribblings from it, usually occur without much heed paid to the broader transnational picture.
The relative absence of a transnational or global perspective in the unfolding of many of these
"domestic" struggles for justice is the focus of my comment on Eric Yamamoto's work. This absence is
rarely challenged. Indeed, the attitude of neglect is so pervasive, it often operates
unacknowledged.24 It is testimony to the enormous strength of the myth of American national
exceptionalism that even those acutely and historically oppressed by its operation adopt its precepts uncritically, and actually
nurture it in their struggles. At its core are the twin notions of fundamental faith, both in the integrity and
sufficiency of the "American" nation and in the mythology of social progress. Great care is taken among
mainstream activists not to destabilize the nation, or appear to do so, even at the expense of social justice.
2AC China Threat Real
The link is non-unique: the U.S. and China have already adopted the worst
form of security thinking – the only option is clear, actionable policy
recommendations – DA to the alternative, and the best scholarship proves
our aff is true
Goldstein ‘15 (Lyle associate professor and founding director, China Maritime Studies Institute, U.S. Naval
War College, Meeting China Halfway, pg. 1-4 May 2015)
As US-China rivalry continues to build a dangerous momentum in our own time, it will be important for those interested in the future
of this crucial relationship to somberly reflect on the roughly 35,000 Americans killed in the Korean War— the first and only major
US-China conflagration. 2 They may also consider that in the fall of 1950, “no one in the Pentagon, the State Department, or the
White House took [Chinese warnings] any more seriously than MacArthur did.” 3 Today, similar warnings are worryingly common in
the
Chinese discourse on strategic affairs. 4 The Cold War and related ideological struggles are now long past, of course, but
potential for a US-China military conflict has increased markedly in the past ten years and now
encompasses scenarios ranging from the South China Sea, to the East China Sea, back to the Korean Peninsula, and even into the
Indian Ocean and much further afield. In comparing the present era of geopolitical rivalry with the early Cold War, however, one
difference is most prominent. In 1950 the United States was at the apex of its strength, and China had been gravely weakened by
decades of war and internal turmoil. Today
the United States confronts a China that is vastly strengthened.
The concomitant risks, therefore, are that much greater. Indeed, given the strength of both powers, a military
conflict today between China and the United States could resemble not so much the “limited” Korean War but
the even graver tragedy of World War I, which has been the subject of so much discussion during its recent centenary.
Scholars who research US-China relations on both sides of the Pacific are nearly universal in concluding
that such a catastrophic conflict today is far from inevitable. But what they have not done thus
far is to provide concrete intellectual paradigms and accompanying policy proposals to lead this
troubled relationship away from the brink of disaster. Therefore, this book seeks to be dramatically different from
any other in the field in its treatment of US-China relations, by explicitly focusing on how to realize new paths to bilateral cooperation
via “cooperation spirals”— the opposite of an escalation spiral. One hundred policy proposals are made throughout the chapters of
this book, not because these are the only solutions to arresting the alarming course toward conflict, but rather to inaugurate a
genuine debate regarding policy solutions to the most vexing problems in bilateral relations.
At present, unfortunately, the two nations’ rivalry continues to unfold across geopolitical, economic, and
even cultural realms and is now extant in all corners of the globe. As China seeks to pursue its “New Silk Road
Strategy” with a raft of new projects and initiatives, American strategists might do well to reflect on the obvious fact that China’s new
“lean to the west,” in part at least, seems to reflect a disposition not to “lean to the east,” an alternative that would have meant
Beijing thus appears to be
seeking to meet the American rebalance directly in East Asia but was ultimately rejected.
intentionally avoiding a kind of “head-on” collision by focusing China’s energies in a different direction. However,
strategists with a zero-sum disposition are all but certain to try to conjure up a clever series of
strategic countermoves to prevent the growth of Chinese influence in Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and
beyond. The author has had the unique opportunity to witness firsthand, in both Washington and Beijing, the intense fear and
loathing that drive zero-sum mentalities in both countries and the competitive and increasingly
dangerous policies that have resulted. Of course, the combination of the “balance of financial terror”
with the “balance of nuclear terror” thankfully lends considerable ballast to the relationship. But it
would be foolhardy in the extreme to rely on these largely hypothetical shock absorbers to
prevent a catastrophe. Moreover, the rivalry between the United States and China not only carries
the risks of conventional or even nuclear warfare but, apart from these most obvious risks, also bears the
immensely costly burdens of an arms race and proxy conflicts below the threshold of direct
hostilities. And then there are the opportunity costs of this rivalry— in crucial areas, such as
responses to nuclear proliferation or pandemic outbreaks— where cooperative opportunities
have, far too often, been crowded out by the tendency toward rivalry. Of late, the US-China rivalry has
been eclipsed, at least in the headlines, by tensions in US-Russian relations resulting from the 2014 crisis
in Ukraine. But this trend is not likely to be durable since Russia is hardly strong enough to compete
against the West on its own. The same cannot be said of China.
Within five years, if it has not already occurred, China’s economy will surpass that of the United States in size. And China has
steadily improved its military prowess and weapons technology, such that it has even moved
ahead of the US military in certain domains, for example, the not insignificant area of antiship cruise
missiles. 5 The ideological factor in the bilateral relationship, moreover, which pits democratic and market principles against
authoritarian state capitalism, has the frequent effect of spraying gasoline over already-red-hot coals. A rather typical, ideologically
tinged American analysis of the strategic dilemma posed by China’s rise ends as follows: “Only a fully democratic China would
the
undoubtedly seek to … maximize the happiness of the population rather than [its] … own power.” 6 In other words,
dilemma, as understood by many if not most Americans, can be resolved only if China embraces
American values and institutions. But might there be other ways to mitigate the two countries’
“natural” tendency toward rivalry, with its myriad costs and dangers?
A spring 2011 Brookings Institution report by Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi marked an important reality check for observers of
US-China relations. Their dismaying conclusion revealed that relations were plagued with “strategic distrust,” despite more than
sixty bilateral dialogues intended to foster greater trust. In explaining the Chinese perspective on strategic distrust, Wang reports
candidly that “some high-ranking officials have openly stated that the United States is China’s greatest national security threat. This
perception is widely shared in China’s defense and security establishments and in the Communist Party’s ideological organizations.”
Lieberthal likewise offers a similarly suspicious American perspective: “Americans … worry … that China seeks to displace the
United States as Number 1, and [Beijing] views US-China relations in fundamentally zero-sum terms.” This book adopts and seeks
to carry forward several recommendations made in Lieberthal and Wang’s path-breaking report, but it also draws inspiration from
their attempt “to spark creative thinking.” 7
The June 2013 meeting of presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping at Sunnylands in Rancho Mirage, California illustrated the top-
level recognition on both sides that the bilateral relationship is evolving in troubling directions. The concept of the meeting— that the
two leaders would spend extended “free time,” without a formal agenda or large groups of advisers— was undoubtedly positive. As
one wise commentary on the Sunnylands summit observed: “It is extraordinary that the leaders of the world’s two great powers meet
so rarely in this way,” and further noted that “it is easy to mock the idea of meetings for the sake of meetings,” but quite correctly
concluded that personal trust between the leaders could amply facilitate much-needed diplomatic breakthroughs and also help
mitigate the most severe crises. 8 A breakthrough of sorts could even be seen in President Xi’s proposed “” (new-type
major power relations). Although many will undoubtedly criticize the term as frustratingly lacking in specific frameworks
regarding how to proceed, what the term does usefully provide is a strong recognition that, on one hand, the relationship is of
supreme importance to both powers and indeed to the world. On the other hand, and perhaps even more important, the term
illustrates the clear understanding by Beijing of the inherent dangers of unbridled great power
competition and the imperative, therefore, to break with patterns of past great power rivalries. 9 Since the Sunnylands summit, a
string of positive, albeit small-scale joint activities has been undertaken by the US and Chinese armed forces. And yet troubling
military confrontations have also continued— for example, in December 2013, involving warships from the two countries in the
South China Sea; and in August 2014, involving US and Chinese military aircraft over the East China Sea. Regrettably, US-China
relations are still lacking fundamental stability. A second major Obama-Xi summit occurred in November 2014 in Beijing.
Encouragingly, this meeting seemed to yield some tangible results in key areas, such as carbon emissions, trade, easing visa
requirements, and military confidence-building. President Xi said that “a pool begins with many drops of water,” while President
Obama remarked that “when the U.S. and China are able to work together effectively, the whole world benefits.”
Yet the Washington foreign policy establishment greeted the late 2014 summit with ample
skepticism. As one representative commentary published a couple of weeks after the summit reflected, “The atmospherics were
cordial, [but] there were no substantive changes … [regarding] any of the most neuralgic security issues driving strategic
competition in the Asia-Pacific. China committed itself to nothing specific or binding. It is difficult not to think that China wants the
appearance of peaceful rise, not the reality.” In this same piece from a commentator at a think tank closely aligned with the current
administration, the author states, “We need to think through China’s strengths and vulnerabilities [and] determine our best points of
leverage.” In the end, the author calls upon the “United States and its allies and partners … to think through the full panoply of
countermeasures available to help fashion a concerted strategy for countering coercion.” 10
A similar skepticism seemed to pervade Obama administration thinking in the lead-up to the November 2014 summit as it was
publicly revealed that “Mr. Xi’s push for a ‘new type of great power relations’ … has clearly fallen out of favor with Mr. Obama and
his aides.” 11 Dismissing this phrasing altogether could have major negative consequences for this all-important relationship over
the long term. In short, rejection of this concept may well imply to Chinese strategists that only Washington
can develop overall concepts to govern the relationship, or worse: that Washington is quite comfortable with “new
type” great power relations, even if that means rivalry and military conflict. These are the wrong
messages to convey to Beijing and suggest that the relationship today is very far from set on a firm foundation,
unfortunately. This book takes a different approach with the clear realization that one of the most basic principles of cooperation is
the ability to listen and try to comprehend the other side’s ideas. Where the vision of “new-type major power relations” is presently
lacking in specifics, this book has the considerable ambition to provide them in a forthright and succinct manner. Relying on
the evidence and ideas from a broad array of Chinese and American thinkers, this book seeks to
provide the intellectual framework, in the form of concrete proposals, that is necessary to put this
most vital of relationships on a solid footing for the twenty-first century and beyond. As such, the book, which
surveys all major points of tension in the relationship— from currency practices to green technology development to the South China
Scholars are
Sea issue— aspires to serve as a practitioner’s guide for a step-by-step strengthening of US-China relations.
frequently reticent about making clear and specific prescriptions, preferring to emphasize positive
description and value-neutral theorizing in order to answer puzzles in the study of international relations. This is often vital
work, but the author’s experience in government and around decision makers reinforces the perception that what is required
more urgently is the development of specific, actionable policy recommendations that are
informed by rigorous political science analysis. In short, there is ample room for a normative treatment of US-China
relations— that most critical of bilateral relationships to world order for the current century, and likely the ones that follow as well.
Our knowledge of China is accurate—their authors have flawed information

Chan 4—PhD in Political Science from Minnesota U, Professor and Chair of the Department of
Political Science at Colorado U at Boulder (Steve, Asian Affairs, Vol 31, No. 3 (Fall, 2004), “Extended
Deterrence in the Taiwan Strait: Learning from Rationalist Explanations in International Relations”,
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30172621, p. 167,
Rationalist interpretations do not imply that people are omnipotent in their ability to procure and process information. We know all too well that
people are subject to a variety of cognitive and perceptual errors (for example, Jervis 1976; Levy 1997; Kahneman and Tversky 2000; Tversky
and Kahneman 1977). This recognition of limits to rationality, however, hardly warrants general attributions of naiveté , even stupidity, to
government leaders. On the contrary, it seems sensible to start from the premise that officials
know their counterparts far better
than scholars may wish to acknowledge. Washington, Beijing, and Taipei, for instance, invest enormous time,
effort, and resources in trying to gain an accurate understanding of each other. Academics have a hard
time claiming any special insight or unique source of wisdom, whether it is based on mastery of the other
side's language, intimate familiarity with its culture, or access to timely and sensitive information with
restricted distribution. If anything, they are usually at a considerable disadvantage on these scores when
compared to diplomats, intelligence analysts, and even journalists and business people. Indeed, academics in
fields such as history and political science typically operate in the realm of common knowledge, outdated
information, and mundane data. This confession in turn implies that at least for some of us, our individual and collective forte lies
with the analysis of persistent empirical patterns and the formulation of general models of foreign policy conduct.
No impact to China containment threat discourse – bad reps don’t

influence policies towards China and our advantage solves the impact
Wenxin 5—Zhang Jiye and Chen Wenxin, Xiandai Guoji Guanxi, Ocnus, September 20, 2005, p.
http://www.ocnus.net/cgibin/exec/view.cgi?archive=78&num=20415
Nevertheless, no matter the extent of playing up the "China military threat theory" by the US military, its
influence on Sino-US relations and the development of the international situation is still limited. From the
1990s to now, the "China threat theory" had emerged once every two to three years. The US rightist
forces and the US military are accustomed to using it as a "target" to play up the "China military threat
theory" in order to consolidate their sphere of influence and position in the US political arena. However,
the main trend of the development of Sino-US relations has not been seriously influenced. On the one
hand, in the US political field, besides military intelligence and rightist groups that publicize the "China
military threat theory," there are many officers and scholars who "calmly view the situation across the ocean,"
seriously look at China's development, and call for strengthening contacts between the United States and China. A noted US think tank, the Rand
Corporation, on 19 May submitted an evaluation report to the US Air Force on "China's Defense Modernization: Opportunities and Challenges."
The report holds that the Pentagon's evaluation of China's military spending is seriously "inflated" and the practice of playing up "China military
threat theory" on purpose should be rectified. On 26 May, US congressional heavyweight Senator Joe Lieberman of the Democratic Party and
Republican congressman Alexander jointly put forward an "Act on Cultural Exchange Between the United States and China in 2005" and asked
the US Government to appropriate $1.3 billion from FY2006 to FY2011 for the promotion of cultural exchanges between the United States and
China, especially for the expansion and strengthening of US education in Chinese language and a program for exchange students between the two
countries. In order to guarantee the implementation of the exchange plan, the proposal also suggested establishing the United States-China
Engagement Strategy Council. In introducing the act, Senator Lieberman said: "All
misunderstanding between China and the
United States can be solved by engagement between the two countries." Even within the US Government, views
toward the "China military threat theory" are different. The "engagement group," headed by the Department of State and the National Security
Council, holds a different view on the "China military threat theory," and so the US Department of Defense could not but postpone its publication
of the "annual report on Chinese military power" again and again. On the other hand, due to pragmatic political considerations, the US
Government needs to consider United States-China relations based on the overall interests of the country. Although the United States has made
some achievements in its global war against terrorism in the current phase, the new round of terrorist attacks in Britain shows the United States
still cannot extricate itself from the war against terrorism and will need China's support.
2AC Cyber Threats Real
Cyber threats are real
Lin ‘12 (Herbert, PhD in Physics from MIT, chief scientist at the Computer Science and Telecommunications
Board at the National Research Council of the National Academies, where he has been study director of major
projects on public policy and information technology. These studies include a 2007 study on cybersecurity research, a
2009 study on offensive information warfare, and a 2010 study on cyber deterrence, “Thoughts on Threat
Assessment in Cyberspace” 2012, 8. ISJP 337)
IV. Discussion and Conclusion

discussion of Sections II.A and II.B suggests
Section I pointed to influences on analysts to draw worst-case conclusions. The
that threats in cyberspace are much more tenuous, ephemeral, and uncertain than those found in traditional
domains of military conflict. Thus, the influences pushing towards worst-case analysis originating from information scarcity
apply even more strongly when cyberspace is the domain in question. Indeed, given the shadowy nature of cyber-operations, it is
not unreasonable to regard them as actions that compromise knowledge, information, and certainty.
When inexperienced human beings with little hard information are placed into unfamiliar
situations in a general environment of tension, they will often make worst-case assessments. In the words of a
former senior Justice Department official involved with critical infrastructure protection, "I have seen too many situations where
government officials claimed a high degree of confidence as to the source, intent, and scope of an attack, and it turned out they
were wrong on every aspect of it. That is, they were often wrong, but never in doubt.""
The above paragraph refers to situations in which policymakers are responding to reports of hostile
operations against U.S. interests, such as protection of U.S. critical infrastructure, often in an atmosphere of
crisis. But the reader might consider the possibility that such thinking is also influential in conducting threat
assessments under non-crisis conditions. That is, in the absence of hard information, there is little that can be done
analytically to argue against worst-case threat assessments of intent and, without countervailing pressures, threat
assessments about adversary intent in cyberspace could be expected to drift towards more and
more dire predictions.
None of these comments should be interpreted to mean that the threat to U.S. interests
emanating from cyberspace is not serious. Today, the debate over the defensive cybersecurity
posture is between those who think the present situation is dire and those who think it is very
dire. No analyst argues that the gap between the defensive cybersecurity posture of the United
States and the threats it faces is shrinking; the only serious debate is over how fast that gap is
growing.
Against this backdrop, what should the policy-making consumer of threat assessments in cyberspace
make of the assessments they receive? Although a capabilities assessment that pits adversary weapons that perform
perfectly against friendly defenses that demonstrate only average performance may be misleading as an indicator of likely
outcomes, worst-case assessments of adversary intent may in fact be reflected in reality.
That is, a "God's eye view" of the intent of U.S. adversaries may indeed be as bleak as a worst-
case assessment would portray.
What should policymakers do in the face of such uncertainty? Despite very high degrees of
uncertainty about the scope and nature of the cyber-threat, policymakers must still act and nothing in
this analysis suggests that uncertainty should paralyze the decisionmaking process. Threat assessments
are undertaken for many purposes, but one of the mast important is to inform the preservation or maintenance of some important
functionality. The
presence of an adversary threat by definition endangers some U.S. functionality and
a worst-case threat assessment reflects a subjective estimate that the importance of the
functionality at risk is high (i.e., the likelihood of a bad outcome is high and/or the magnitude of the loss implied by that bad
outcome is high).
2AC Deterrence Reps Good
Deterrence theory creates a mutual vulnerability and respect that ushers in
a paradigm of onto-security – reduces the structural likelihood of violence
Lupovici ‘08 - (Amir, Post-Doctoral Fellow Munk Centre for International Studies University of Toronto, “Why
the Cold War Practices of Deterrence are Still Prevalent: Physical Security, Ontological Security and Strategic
Discourse” http://cpsa-acsp.ca/papers-2008/Lupovici.pdf)
Since deterrence can become part of the actors’ identity, it is also involved in the actors’ will to
achieve ontological security, securing the actors’ identity and routines. As McSweeney explains,
ontological security is “the acquisition of confidence in the routines of daily life—the essential predictability of interaction through
which we feel confident in knowing what is going on and that we have the practical skill to go on in this context.” These routines
become part of the social structure that enables and constrains the actors’ possibilities (McSweeney, 1999: 50-1, 154-5; Wendt,
1999: 131, 229-30). Thus, through the emergence of the deterrence norm and the construction of
deterrence identities, the actors create an intersubjective context and intersubjective
understandings that in turn affect their interests and routines. In this context, deterrence
strategy and deterrence practices are better understood by the actors, and therefore
the continuous avoidance of violence is more easily achieved. Furthermore, within such a context of
deterrence relations, rationality is (re)defined, clarifying the appropriate practices for a rational
actor, and this, in turn, reproduces this context and the actors’ identities. Therefore, the internalization of deterrence
ideas helps to explain how actors may create more cooperative practices and break away from
the spiral of hostility that is forced and maintained by the identities that are attached to the
security dilemma, and which lead to mutual perception of the other as an aggressive enemy. As Wendt for example
suggests,in situations where states are restrained from using violence—such as MAD (mutual assured
destruction)—states not only avoid violence, but “ironically, may be willing to trust each other
enough to take on collective identity”. In such cases if actors believe that others have no desire to engulf them, then it
will be easier to trust them and to identify with their own needs (Wendt, 1999: 358-9). In this respect, the norm of
deterrence, the trust that is being built between the opponents, and the (mutual) constitution of
their role identities may all lead to the creation of long term influences that preserve the
practices of deterrence as well as the avoidance of violence. Since a basic level of trust is
needed to attain ontological security, 21 the existence of it may further strengthen the practices
of deterrence and the actors’ identities of deterrer and deterred actors. In this respect, I argue that for the
reasons mentioned earlier, the practices of deterrence should be understood as providing both physical and
ontological security, thus refuting that there is necessarily tension between them. Exactly for this
reason I argue that Rasmussen’s (2002: 331-2) assertion—according to which MAD was about enhancing ontological over physical
security—is only partly correct. Certainly, MAD should be understood as providing ontological security; but it also allowed for
physical security, since, compared to previous strategies and doctrines, it was all about decreasing the physical threat of nuclear
weapons. Furthermore, the ability to increase one dimension of security helped to enhance the other,
since it strengthened the actors’ identities and created more stable expectations of avoiding
violence.
2AC Disease Reps Good
If disease reps cause reality, they cause good preparation, NOT
SECURITIZED RESPONSES
Saksena ’11 (Mita, Former Lecturer, Jai Hind College, Bombay University. Also former Research Assistant
University of Madras, Project on Implementation of Regulatory and Distributive Policies in Tamil Nadu Joint Project
between University of Oslo and University of Madras. Dissertation was overseen and approved by Professor Paul A.
Kowert, Associate Professor, Department of Politics and International Relations Florida International University. This
Thesis is written by Mita Saksena – the author now holds a Ph.D. in International Health & Human Rights from
FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY “FRAMING INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND U.S. PUBLIC OPINION” A
dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS – http://search.proquest.com/docview/952533573)
Two hypotheses were tested in this chapter. First, frames represented prominently in the media will tend
to mobilize public support for policies associated with those frames. This study indicates that the
biomedical frame was the predominant frame in media reports in the sampled period 2004–2007
(Tables 5.4–5.9 and Figure 5.1-5.3). The study also highlights a strong correlation between the biomedical
frame and the American public’s worry about the disease and their concern about the likelihood that the disease
would strike the United States. The surveys were conducted mainly between December 2005 and in 2006 and the
beginning of 2007. Figure 5.1 clearly indicates that between 2005 and the second quarter of 2007, the volume of stories
that discussed the impact of avian flu on the United States and the globe as a whole increased.
In the second quarter of 2007 all articles dealt with the impact of the disease on the United States. In February 2005, a news story
reported that at the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, scientists stated that they
believed it highly likely that a virus that has swept through chickens and other poultry in Asia would genetically change into a flu that
can be transmitted among people.38 At the same time, Cambodia and Indonesia reported their first human cases of avian flu, which
turned out to be fatal.39 By November 2005, the WHO's official count of human cases of H5N1 reached 122, with 62 deaths in
Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, and Cambodia.40 This was followed by news reports of the spread of avian flu to countries such as
China, the Russian Federation, Turkey, Italy, and many other countries around the globe. This was also a time when the
United States President and Congress launched several initiatives. The Pandemic and All Hazards
Preparedness Act was adopted by Congress in December 2006. With this law, Congress mandated for the first time in
United States history that the federal government prepare a National Health Security Strategy to guide improvement of the
country’s public health emergency preparedness and response capabilities. The second hypothesis tested was that when
the biomedical and economic frames dominate media coverage, which is the most common scenario, people will be
more worried about the disease. They will be likely to support potentially inconvenient policies intended to address
the dangers of the disease. The survey reports show high support for vaccine production and research and
willingness on the part of the American public to undertake precautionary measures to deal with the disease.
The public did not see the human rights and security frames as relevant. The security frame was
more prominent in media stories about bird flu than it was for SARS. It did not, however, show any significant
correlation with worries about bird flu. The human rights frame was not very prominent in news stories about bird flu.
Part of the reason for this is that the bird flu did not infect humans in the United States , and there were no major issues
arising over access to antiviral drugs and vaccines or about quarantine and isolation.
2AC Human Rights Good
Militarism and arms spending trades off with human rights—only by
prioritizing HR can we solve
Felice ’98 (William F. Felice, Professor in international political economy, international law, international
organization, and human rights. His research and scholarship focuses on normative issues of rights and justice within
our global society. Dr. Felice previously served as a representative to the United Nations for a human rights non-
governmental organization. He is the author of Taking Suffering Seriously, The Ethics of Interdependence: Global
Human Rights and Duties, The Global New Deal and How Do I Save My Honor?, 1998 “Militarism and Human
Rights,” Internation Affairs, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Vol. 74, No. 1, pp. 25-40, https://www-jstor-
org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/pdf/2624664.pdf?ab_segments=0%2Fdefault-
2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=excelsior:8ef4a74f8bb581421d52f6a972a696ac, Accessed on 06/25/19)
development cannot proceed

The former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, asserted that
easily in societies where military concerns are at or near the centre of life. Societies whose
economic effort is given in substantial part to military production inevitably diminish the
prospects of their people for development.. .Preparation for war absorbs inordi- nate resources and impedes the
development of social institutions.'2 Jack Matlock, a former United States ambassador to Moscow, makes a similar point in relation
to the required weapons spending for new members joining NATO: 'It's extraordinarily unwise for these countries to shoulder these
costs when they must pay the costs of meeting their social needs.'3 Webster's Dictionary defines militarism as a 'policy of
Militarism thus includes the
maintaining a strong military organization in aggressive preparedness for war'.4
disposition to maintain national power by means of strong military forces projecting menacing
arms potency capable of deterring or compelling enemy nations. The Secretary-General and the
ambassador argue that militarism represents a structural choice that accords military priorities and
arms spending a higher priority than meeting basic human needs. Are these distinguished diplomats right?
Are there dire economic consequences to high levels of military spending? And if so, what are the human rights implications of
militarization? The negative effects of militarism on society overall are often dramatically shown
through analysis of the policies of repressive governments in the less- developed world-from
Myanmar (Burma) to Iraq to Syria. These dictatorial regimes clearly choose militarism over human
rights. In this article, however, I will undertake a tougher task. My hypothesis is that there is a global trade-off
between militarism and economic growth which impacts on the protection of rights. High levels of
military spending in less developed and developed countries prevent all of these from fulfilling the basic economic and social rights
articulated in the International Bill of Human Rights. A useful beginning may be made by examining the effect of military spending on
the United States, given its pivotal role in that economy. If significant military expenditures have a positive impact on the US
economy, it will be difficult to argue that less developed nations should not pursue such policies. This analysis is particularly
important given the publicity in the new media worldwide about the 'growth' and 'success' of the US economy in the mid-iggos. What
is the relationship between military expenditure and the state of the US economy? The United States spends a significant amount
of its overall national wealth on weapons systems and standing armies. Current military planning calls for a 'defence' budget of well
over $250 billion a year, plus inflation, well into the twenty-first century, averaging over $680 million a day.5 Over 42 per cent of the
entire world's military expenditures are made by the United States. The
federal government spends four times as
much on the military as on education, job training, housing, economic development, and
environmental protection combined.6 The US government has relied on the military budget above all to stimulate the
economy.The Keynesian'logic' that military spending can prevent a recession/depression has not been challenged by any
administration since the Second World War. The economic prosperity of the United States during that war left a deep impression. In
the I930S the country experienced the Great Depression, with unemployment rates hovering around 25 per cent. In I944 the
unemployment rate dropped to I.2 per cent.The public's willingness to finance a large military establishment is linked to the
perception that these expenditures perform a positive overall economic function in the national economy. With defence spending
consuming one-third of the federal budget, scholars have documented the effect of such expenditures on the federal budget deficit.7
During the Reagan years the United States spent $2 trillion on defence while cutting taxes. The resulting budget deficit, combined
with high interest rates and large trade deficits, sent the economy spinning. Further, while the United States in the I99OS devotes
around 5-6.5 per cent of its GNP to defence, its major economic competitors,Japan and Germany, allocate a smaller proportion
the United States consistently has less capital
(approximately i per cent and 3 per cent respectively).8 As a result,
to invest in civilian industries. Scholars attribute the relative decline of the US global economic
position vis-a-visJapan and Germany since the I970S to this draining of scarce capital from
civilian industries. It has been estimated that for every i per cent of GNP devoted to military spending, overall economic
growth is reduced by about o.5 per cent. In the long term, Japan thus grows at a rate approximately two or three percentage points
faster than the United States, all other things being equal. Ron Smith, for example, has used regression analysis to calculate the
ratio of investment to gross national product against the GNP growth rate, unemployment, and military expenditure as a percentage
of GNP. He discovered a powerful correlation between increases in defence spending and decreases in investment spending,
supporting the argument of a trade-off between defence and economic growth.9 There are two key points here: the enormity of the
military budget; and the economic difference between expenditure and investment.IO Mainstream economic thought has long
viewed military expenditures as an impediment to economic progress because they are merely outlays for goods and services and
not investments.Adam Smith in The wealth of nations probably said it best: 'The whole army and navy, are unproductive labourers.
They are the servants of the public, and are maintained by a part of the annual produce of the industry of other people. Their
service, how honourable, how useful, or how necessary soever, produces nothing for which an equal quantity of service can
afterwards be procured.'I Military expenditures are designed to meet an immediate goal. Investments, on the other hand, are
designed to increase future resources. The diversion of significant amounts of national resources towards non- productive military
expenditures results in long-term decline in productive capacity and efficiency. This has occurred in the United States. Since the
mid-1970s, the US government has documented the decline in the American standard of living. Despite current 'growth' indicators in
the national economy, it has in fact become harder to climb out of poverty in the United States in the last two decades. The US
economy has become less and less hospitable to the young, the unskilled and the less educated. This lack of equal opportunity lim-
its the viability of liberal rights.'2 The Census Bureau, for example, reported that the percentage of full-time workers with low
earnings grew sharply in the I970s, despite the economic expansion that brought increased prosperity to the affluent. The Bureau
defined low earnings as $I2,I95 a year, expressed in I990 dollars and adjusted for inflation. At the end of the I970s, I2.I per cent of
all full-time employees earned below the equivalent of $I2,I95, which was then $6,905. By I990 that figure had risen to i8 per cent.I3
The number ofAmerican children living in poverty grew by more than i million during the I980s, and in I989 about I8 per cent of
children in the United States lived in families with incomes below the federal poverty line, including 39.8 per cent of all black
children, 38.8 per cent of American Indian children, 32.2 per cent of Hispanic children, I7.I per cent of Asian-American children, and
I2.5 per cent of white children. I4 These trends are continuing. For example, the Census Bureau reported in I994 that the typical
American household saw its income decline in I993, and more than a million Americans fell into poverty in that year. In I994, Labor
Secretary Robert Reich declared,'America is in danger of splitting into a two- tiered society. This is not anyone's idea of progress.'IS
And, in I992, when President Clinton came to office, 48 per cent of the working poor did not have health insurance, and three years
later in I995, despite a 'growth' economy, the situation was unchanged; 9.4 million citizens still do not have health insurance.i6
Inflation-adjusted wage rates for the median worker fell in the I980s and continued to decline sharply in the I99Os. From I989 to
I997, real wages for the majority of workers in the middle the vast American middle class- continued to erode, with the median
worker's wage falling by 5 per cent since I989.I7 A key factor in the absolute decline in the living standards of most Americans since
the I970S is the amount of capital spent for non-productive military purposes. US military spending contributed to a decline in
competitiveness. For much of the Cold War, manufacturing productivity growth in most European nations averaged twice the US
rate, and in Japan was often three times that of the United States. The Europeans and the Japanese could drop the prices of their
goods more quickly than American firms. Investment was a key factor in productivity growth. US arms production diverted engineers
and scientists from civilian projects. Some of the brightest, most highly skilled people no longer worked directly to increase the
productivity and competitiveness of the nation's manufacturing sector.'8 Academic studies from the I980s to the mid-iggos confirm
the negative relationships between militarism and economic growth. Steve Chan, for example, concludes that the evidence is clear
for advanced Western economies: military spending does not encourage or facilitate sustained economic growth. In the long
run,'these expenditures are more apt to have a negative than a positive impact on investment, inflation, employment, balance of
payments, industrial productivity, and economic growth. The evidence on the United States.. .indicates especially significant costs
in these regards.' Heavy defence spending 'seems to have a particularly important impact in dampening capital formation and
investment, which in turn reduces economic growth in the long run'. Chan also notes the 'customary preference of officials to finance
defense and war by running budget deficits rather than by cutting other programs or raising taxes, [with] much of the cost of this
spending shifted to future generations'.I9 These conclusions were confirmed in a I995 study by Alex Mintz and Randolph
Stevenson that was grounded solidly in neoclassical economic theory. Using longitudinal data from I03 countries, they
demonstrated that increases in non-military spending contribute to growth significantly more than increases in military expenditures.
Military expenditures had either a negative effect or no effect on growth in about go per cent of the cases. Mintz and Stevenson
demonstrated that a shift away from military spending significantly contributes to economic growth in the long run.20 The central
purpose of economic activity is to create material well-being. A healthy economy produces and distributes consumer goods and
services to satisfy material needs (e.g. refrigerators) and producer goods (e.g. machinery and transport equipment). Goods or
services that do not contribute to material well-being are opportunities lost and therefore represent economic costs. The production
of military goods and services is a non-contributing activity. An economy that is persistently dominated by military production will
divert critical economic resources to non-contributive activities and experience a long- term decline in productivity. Investment to
improve efficiency in the civilian sector will have been stifled.2I This tendency for defence activities to divert resources away from
public and private investments more able to promote growth, leads Sandler and Hartley to conclude that the net impact of defence
spending on growth is negative.22 When defence activities take scarce resources, including research and development funds, from
private investment, long-term growth is impeded. Many argue that high levels of military spending create jobs. However, according
to Robert DeGrasse,'most industries selling to the Pentagon create fewer jobs per dollar spent than the average industry in the
American economy'. DeGrasse has documented how seven of eleven manufacturing industries selling the greatest volume of
goods to the military-including the three largest, which together account for over 40 per cent of the Pentagon's purchases from the
private sector-create fewer jobs per dollar than the median manufacturing industry. Three simulations demonstrate that transferring
military expenditures to either civilian government spending or tax cuts creates higher employment. For example, shifting $62.9
billion from military purchases to personal consumption expenditures created some i . million jobs.23 Moreover, the Congressional
Budget Office of the US Congress, using two different models of the US economy, concluded in I992 that the use of the peace
dividend to reduce the federal deficit would benefit the economy in the long run.24 There is also an indirect negative effect of military
spending. Mintz and Huang, for example, analysed the indirect impact of arms expenditures on education spending. Their empirical
study indicated no negative short-term effects but demonstrated a significant indirect long-term trade-off between spending on
defence and on education. The negative effect on education was felt to be attributable to the impact of military policies on
investment and growth. Over a 'longer time period, military spending crowds out investment, which reduces growth, thereby
affecting the amount the government spends on education programs'.25 In summary, there are at least three different ways in which
military spending restricts economic growth in the United States. First, it leads to a decrease in investment and thus retards the
expansion of civilian industry; second, it leads to lower employment and an inefficient use of labour resources; and third, it takes
resources away from civilian research and development, impeding nonmilitary innovation and growth and siphoning off highly
The result is a diversion of resources away from the
qualified engineers and labour from the civilian sector.
collective human rights of education, health care and subsistence. The implementation of basic economic
and social rights depends upon a shift in scarce resources away from militarism and towards these areas of human need.
Militarization, of course, is a global phenomenon. Expensive and sophisticated weapons are sought and purchased everywhere in
the name of security and self-determination. Worldwide military spending of $8i5 billion in I992 equalled the income of nearly half the
world's people. Military expenditures in developing countries rose three times as fast as those of the industrialized countries
between I960 and I987; from $24 billion to $I45 billion, an increase of 7.5 per cent a year, compared with 2.8 per cent for the
industrialized countries. In I990/I the ratio of military to social spending (calculated as military expenditures as a percentage of the
combined education and health expenditures) was an astounding 373 per cent in Syria, 222 per cent in Myanmar and I90 per cent in
Ethiopia. Some of the poorest countries are among those which spend more on their military than on education and health: Angola,
Mozambique, Pakistan, Somalia andYemen, as well as Ethiopia and Myanmar.26 Did these expenditures provide security?
Unfortunately not. In developing countries, the chances of dying from social neglect (from malnutrition and preventable diseases)
are 33 times greater than the chances of dying in a war from external aggression.27Yet US arms and military aid continue to flow to
countries that face no significant external enemy. As a consequence, the function of the military in these countries often becomes
internal repression (as was heinously demonstrated in Guatemala throughout the ig80s). The human cost of military spending in
developing nations is enormous. The statistics are numbing. Twelve per cent of military spending in developing countries could
provide funds for primary health care for all, including immunization of all children, elimination of severe malnutrition and reduction of
moderate malnutrition by half, and provision of safe drinking water for all. Four per cent could reduce adult illiteracy by half, provide
universal primary education and educate women to the same level as men. Eight per cent could provide basic family planning to all
and stabilize world population by 20I 5.28
2AC Nuclear Reps Good
Ignoring nuclear war between great powers is akin to the process of
nuclear forgetting used by the national security establishment to downplay
the dangers of the bomb – reinforces the genocidal logic of deterrence
Hanson ‘18 (Marianne, School of Political Science and International Studies, The University of Queensland, St
Lucia, “Normalizing zero nuclear weapons: The humanitarian road to the Prohibition Treaty,” Contemporary Security
Policy, 39:3)
a
This process of normalization was achieved by the leaders and strategists within the nuclear states. Gamson (1987) has written of
“nuclear forgetting,” where a “sustained governmental effort to downplay atomic dangers” (p. 16)
meant that the realities of nuclear destruction were largely occluded. Nuclear forgetting has provided a sanctuary, where
people can avoid confronting the actuality of a nuclear threat (Ungar, 1992, p. 5), at least until they are
faced with an imminent nuclear crisis. Thus, normalizing can be seen as the amelioration or even defusing of nuclear
anxieties and the implicit conferring of a sense of everyday legitimacy (Ungar, 1992, p. 9) onto the “fact” of nuclear strategy.
For Boyer (1985, p. 15), nuclear
“forgetting” was the outcome of a “symbolic contest” in which state
interests, or national security, came to eclipse the ever-present but successfully submerged
public fears of nuclear war. In a somewhat different approach, strategists like Kahn (1960) openly acknowledged the
horrors that nuclear war would bring, but argued that the United States nevertheless would be able to absorb the deaths of tens of
millions of people, and still emerge victoriously: Nuclear war could be fought, and it could be won.
For a handful of powerful states, therefore, the acquisition and deployment of these weapons, planning for nuclear warfare, and the
modernizing of their arsenals, has elevated the status of what have been quintessentially unconventional weapons—abnormal in
terms of their destructive capacity and their actual military utility—into ones seen by the policy elites within these states as a
necessary part of everyday life. Nuclear weapons came to be accepted and embraced as central elements of the security doctrines
of these states even though there was a parallel and growing taboo against their use, or at least a norm of non-use. This was
demonstrated by the fact that at the same time that their presumed use was deeply embedded in the doctrine of deterrence, their
actual use was held to be untenable. These entrenched views about these weapons—that they are essential for the security and
strategic stability of these states—blocked any real progress in “devaluing” (Ritchie, 2013) nuclear weapons, a necessary
precursor in any efforts to eliminate them.
None of this is to suggest that there was no opposition to this state of affairs or that there was no recognition of the humanitarian
implications of using nuclear weapons. Boyer (1985), for one, noted that the nuclear debates in the United States between 1945 and
1950 contained the same anti-nuclear themes which were evident decades later. The “normal” nature of nuclear weapons has been
challenged—especially by prominent individuals and civil society groups—although never with any real success, and not by any
large grouping of states, as we see today. From the onset of the nuclear age, disarmament advocates have questioned the
assumptions behind the acquisition and retention of such arsenals on a number of grounds, but this has not resulted in any serious
dislodging of the acceptance of weapons which might be considered, under other circumstances, abhorrent and unacceptable.
The opposition
has come from writers and intellectuals, and not just from Western states. The Kenyan
academic Mazrui (1979), for example, rejected the system of “nuclear apartheid,” where the P5 states
arrogated to themselves the “right” under the NPT, to keep their weapons, while at the same time denying such weapons to other
states. Noteworthy in the United States was the early view that resources spent on nuclear weapons could be spent instead on civil
rights programs and on impoverished black communities (Intondi, 2015). For Mazrui and others,there was a correlation
between the struggles for domestic civil rights, global liberation from colonial rule, and
an opposition to nuclear armaments (Allman, 2008).
Many non-nuclear states resented the terms of the NPT, even as they had signed up to its
provisions, in the hope that the P5 states would live up to their side of the bargain by complying with
Article VI requiring the elimination of their nuclear arsenals. The creation of nuclear-weapon free zones (which to
date cover the entire southern hemisphere) was further testament to the rejection of the nuclear
“normal,” even though these zones did nothing to stop the United States and Soviet Union increasing their arsenals to a height of
approximately 70,000 weapons by the mid-1980s. For many developing states, the nuclear order was a “superpower condominium,”
one which was increasingly difficult to dislodge (Millar, 1971; Ray, 1987). Clearly, nuclear weapons were perceived as vitally
important in the deterrent relationship between these adversaries. But the fact that the nuclear age has persisted so tenaciously—
even though the Cold War ended almost 30 years ago—reflects the extent to which nuclearism has continued, not just within the
nuclear- weapon states and their allies, but in global security politics more broadly. This persistence brought with it its own set of
assumptions and justified rationalities, making it difficult to move beyond a paradigm of nuclear- centeredness.
In the early 1980s, Lifton and Falk (1982) devised the term “nuclearism” to explain what they saw as the “psychological, political,
and military dependence on nuclear weapons, the embrace of [these] weapons as a solution to a wide variety of human dilemmas,
most ironically that of ‘security’” (p. ix). Nuclearism
allowed a deeply entrenched valuing of nuclear
weapons, a traditional framing of these arsenals which was about security, nuclear deterrence, and even nuclear
war-fighting, but rarely about what would be the practical consequences of any nuclear use. Echoing
Lifton and Falk, Taylor (2007) has usefully contributed to our understanding of what nuclearism is: the result of “a potent mixture of
ideologies including bureaucracy, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, militarism, technological determinism, and instrumental
rationality” (p. 677).
Nuclearism brought with it a sense of certainty for nuclear-weapon states, with little room for any who might question or resist its
the bomb, “as fact or slogan, has operated in the culture as a static if terrible
imposition. For Williams (1980),
entity, provoking resignation, cynicism or despair” (p. 26). Williams noted at the same time that, “the reality
has been the unceasing development of new and ever more dangerous systems” (p. 26).
This “unceasing development” of weapons systems has continued well past the ending of the Cold War,
and is manifested today in nuclear modernization programs being carried out in every one of the
nine nuclear-weapon states. Attempts to resist nuclearism by charting a more equitable global security order have been
unable to dislodge the status quo. Essentially, when nuclear weapons have been discussed at an official level, this has been within
strategic, technological, and political contexts. Rarely have they been assessed and debated—by large groupings of states—within
ideas about strategic necessity, parity, nuclear preponderance, and
humanitarian contexts. Instead,
even “winning” a nuclear war (Kahn, 1960; Payne & Gray, 1980) have characterized most of the
thinking and scholarly research in this field.
There are at least three elements which have compounded the growth and sustenance of nuclearism; these
are first, the relative absence of humanitarian frameworks in strategic discourses; second,
extremely restrictive nuclear policy-making practices; and third, the privileged position
accorded to the P5 states under the NPT. These will now be examined in turn.
Nuclear weapons: A humanitarian-free zone?
Nuclear weapons rely for their effectiveness on the promise of widespread and unprecedented levels of destruction. Notwithstanding
the right of states to defend themselves under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the use of nuclear weapons would violate the tenets of
international humanitarian law, especially those restrictions which require distinguishing between military and civilian targets, the
protection of civilians, a proportionate use of force, and the need to refrain from causing superfluous injury and unnecessary
suffering.
While at a general and abstract level members of the public have been aware of the effects of nuclear weapons, it suited
governments of the nuclear weapons states not to encourage too close an examination of the consequences of nuclear-weapon
use. State authorities were careful to preserve a mostly abstracted view of nuclear doctrines, one that avoided the human costs of
nuclear use (Meyer, 1995). Little consideration was given to effects on the public, apart from the early “duck and cover” campaigns,
and the provision of a few fallout shelters, in the United States in the early years of the atomic age. The realities that would be faced
by domestic and international communities in the aftermath of any such strike, in terms of providing effective assistance, and how to
contain radioactive spread, for example, were also largely missing. (Kahn was an exception here, addressing as he did the physical
impacts of a nuclear strike, which he believed the United States could successfully absorb.)
Central to the persistence of this nuclearism over a period of 70 years has been the creation of a
language and dominant discourse which allowed daily planning for the alleged “unthinkable”: the
use of nuclear weapons against not just the leaders and armies of an enemy state but also against—
indeed primarily against—its people and its cities. The construction of a particular discourse
surrounding nuclear weapons allowed for an ordinariness, where these weapons came to be
accepted as central pillars in the security doctrines of a small group of powerful states. And even as there
was a parallel and growing norm of non-use—where their actual use was held to be (mostly) untenable—their
presumed use was deeply enshrined in the doctrine of nuclear deterrence (Freedman, 2004;
Quinlan, 2009).
the growth of a norm of non-
In other words, thinking and planning for the apparently unthinkable was common, and
use was never enough to produce an outright rejection of what had become, during the Cold War and
even after it, quite thinkable. Unsurprisingly, states never negotiated or adopted a treaty outlawing explicitly
the possession or use of nuclear weapons. While such treaties existed for the other two kinds of weapon
of mass destruction— chemical and biological weapons—the absence of a similar legal prohibition
regarding nuclear weapons was a clear indication that the P5 was never in favor of any such legal
proscription.
Implicit in the programs of the nuclear weapons states was a persistence of the belief that their
arsenals were rational, necessary, and normal. But at the same time that this normality was being
constructed and reinforced for them, any attempts made by other states to acquire nuclear weapons were
seen as unnecessary, irrational, and destabilizing to global security. Would-be nuclear states
were branded as “rogues” or “pariahs” acting in defiance of well-established norms of non-
proliferation. As time wore on, the nuclear-weapon states, and especially the United States, increased their efforts to stop the
spread of these weapons to others considered unfit to become nuclear states themselves (Harrington de Santana, 2011; Price,
2007). In doing so, they
had to perform two contradictory tasks: to continue with their own nuclear
possession on the basis of an assumed rationality and strategic necessity, while at the same
time casting attempts made by other states to acquire nuclear weapons as unnecessary,
irrational, and in violation of the non-proliferation norm.
While this contradictory approach can be explained as simple power politics where the large and powerful states pursued policies
favorable to themselves, there nevertheless were difficulties in sustaining such a position. First, by demonstrating a clear wish to
retain a nuclear deterrent, the nuclear states signaled to other states that nuclear weapons have a great deal of utility, which in turn
makes their case for global non-proliferation difficult and complicated. Second, the P5 states have repeatedly promised to eliminate
their nuclear weapons. Not only is this enshrined in the NPT, but it is a promise that has also been re-stated by them at numerous
multilateral gatherings. This makes their continued retention of nuclear weapons a deeply contested issue which has generated
decades of grievance among the non- nuclear states.
Despite the fact that nuclear weapons are the quintessential “weapon of mass destruction”—leaders of the nuclear-weapon states
have been successful in avoiding this explicit terminology being applied to their weapons (see Cooper, 2006, p. 365; Mutimer,
2000). A cursory look at the way nuclear weapons holdings are described in official military policies in the nuclear states confirms
this: One’s own weapons are “nuclear weapons,” representing a “nuclear capability.” Where the term “weapons of mass destruction”
appears, it is always in relation to the holdings of nuclear (or chemical or biological) weapons by other states, implied as being
The P5 present their nuclear arsenals as normal elements of an international
rogues or pariah nations.
security order which is nevertheless reserved for them exclusively (see for example the Joint Press Statement made
recently by all P5 states (United States, 2017)). Their linguistic practices have focused on strategic parity and national security.
This has been important, not just for differentiating between “responsible” nuclear states
(themselves), and “irresponsible” others, but because they have also masked the consequences of
using nuclear weapons. The development of this discourse shaped the debate on nuclear
weapons, using jargon and metaphor to deflect attention away from the reality of injury
and death (Cohn, 1987; Hilgartner, Bell, & O’Connor, 1982).
This has made it difficult to move beyond a paradigm of nuclear-centeredness. Even after the ending of the Cold War, it was evident
that there would be no reassessment of what would be the most appropriate national and international security needs in a vastly
changed political landscape. Rather, as the 1990s passed and the new century advanced, it was clear that the world would have to
continue to live with nuclearism, on the terms set by the P5 decades earlier. Certainly the numbers of nuclear weapons dropped
significantly after 1991, but at heart, security doctrines remained fixed in a Cold War time-warp, and the lethality of (even reduced)
arsenals remained high (Kristensen, 2009; Mueller & Schaper, 2004; Stimson Center, 1995a). This perpetuation of a nuclear
culture, despite the end of the superpower conflict was of great concern to non-nuclear states.
By holding off any serious consideration of the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons’ use, elites within the nuclear states
have been able to present this option as something which could indeed be contemplated (Kahn, 1960; Payne & Gray, 1980). Taylor
(2007) observed that the language used was designed to suggest “mastery and control” by ignoring
contradictions, “by normalizing the presence and use of nuclear weapons, by obscuring
attribution of agency (and thus accountability) ... and by inhibiting ethical reflection about the
consequences of nuclear weapons” (p. 677). The successful construction of this particular set of
beliefs and practices, talked about in abstract and unemotional language, allowed the growth of nuclear
doctrines, shielded off from any meaningful external scrutiny and assessment, and permitting
its adherents to intensify and replicate their own dominant discourse and practices.
It can be argued, of course, that most instances of warfare have violated and continue to violate
international humanitarian law. Rarely have we seen a clear regard for the upholding of the fundamental principles of the
laws of war. But there are two important points to note here. The first is that nuclear weapons, by their
nature, produce a qualitatively different capacity for human destruction (when compared against
conventional weapons). Second, notwithstanding violations of humanitarian law in the past, or indeed ongoing ones, there
are expectations at the broad level that warfare should abide by these guidelines, including the
Geneva conventions revised after the Second World War to include civilians.
Nuclear weapons: Decision-making by the few
governments were able to keep nuclear decision-
The reality of the dominant nuclear security discourse was that
making isolated from public oversight. Booth (1999) has pointed to the cumulative effects of this arrangement: For
him, plans for nuclear deterrence and nuclear war affirmed an idea that “national security
can only ultimately rest on genocidal threats” (p. 21). In other words, rendering as “normal” the
securing of one’s own interests largely at the expense of mass killing of others was, for Booth, an
erosion of liberal principles, the institutionalization of a zero-sum security outlook impervious to
change. While in various ways this has always been the case with war and violent conflict, it becomes more problematic when we
are contemplating nuclear warfare.
2AC Russia Threat Real
Russian threats are not constructed – but the result of cyber intrusions,
political warfare, and military expansionism. Russia’s alignment with China
represents a threat to US interests in the global order.
Brennan 07/01/19 (David, currently a World News reporter for Newsweek. Prior to joining Newsweek in early
2017, he reported on British politics and global current affairs as a staff writer at International Business Times, U.S.
IN DANGER OF LOSING GLOBAL DOMINANCE TO RUSSIAN AND CHINESE 'AUTHORITARIAN STABILITY,'
PENTAGON WARNS, https://www.newsweek.com/u-s-danger-losing-dominance-russia-china-authoritarian-stability-
1446780)
A new report published by the Pentagon has warned that the U.S. is at risk of losing the global
battle for influence to authoritarian nations such as Russia and China. A 150-page white paper,
prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and acquired by Politico, says that Russia poses a
particularly active threat to the U.S.-led world order. The document warns that America is
underestimating Russian aggression and is not prepared to deal with the wide range of
techniques used by Moscow to undermine democracies worldwide. The "Strategic Multilayer
Assessment" suggests the U.S. is entering a new period of ideological competition with nations
like Russia and China, who have rejected liberal democracy in favor of "authoritarian stability."
But in this new struggle, the authors argue that America lacks a clear ideological message of the kind that
carried it through the Cold War. Belinda Bragg, a research scientist for the NSI government consulting firm, wrote parts
of the study. She said that the U.S. needs "to better articulate U.S. interests and strategy to both ourselves and others." Another
contributor, Anna Borshchevskaya of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, added that domestic divisions are damaging
efforts to create a new American identity. "We still have a story to tell but because we are so polarized and are doubting ourselves
we have a narrative problem," she told Politico. "Russia does not." The report detailed the methods Russia is
using to undermine the U.S. and its traditional allies. Navy Rear Admiral Jeffrey Czerewko, the
Joint Chiefs' deputy director for global operations, listed "economic competition, influence
campaigns, paramilitary actions, cyber intrusions, and political warfare," all of which he
expected to become more common. Contributor Jason Werchan, a member of the U.S. European Command strategy
division, wrote that malign Russian activities include "threatening other states militarily, or
compromising their societies, economies, and governments by employing a range of means and
methods to include propaganda, disinformation, and cultural, religious, and energy coercion."
Alignment between Moscow and Beijing is cause for particular concern, the paper said. Presidents Xi Jinping
and Vladimir Putin have lauded closer ties between the two neighbors, who could form a potent anti-American front." The world
system, and America's influence in it, would be completed upended if Moscow and Beijing aligned more closely," Werchan
suggested. The document also suggests steps that could undermine the relationship, such as sowing concern in Russia about
China's mammoth economic and infrastructure projects across the globe. Ultimately, the authors note that Russia's greatest
weakness is its most powerful man: Putin. Thomas Sherlock, a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, gathered data
for the study. He noted "relatively weak approval among the [Russian] public for a forceful external posture, including intervention in
the 'near abroad' to check American power or protect Russian-speakers from perceived discrimination." The network of
oligarchs that keeps Putin in power is also a weak spot for his authoritarian regime. "While both
elites and members of the mass public are supportive of restoring Russia's great power status,
they often define a great power and its priorities more in terms of socio-economic development
than in the production and demonstration of hard power," the report reads. "These perspectives
increasingly come into conflict with those of the Kremlin."
2AC Warming Reps Good
Our simulation of environmental diplomacy is good – integration of
ecological concerns into IR creates a psychological preference for
cooperation and a future-oriented ethos in students
Ali & Mueller 10 (Saleem, Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Vermont, Markus, assistant
professor for social and organizational psychology at Catholic University Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany, “Simulating
Environmental Diplomacy”, June 23, 2010, http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/000168)
Environmental policy issues are often framed in terms of resource scarcity, spurring a scramble for that last
blade of grass or last drop of water in a "tragedy of the commons." Yet human perceptions of access to resources can be shifted
from a mindset of competitive conflict to one of cooperative relationships. The psychological aspects of
such a transformation are often best illustrated through simulations. For example, a distributive conflict premised
on resource quantity can be reframed to highlight cooperation in maintaining resource quality. Lakes present a classic example
where it is easy to show how a common resource will be degraded for all users. A similar case is harder to make in river simulations where upstream
Lessons from these simulation
parties have far greater power and much less to lose as a result of pollution or scarcity downstream.
techniques are under-utilized in international diplomacy. Not only can simulations be useful in changing the narrative of
environmental conflicts, but environmental issues can be useful in changing the tone of political
conflicts. For example, if two countries distrust each other over religious or ethnic differences,
environmental cooperation may present a neutral means of building bridges. Building a Methodology A
simulation can also be useful as an experimental tool to further evaluate the efficacy of
environmental factors in conflict resolution. What would such a methodology look like? We might start by using
vignettes that describe conflicts between stakeholders from neighboring nations—with students, border
military guards, and political activists as participants in the simulation. The inclusion of environmental issues in the conflict
descriptions would be the main independent variable. The level of severity would also vary in the vignettes, as would its impact
on vested interests. The conflicts could range from environmental threats as a common aversion (like the scarcity of water or other resources), to
nature as an end in itself that should be protected (perhaps a transboundary protected area without important natural resources), to situations without
environmental issues. In order to separate the effect of environmental issues from the effect of cooperative discussion itself, a control group could be
We expect the inclusion of environmental issues to
told that the two countries are cooperating over trade talks.
affect the willingness of the two parties to positively cooperate, given some initial research from the field of
conservation psychology. In a typical vignette, participants might read about an incident between two neighboring countries in which citizens of one
country were accidentally killed when military exercises by the other country mistakenly shelled the wrong target. (For student participants, this would
be presented as a real incident. For the senior diplomats, who are better informed, we would merely ask them to treat this as a hypothetical incident.)
Some of the participants will also be told that the two countries are engaged in cooperative discussions over how to protect a shared environmentally
sensitive area. Others will be told that the two countries are engaged in discussions over how to allocate shared, and contested, water resources. A
third group will be told that the two countries are engaged in cooperative trade talks, and a last group will not be told about any discussions between
the two countries. The exact mechanics of the simulation would be worked out after a series of consultations with experts on behavioral methodologies
and the running of test groups. Dependent variable measures for the vignettes as well as the ensuing studies will include resource allocation between
groups, stereotyping of the "other," moral exclusion of the other, perceived justice, as well as the willingness to employ different strategies of
negotiation. Assessment of one party's willingness to interact with the other group will be adapted for each vignette from the Transgression-Related
Interpersonal Motivations Inventory, a widely used method in psychology. This technique has previously been adapted for similar use to assess
attitudes about appropriate relations between nations. Sample items would be: "Country A should continue to cooperate with country B," "Country A
should avoid involvement with Country B," "Country A should forgive Country B," "Country A should fear future aggressive actions by Country B"
people do not have to choose between identifying with
(scaled 1–5, strongly disagree to strongly agree). In other words,
the original group or identifying with the larger collective; they can identify with both. When
groups cooperate, they develop trust in each other as well as a perception of shared
characteristics. Working together to protect a shared ecosystem may allow nations to experience
the same effects: Trust that is established through work on one project may generalize to a
greater level of trust on other issues; perceived similarity in value for nature may help to overcome tendencies toward stereotyping
and moral exclusion. The Horizon of Cooperation Yet another potential mechanism of the psychological impact of peace parks is in encouraging a
consideration of
reduction of temporal discounting. Although this work is still in the preliminary stages, there is some evidence that
environmental issues promotes a longer time horizon compared to some other issues. Robert Axelrod
empirically showed in his classic work The Evolution of Cooperation that increasing the "shadow of the future" (the
likelihood and importance of future interaction) promotes cooperation. If we can frame
environmental issues in the context of longer-term interactions between humans and the
planet, there are likely to be derivative cooperative benefits from this mechanism. Such an
approach would blend the use of simulations in collaborative planning with psychological
techniques—potentially offering a mechanism for "ecological cooperation." In August 2010, the American Psychological Association is hosting a
special session on environment, peace, and conflict at which we intend to discuss the prospects for engaging in research to test this hypothesis with
scholars, practitioners, and students can consider testing this
actual stakeholders in a conflict situation. In the meantime,
proposition on their own, experimenting with different ecological vignettes. There can also be variations in the
simulation before and after environmental education programs to evaluate the effectiveness of ecoliteracy programs. Environmental
awareness, coupled with strong leadership in using ecological variables in diplomacy, may well
provide us with a new policy innovation for dealing with intractable conflicts.
2AC Warming Reps Good
The 1ac’s narrative of environmental risk is motivating and drives
individual activism – proves we’ve performed our pedagogy and it’s
preferable to the alt
Veldman ‘12 (Robin, PhD Candidate Religion and Nature at U of Florida National Foundation Fellow at the
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, Spring, “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse: How
Imagining the End Facilitates Moral Reasoning Among Environmental Activists” Ethics and the Environment, Vol 17
No 1)
Environmental Apocalypticism and Activism As we saw in the introduction, critics often argue that apocalyptic rhetoric induces
feelings of hopelessness or fatalism. While it certainly does for some people, in this section I will present evidence that
apocalypticism also often goes hand in hand with activism.¶ Some of the strongest evidence of a
connection between environmental apocalypticism and activism comes from a national survey that examined whether
Americans perceived climate change to be dangerous. As part of his analysis, Anthony Leiserowitz identified several
The
“interpretive communities,” which had consistent demographic characteristics but varied in their levels of risk perception.
group who perceived the risk to be the greatest, which he labeled “alarmists,” described climate
change [End Page 5] using apocalyptic language, such as “Bad…bad…bad…like after nuclear
war…no vegetation,” “Heat waves, it’s gonna kill the world,” and “Death of the planet” (2005, 1440). Given
such language, this would seem to be a reasonable way to operationalize environmental apocalypticism. If such
apocalypticism encouraged fatalism, we would expect alarmists to be less likely to
have engaged in environmental behavior compared to groups with moderate or low levels of concern. To
the contrary , however, Leiserowitz found that alarmists “were significantly more likely to
have taken personal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ” (ibid.) than
respondents who perceived climate change to pose less of a threat . Interestingly, while one
might expect such radical views to appeal only to a tiny minority, Leiserowitz found that a respectable eleven
percent of Americans fell into this group (ibid).¶ Further supporting Leiserowitz’s findings, in a
separate national survey conducted in 2008, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, and Leiserowitz found that a group they
labeled “the Alarmed” (again, due to their high levels of concern about climate change) “are the segment most
engaged in the issue of global warming. They are very convinced it is happening,
human-caused, and a serious and urgent threat. The Alarmed are already making
changes in their own lives and support an aggressive national response ” (2009, 3, emphasis
added). This group was far more likely than people with lower levels of concern over
climate change to have engaged in consumer activism (by rewarding companies that support action
to reduce global warming with their business, for example) or to have contacted elected officials to express their concern.
“[w]hen asked which reason for action was most important to
Additionally, the authors found that
them personally, the Alarmed were most likely to select preventing the destruction of most
life on the planet (31%)” (2009, 31)—a finding suggesting that for many in this group it is specifically the
desire to avert catastrophe, rather than some other motivation, that encourages pro-
environmental behavior. Taken together, these and other studies (cf. Semenza et al. 2008 and DerKarabetia,
Stephenson, and Poggi 1996) provide important evidence that many of those who think environmental
problems pose a severe threat practice some form of activism, rather than giving way
to fatalistic resignation.¶ National surveys give a good overview of the association between apocalypticism and
activism among the general public, but they do not [End Page 6] provide sufficient ethnographic detail. To complement this
broader picture I now turn to case studies, which provide greater insight into how adherents themselves understand what
motivates their environmental behavior. ¶ When seeking a subset of environmentalists with apocalyptic beliefs, the radical wing
is an obvious place to look. For example, many Earth First!ers believe that the collapse of industrial society is inevitable (Taylor
1994). At the same time, the majority are actively committed to preventing ecological disaster. As Earth First! co-founder Howie
Wolke acknowledged, the two are directly connected: “As ecological calamity unravels the living fabric of the Earth,
environmental radicalism has become both common and necessary” (1989, 29).3 This logic underlies efforts to preserve
wilderness areas, which many radical environmentalists believe will serve as reservoirs of genetic diversity, helping to restore
In addition to encouraging activism to preserve
the planet after industrial society collapses (Taylor 1994).
wilderness, apocalyptic beliefs also motivate practices such as “monkeywrenching,” or ecological
sabotage, civil disobedience, and the more conventional “paper monkeywrenching” (lobbying, engaging
in public information campaigns to shift legislative priorities , or using lawsuits when these tactics
fail). Ultimately, while there are disagreements over what strategies will best achieve their desired goals, for most radical
environmentalists, apocalypticism and activism are bound closely together. ¶ The connection between belief in impending
disaster and environmental activism holds true for Wiccans as well. During fieldwork in the southeastern United States, for
example, Shawn Arthur reported meeting “dozens of Wiccans who professed their apocalyptic millenarian beliefs to anyone who
expressed interest, yet many others only quietly agreed with them without any further elaboration” (2008, 201). For this group,
the coming disaster was understood as divine retribution, the result of an angry Earth Goddess preparing to punish humans for
squandering her ecological gifts (Arthur 2008, 203). In light of Gaia’s impending revenge, Arthur found that Wiccans advocated
both spiritual and material forms of activism. For example, practices such as Goddess worship, the use of herbal remedies for
healing, and awareness of the body and its energies were considered important for initiating a more harmonious relationship
with the earth (Arthur 2008, 207). As for material activism, Arthur notes [End Page 7] that the notion of environmental
apocalypse played a key role in encouraging pro-environmental behavior:¶ images of immanent [sic] ecological crisis and
apocalyptic change often were utilized as motivating factors for developing an environmentally and ecologically conscious
worldview; for stressing the importance of working for the Earth through a variety of practices, including environmental activism,
garbage collecting, recycling, composting, and religious rituals; for learning sustainable living skills; and for developing a special
relationship with the world as a divine entity. (2008, 212) ¶ What these studies and my own experiences in the environmentalist
people who make a serious commitment to engaging in
milieu4 suggest is that
environmentally friendly behavior, people who move beyond making superficial
changes to making substantial and permanent ones, are quite likely to subscribe to
some form of the apocalyptic narrative.¶ All this is not to say that apocalypticism directly or inevitably causes
activism, or that believing catastrophe is imminent is the only reason people become activists. However, it is to say that
activism and apocalypticism are associated for some people, and that this association is not
arbitrary, for there is something uniquely powerful and compelling about the
apocalyptic narrative. Plenty of people will hear it and ignore it, or find it implausible, or simply decide that if the
situation really is so dire there is nothing they can do to prevent it from continuing to deteriorate. Yet to focus only on
the ability of apocalyptic rhetoric to induce apathy, indifference or reactance is to
ignore the evidence that it also fuels quite the opposite —grave concern, activism, and sometimes
even outrage. It is also to ignore the movement’s history. From Silent Spring (Carson [1962] 2002) to The Limits to Growth
(Meadows et al 1972) to The End of Nature (McKibben 1989), apocalyptic arguments have held a prominent place within
environmental literature, topping best-seller lists and spreading the message far and wide that protecting the environment
should be a societal priority. Thus, while it is not a style of argument that will be effective in convincing everyone to commit to
the environmental cause (see Feinberg and Willer 2011), there does appear to be a close relationship between apocalyptic
belief and activism among a certain minority. The next section explores the implications of that relationship further. [End Page
8]¶ The Apocalyptic Narrative as a Framework for Moral Deliberation¶ In discussing how apocalypticism functions within the
environmental community, it will be helpful to analyze it as a type of narrative. I do so because the domain of narrative includes
both the stories that people read and write, as well as those they tell and live by. By using narratives as data, scholars can
analyze experiential and textual sources simultaneously (Polkinghorne 1988; Riessman 2000). ¶ To analyze environmental
apocalypticism as a type of narrative is not to suggest that apocalyptics’ claims about the future are fictional. Rather, it is to
highlight that the facts to which environmentalistsappeal have been organized with particular
goals in mind, goals which have necessarily shaped the selection and presentation of those facts. Compelling
environmental writers do not simply list every known fact pertaining to the natural
world, but instead select certain findings and place them within a larger interpretive
framework. Alone, each fact has little meaning, but when woven into a larger
narrative, a message emerges. This process of narrativization is essential if a
message is to be persuasive (Killingsworth and Palmer 2000, 197), and has occurred not only in the rapidly
expanding genre of environmental nonfiction, but in much scientific writing about the environment as well (Harré, Brockmeier,
and Mühlhäusler 1999, 69).¶ What defines narratives as such is their beginning-middle-end
structure, their ability to “describe an action that begins, continues over a well-defined period of time, and finally draws to a
definite close” (Cronon 1992, 1367). Here I will focus on the last of these elements, the ending, because anything we can learn
about how endings function within narratives in general will be applicable to the apocalypse, the most final ending of all. ¶ An
ending is essential in order for a story to be complete, but there is more to it than this. Endings are also key because they
establish a story’s moral, the lesson it is supposed to impart upon the reader. In other words, to know the moral of the story,
auditors must know the consequences of the actions depicted therein, so there can be no moral without an ending. To take a
simple example, when we hear the story of the shepherd boy who falsely claims that a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep in
order to entertain himself at his community’s expense, what makes the lesson clear is that when a wolf does attack his flock, the
disenchanted town members refuse to come to his aid. By clearly illustrating how telling lies can have [End Page 9] unpleasant
consequences for the perpetrator, the ending reveals the moral that lying is wrong. As Cronon explains, it is “[t]he difference
between beginning and end [that] gives us our chance to extract a moral from the rhetorical landscape” (1992, 1370). ¶ Endings
play a similar role in environmental stories. In Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance (1992), for example, he devotes over a third
of the book’s pages to presenting scientific evidence that disaster is imminent.5 As he sums it up, “Modern industrial
civilization…is colliding violently with our planet’s ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the earth is breathtaking, and
the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them” (1992, 269). He builds this
argument so carefully precisely because if the ending does not seem credible, the moral he wants readers to draw from the
If his readers are not convinced that the ending to this story of
story will not be compelling.
ecological misbehavior will be a debacle of colossal proportions, they will not become
convinced that they need to dramatically alter their ecological behavior . Thus the vision of
future catastrophe that Gore presents provides a crucial vantage point from which the present environmental situation can be
understood as the result of a grand moral failure, and Gore’s readers are made aware of their obligations in light of it. Gore
himself appreciates the importance of this recognition, arguing that “whether we realize it or not, we are now engaged in an epic
battle to right the balance of our earth, and the tide of this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become
sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join an all-out effort” (1992, 269, emphasis added). Here, as in so
many other stories, the ending must be in place for the moral to become clear.¶ To say that endings are essential in order for
stories alter behavior, that they can encourage action in
stories to have morals is already to hint that
the real world even as they invoke an imaginary one. This much is clear from Earth in the Balance
(1992): Gore does not just want people to grasp a moral, to perceive some ethic in the abstract—he wants them change their
behavior in the here and now. In constructing a narrative with this goal in mind, he is banking on the ability of powerful stories to
motivate social change, to be, as Cronon puts it, “our chief moral compass in the world” (1992, 1375). ¶ Mark Johnson’s
insightful synthesis of cognitive science and philosophy helps explain further how this process of moral guidance occurs. For
[End Page 10] Johnson, narrative is fundamental to our experience of reality, “the most comprehensive means we have for
constructing temporal syntheses that bind together and unify our past, present, and future into more or less meaningful patterns”
(1993, 174). Narratives are also critical to our ability to reason morally, an activity which
Johnson asserts is fundamentally imaginative. In this view, we use stories to imagine ourselves
in different scenarios, exploring and evaluating the consequences of different
possible actions in order to determine the right one . Moral deliberation is thus¶ …an imaginative
exploration of the possibilities for constructive action within a present situation. We have a problem to solve
here and now (e.g., ‘What am I to do?’…. ‘How should I treat others?’), and we must try out various
possible continuations of our narrative in search of the one that seems best to
resolve the indeterminacy of our present situation . (1993, 180)¶ Put another way, what cognitive
science has revealed is that from an empirical perspective the process of moral deliberation
entails constructing narratives rooted in our unique history and circumstances, rather
than applying universal principles (such as Kant’s categorical imperative) to particular cases. That
we use narratives to reason morally is not a result of conscious choice but of how
human cognition works. That is, insofar as we experience ourselves as temporal beings, a narrative framework is
necessary to organize, explain, and ultimately justify the many individual decisions that over time become a life. Formal
principles may be useful in unambiguous textbook cases, but in real life “we can almost never decide (reflectively) how to act
without considering the ways in which we can continue our narrative construction of our situation” (Johnson 1993, 160).
Empirically speaking, “our moral reasoning is situated within our narrative understanding” (Johnson 1993, 180, italics in
original).¶ The observation that people use narratives to reason morally may help explain the association between
environmental apocalypticism and activism. The
function of the apocalyptic narrative may be that it
helps adherents determine how to act by providing a storyline from which they can
imaginatively sample, enabling them to assess the consequences of their actions . In
order to answer the question, “Should I drive or walk to the store?” for example, they can reason, “If I walk, that will reduce my
access to
carbon footprint, which will help keep the ice caps from melting, saving humans and other species.” It is their
this narrative of impending [End Page 11] disaster that makes such reasoning possible, for it
provides a simple framework within which people can consider and eventually arrive
at some conclusion about their moral obligations .6 More broadly, it can guide entire lives by providing a
narrative frame of reference that imbues the individual’s experiences with meaning. For example, it is the context of looming
anthropogenic apocalypse which suggests that dedicating one’s life to achieving a healthier relationship with the natural world is
a worthwhile endeavor. Absent the apocalypse, choices such as limiting one’s travel to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions, becoming vegetarian, working in the environmental sector (often for less
compensation), or growing one’s own food could seem to be meaningless sacrifices . Within this context, on
the other hand, such choices become essential features of the quest to live a moral life. ¶ The apocalyptic narrative
is but one of many ways to tell the environmental story, yet it is one that seems particularly well-suited to
encouraging pro-environmental behavior . First, the apocalyptic ending discloses certain
everyday decisions as moral decisions. Without the narrative context of impending
disaster, decisions such as whether to drive or walk to the store would be merely
matters of convenience or preference. In the context of potentially disastrous consequences for valued
places, people, and organisms, by contrast, such decisions become matters of right and wrong. Second, putting
information about the environment into narrative form enables apocalyptics to link
complex global environmental processes to their own lives , a perceptual technique Thomashow
describes as “bringing the biosphere home” (2002). Developing this skill is essential because without that felt sense
of connection to their own lived experience, people are much less likely to become
convinced that it is incumbent upon them to act (2002, 2). Finally, the sheer magnitude of the impending
disaster increases the feeling of responsibility to make good on one’s moral intuitions. By locating individuals within a drama of
ultimate concern, the narrative frames their choices as cosmically important, and this feeling of urgency then helps to convert
moral deliberation into action. With this conceptual overview in place, we can now examine more closely what the relationship
between apocalypticism and moral reasoning looks like in practice. [End Page 12]
2AC Generic Threats Real
No threat inflation - even if predictions aren’t perfect, threats are real and
only an analysis that prioritizes high magnitude scenarios can solve
Ravenal ‘09 (Earl, Professor Emeritus at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and the Department of
Government at Georgetown University, “What's Empire Got to Do with It? The Derivation of America's Foreign
Policy,” Critical Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Politics and Society 21.1, 21-75)
Rummaging through the concomitants of “imperialism,” Eland (2004, 65) discovers the thesis of “threat inflation” (in this case,
virtual threat invention): Obviously, much higher spending for the military, homeland security, and foreign aid are required for a
policy of global intervention than for a policy of merely defending the republic. For example, after the cold war, the security
bureaucracies began looking for new enemies to justify keeping defense and intelligence budgets high. Similarly, Eland (ibid., 183),
in a section entitled “Imperial Wars Spike Corporate Welfare,” attributes a large portion of the U.S. defense budget—particularly the
procurement of major weapons systems, such as “Virginia‐class submarines … aircraft carriers … F‐22 fighters … [and] Osprey tilt‐
rotor transport aircraft”—not to the systemically derived requirement for certain kinds of military capabilities, but, rather, to the
imperatives of corporate pork. He opines that such weapons have no strategic or operational justification; that “the American empire,
militarily more dominant than any empire in world history, can fight brushfire wars against terrorists and their ‘rogue’ state sponsors
without those gold‐plated white elephants.” The underlying notion of “the security bureaucracies … looking for new enemies” is a
threadbare concept that has somehow taken hold across the political spectrum, from the radical left
(viz. Michael Klare [1981], who refers to a “threat bank”), to the liberal center (viz. Robert H. Johnson [1997], who dismisses most
alleged “threats” as “improbable dangers”), to libertarians (viz. Ted Galen Carpenter [1992], Vice President for Foreign and Defense
What is missing from most analysts’
Policy of the Cato Institute, who wrote a book entitled A Search for Enemies).
claims of “threat inflation,” however, is a convincing theory of why, say, the American government
significantly (not merely in excusable rhetoric) might magnify and even invent threats (and, more seriously, act on such inflated
Eland (2004, 185) suggests that such behavior might stem from military or
threat estimates). In a few places,
national security bureaucrats’ attempts to enhance their personal status and organizational
budgets, or even from the influence and dominance of “the military‐industrial complex”; viz.: “Maintaining the empire and
retaliating for the blowback from that empire keeps what President Eisenhower called the military‐industrial complex fat and happy.”
Or, in the same section: In the nation’s capital, vested interests, such as the law enforcement bureaucracies … routinely
take advantage of “crises”to satisfy parochial desires. Similarly, many corporations use crises to get pet projects— a.k.a.
pork—funded by the government. And national security crises, because of people’s fears, are especially ripe opportunities to grab
largesse. (Ibid., 182) Thus, “bureaucratic‐politics” theory, which once made several reputations (such as those of Richard Neustadt,
Morton Halperin, and Graham Allison) in defense‐intellectual circles, and spawned an entire sub‐industry within the field of
international relations, 5 is put into the service of dismissing putative security threats as imaginary. So, too, can a surprisingly
cognate theory, “public choice,” 6 which can be considered the right‐wing analog of the “bureaucratic‐politics” model, and is a
Public‐
preferred interpretation of governmental decision‐making among libertarian observers. As Eland (2004, 203) summarizes:
choice theory argues [that] the government itself can develop separate interests from its citizens.
The government reflects the interests of powerful pressure groups and the interests of the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats in
them. Although this problem occurs in both foreign and domestic policy, it may be more severe in foreign policy because citizens
pay less attention to policies that affect them less directly. There is, in this statement of public‐choice theory, a certain ambiguity,
and a certain degree of contradiction: Bureaucrats are supposedly, at the same time, subservient to societal
interest groups and autonomous from society in general. This journal has pioneered the argument that state autonomy is a
likely consequence of the public’s ignorance of most areas of state activity (e.g., Somin 1998; DeCanio 2000a, 2000b, 2006, 2007;
Ravenal 2000a). But state autonomy does not necessarily mean that bureaucrats substitute their own interests for those of what
could be called the “national society” that they ostensibly serve. I have argued (Ravenal 2000a) that, precisely because of the
public‐ignorance and elite‐expertise factors, and especially because the opportunities—at least for bureaucrats (a few notable post‐
government lobbyist cases nonwithstanding)—for lucrative self‐dealing are stringently fewer in the defense and diplomatic areas of
government than they are in some of the contract‐dispensing and more under‐the‐radar‐screen agencies of government, the “public‐
choice” imputation of self‐dealing, rather than working toward the national interest (which, however may not be synonymous with the
interests, perceived or expressed, of citizens!) is less likely to hold. In short, state autonomy is likely to mean, in the derivation of
foreign policy, that “state elites” are using rational judgment, in insulation from self‐promoting interest groups—about what
strategies, forces, and weapons are required for national defense. Ironically, “public choice”—not even a species of economics, but
rather a kind of political interpretation—is not even about “public” choice, since, like the bureaucratic‐politics model, it repudiates the
very notion that bureaucrats make truly “public” choices; rather, they are held, axiomatically, to exhibit “rent‐seeking” behavior,
wherein they abuse their public positions in order to amass private gains, or at least to build personal empires within their ostensibly
official niches. Such sub‐rational models actually explain very little of what they purport to observe. Of course, there is some truth in
them, regarding the “behavior” of some people, at some times, in some circumstances, under some conditions of incentive and
motivation. But the factors that they posit operate mostly as constraints on the otherwise rational optimization of objectives that, if for
no other reason than the playing out of official roles, transcends merely personal or parochial imperatives. My treatment of “role”
differs from that of the bureaucratic‐politics theorists, whose model of the derivation of foreign policy depends heavily, and
acknowledgedly, on a narrow and specific identification of the role‐playing of organizationally situated individuals in a partly
conflictual “pulling and hauling” process that “results in” some policy outcome. Even here, bureaucratic‐politics theorists Graham
Allison and Philip Zelikow (1999, 311) allow that “some players are not able to articulate [sic] the governmental politics game
because their conception of their job does not legitimate such activity.” This is a crucial admission, and one that points—empirically
—to the need for a broader and generic treatment of role.Roles (all theorists state) give rise to “expectations” of
performance. My point is that virtually every governmental role, and especially national‐security
roles, and particularly the roles of the uniformed military, embody expectations of devotion to the
“national interest”; rationality in the derivation of policy at every functional level; and objectivity in the
treatment of parameters, especially external parameters such as “threats” and the power and capabilities of other
nations. Sub‐rational models (such as “public choice”) fail to take into account even a partial dedication to
the “national” interest (or even the possibility that the national interest may be honestly misconceived in more parochial
terms). In contrast, an official’s role connects the individual to the (state‐level) process, and
moderates the (perhaps otherwise) self‐seeking impulses of the individual. Role‐derived behavior
tends to be formalized and codified; relatively transparent and at least peer‐reviewed, so as to be consistent
with expectations; surviving the particular individual and transmitted to successors and ancillaries ;
measured against a standard and thus corrigible; defined in terms of the performed function and therefore
derived from the state function; and uncorrrupt, because personal cheating and even egregious aggrandizement
are conspicuously discouraged. My own direct observation suggests that defense decision‐makers attempt
to “frame” the structure of the problems that they try to solve on the basis of the most accurate
intelligence. They make it their business to know where the threats come from. Thus, threats are
not “socially constructed” (even though, of course, some values are). A major reason for the rationality, and
the objectivity, of the process is that much security planning is done, not in vaguely undefined
circumstances that offer scope for idiosyncratic, subjective behavior, but rather in structured and
reviewed organizational frameworks. Non‐rationalities (which are bad for understanding and prediction) tend
to get filtered out. People are fired for presenting skewed analysis and for making bad
predictions. This is because something important is riding on the causal analysis and the contingent
prediction. For these reasons, “public choice” does not have the “feel” of reality to many critics who have participated in the
structure of defense decision‐making. In that structure, obvious, and even not‐so‐obvious, “rent‐seeking” would not only
be shameful; it would present a severe risk of career termination. And, as mentioned, the defense
bureaucracy is hardly a productive place for truly talented rent‐seekers to operate, compared to
opportunities for personal profit in the commercial world. A bureaucrat’s very self‐placement in these reaches of
government testifies either to a sincere commitment to the national interest or to a lack of sufficient imagination to exploit
opportunities for personal profit.
2AC Perm Cards
2AC Reform Security
Perm do the aff and all non-mutually exclusive parts of the alternative.
Security is not entrenched in politics – analysis can be changed to reflect
multiple perspectives
Loader and Walker ’07 (Ian, Professor of Criminology and Professorial Fellow of All Souls College, and Neil,
University of Edinburgh, School of Law, Civilizing Security, Ch. 4)
Yet critical work in policing and security studies remains, in our view, skewed in its account of these
associations. It concludes too easily from the above that there can be no progressive democratic
politics aimed at civilizing security, that security is so stained by its uncivil association with the (military and police)
state and its monolithic affects and effects, that the only radical strategy left open is to
deconstruct and move beyond it (e.g. Dillon 1996: ch. 1). In so doing, this strand of state scepticism
commits two mistakes, both of which flow from its failure to appreciate or at least sufficiently to acknowledge what we
tried to demonstrate in an earlier section of the chapter; namely, that state policing, however culpable it might be in
exacerbating certain of the tensions involved in applying general order in any particular context,
is not the fixed and fundamental source of these tensions. It forgets, first of all, that while the
affective connections between security, state and nation are deeply entrenched, they take no
necessary or essential substantive form. They can, in other words, be remade and reimagined in
ways that connect policing and security to other more inclusive, cosmopolitan forms of
belonging - to political communities that 'do not necessarily equate difference with threat*
(Dalby 1997: 9). It tends, secondly, to forget that the 'pursuit of security' through general order is not only the
product of forms of technocratic, authoritarian government that impoverishes our sense
of the political (Dillon 1996: 15). Security, in the sense of a broadly responsive and acceptable
conception of order, can also be, and indeed - if we examine the political aspirations which preceded and have
survived the modern state - must also be, conceived of in a prior and abstract sense as a valuable
human good, one that in concrete application is a key ingredient of the good society as well as
being axiomatic to the production of other individual goods (most directly, liberty). It is our contention that
security can be rethought along these lines, and that the state through its ordering and cultural
work continues to possess a central place in the production of security thus conceived; we develop
this argument in part II. We must first, however, consider one further critique of the modern state tradition.
2AC Perm – Ontology
Prioritizing ontology is useless and the aff is not an opportunity cost – the
perm’s combination solves
Deudney ‘13 (Daniel, Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Political Science @ Johns
Hopkins, “Mixed Ontology, Planetary Geopolitics, and Republican Greenpeace,” November 2013, http://www.theory-
talks.org/2013/11/theory-talk-60_9211.html)
In many parts of both European and American IR and related areas, Postmodern and constructivist theories have significantly
contributed to IR theorists by enhancing our appreciation of ideas, language, and identities in politics. As a response to the limits
and blindnesses of certain types of rationalist, structuralist, and functional theories, this renewed interest in the ideational is an
important advance. Unfortunately, both postmodernism and constructivism have been marked by a strong tendency to go too far in
their emphasis of the ideational. Postmodernism
and constructivism have also helped make theorists
much more conscious of the implicit—and often severely limiting—ontological assumptions that
underlay, inform, and bound their investigations. This is also a major contribution to the study of
world politics in all its aspects. Unfortunately, this turn to ontology has also had intellectually
limiting effects by going too far , in the search for a pure or nearly pure social ontology. With
the growth in these two approaches, there has indeed been a decided decline in theorizing
about the material. But elsewhere in the diverse world of theorizing about IR and the global,
theorizing about the material never came anything close to disappearing or being eclipsed. For
anyone thinking about the relationships between politics and nuclear weapons, space, and
the environment , theorizing about the material has remained at the center, and it would be
difficult to even conceive of how theorizing about the material could largely disappear . The
recent ‘re-discovery of the material’ associated with various self-styled ‘new materialists’ is a welcome, if belated, re-discovery for
postmodernists and constructivists. For most of the rest of us, the material had never been largely dropped out. A very visible
example of the ways in which the decline in appropriate attention to the material, an excessive turn to the ideational, and the quest
for a nearly pure social ontology, can lead theorizing astray is the core argument in Alexander Wendt’s main book, Social Theory of
International Politics, one of the widely recognized landmarks of constructivist IR theory. The first part of the book advances a very
carefully wrought and sophisticated argument for a nearly pure ideational social ontology. The material is explicitly displaced into a
residue or rump of unimportance. But then, to the reader’s surprise, the material, in the form of ‘common fate’ produced by nuclear
weapons, and climate change, reappears and is deployed to play a really crucial role in understanding contemporary change in
ontologically
world politics. My solution is to employ a mixed ontology. By this I mean that I think several
incommensurate and very different realities are inescapable parts the human world. These
‘unlikes’ are inescapable parts of any argument, and must somehow be combined . There are
a vast number of ways in which they can be combined, and on close examination, virtually all
arguments in the social sciences are actually employing some version of a mixed ontology,
however implicitly and under-acknowledged . But not all combinations are equally useful in addressing all
questions. In my version of mixed ontology—which I call ‘practical naturalism’—human social agency is understood to be occurring
‘between two natures’: on the one hand the largely fixed nature of humans, and on the other the changing nature composed of the
material world, a shifting amalgam of actual non-human material nature of geography and ecology, along with human artifacts and
infrastructures. Within this frame, I posit as rooted in human biological nature, a set of ‘natural needs,’ most notably for security-
from-violence and habitat services. Then I pose questions of functionality, by which I mean: which combinations of material
practices, political structures, ideas and identities are needed to achieve these ends in different material contexts? Answering this
question requires the formulation of various ‘historical materialist’ propositions, which in turn entails the systematic formulation of
These arguments are not
typologies and variation in both the practices, structures and ideas, and in material contexts.
centered on explaining what has or what will happen. Instead they are practical in the sense that
they are attempting to answer the question of ‘what is to be done’ given the fixed ends and
given changing material contexts. I think this is what advocates of arms control and environmental
sustainability are actually doing when they claim that one set of material practices and their
attendant political structures, identities and ideas must be replaced with another if basic human
needs are to going to continue to be meet in the contemporary planetary material situation
created by the globalization of machine civilization on earth. Since this set of arguments is
framed within a mixed ontology, ideas and identities are a vital part of the research agenda.
Much of the energy of postmodern and many varieties of critical theory have focused on
‘deconstructing’ various identities and ideas. This critical activity has produced and continues to produce many
insights of theorizing about politics. But I think there is an un-tapped potential for theorists who are
interested in ideas and identities, and who want their work to make a positive contribution to
practical problem-solving in the contemporary planetary human situation in what might be
termed a ‘constructive constructivism’. This concerns a large practical theory agenda —and an
urgent one at that, given the rapid increase in planetary problems —revolving around the task of figuring out
which ideas and identities are appropriate for the planetary world, and in figuring out how they can be rapidly disseminated.
2AC Perm – Pragmatism
Perm do both - Our method of opinion forming an advocacy of particular
response to particular problems is a useful template for pragmatically
solving transnational problems, without prescribing a formula for all
decision-making—eschews state-centrism and outweighs co-option risks
Bray ‘09, (Daniel, The University of Melbourne International Politics and Political Theory Lecturer, Ph.D,
“Pragmatic Cosmopolitanism: A Deweyan Approach to Democracy beyond the Nation-State”, Millennium, 37.3)
In keeping with pragmatist tenets, my approach to the problem of practical institutionalisation is a

context-sensitive one that does not impose an a priori ‘direct’ or ‘representative’ template for the
political institutionalisation of democracy, which may require more or less degrees of mediation
and delegation depending on the particular problematic situation. As Saward points out, different democratic
mechanisms may be called for depending on whether they require permanent structures or
temporary measures and on whether they are undertaken by governments or by non-
governmental actors.103 Thus, one may have a normative preference for minimising the degree of
mediation and delegation in any democratic regime, but these features of democratic practice should not be
viewed as inherent bads. Indeed, given the scale and complexity of modern politics, transnational
democratic publics are likely to require significant levels of mediation and delegation if they are to be
effective actors in global politics.
The key response of pragmatic cosmopolitanism here is to see transnational publics as institutions of critical
inquiry that are formed when associated individuals work collectively to address problems
presented by transnational consequences. As Molly Cochran points out, in Deweyan terms these publics exist on a
continuum from ‘weak’ publics that are understood to involve associated activity that is only informally organised (like a
neighbourhood group) or narrowly focused on a single issue (like the control and prevention of AIDS104), to stronger publics that
have political agencies invested with public authority that are capable of issuing binding decisions for a societal group (an
Today, in the
international regime, say, or a more densely articulated public we commonly regard as a political ‘state’).105
absence of adequately responsive global institutions, most transnational associations take
contestation rather than popular control as their fundamental political purpose.106 When they seek to
provide alternative sites for deliberation where dominators are not present they form what Nancy
Fraser calls ‘subaltern counterpublics’ that attempt to indirectly influence formal organisations by mobilising broader public
opinion.107 These oppositional networks and movements can only be conceived as transnational public
institutions, however, when their efforts are directed at shifting authority away from states and their agents
by making their own concerns authoritative in the decisionmaking that takes place where
international public authority exists in global politics – international law, regimes, the United Nations and in
the broader bilateral and multilateral relations between states.108 In the view of pragmatic cosmopolitanism, this
process constitutes the core dynamic of democratic reconstruction in international institutions.
It is this perspective that highlights the key difference between the pragmatist and deliberative approaches to the institutionalisation
of transnational democracy. Instead of seeing publics as constituted by responsible citizens who reason
publicly on the basis of a distinctive form of communication, pragmatists see responsible action as emerging
from publics constituted by persons who recognise a need for social cooperation in resolving
common problematic situations. In the pragmatist view, publics are developing ‘the traits of a state’ when they develop
strong organisational and decision-making capabilities and seek to make their concerns authoritative in global politics.
Pragmatism therefore does not hold to the strict state–civil society separation that fundamentally
shapes the deliberative approach. Beyond nation-states with sharply defined constitutional structures, the desire to maintain
a strict separation between opinion-formation in the public sphere and will-formation in formal
representative institutions seems to neglect the requirement for some kind of connective tissue
between them, or at least assumes that the translation of opinions into decision-making will occur
through an underlying discursive shift that changes the context in which formal decisions are
reached. Deliberative democrats thus privilege informal procedures of truth-seeking (that are never power-
free or completely non-strategic) over political voice in formal institutions. Dryzek is obviously concerned
about the co-option of oppositional civil society – which is certainly an ever-present threat and one to be taken
seriously – but in many global and transnational contexts this threat tends to be overstated and fails to
acknowledge the strategic character of ‘publics’ themselves. As Cochran points out, despite the
blurring of the state–society divide, co-option is unlikely to be ever fixed or complete.109
Additionally, not all weak publics seek permanent or even minimal levels of inclusion in existing formal institutions, preferring to
pragmatic cosmopolitanism argues that in
focus on contestation or developing alternative forums. Ultimately,
many contexts of contemporary global politics the need to realise change through access to
formal decision-making outweighs the risk of co-option. One such context I discussed earlier centres on the
contemporary climate change negotiations, where a wide variety of nongovernmental actors attempt to influence
states in formal institutions by ‘channelling up’ the concerns of excluded publics, while at the same
time monitoring the negotiations and ‘channelling down’ information to broader transnational and domestic
constituencies.110
2AC Perm – Disarm
Perm solves best, it isn’t mutually exclusive, disarmament is the most
effective way to combat militarism in combination with a broader critical
analysis
Thee ‘77 (Thee, M. 1977, Militarism and Militarization in Contemporary International Relations. Bulletin of Peace
Proposals, 8(4), 296–309. https://doi.org/10.1177/096701067700800402, https://journals-sagepub-
com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/096701067700800402)
By far the greatest harm military regimes inflict on Third World countries lies in the undermining
and corruption of democratic development and in violation of basic human rights. The creative
energy of young nations is suppressed at the very start of sovereignty and nationhood. The
experience of the Latin American countries where the military has long since won a strong
foothold should serve as a warning here. For the international community, such a development
is not only a tragedy in human terms but a real stumbling block for global progressive change.
3.4. Combating militarism Considering the size of the problem, we will see that a strategy to combat militarism and militarization must encompass a
wide range of actions, national and international. There is a systemic, social, political, economic, and human rights context to such a strategy. To be
effective, it would have to focus on the human being and human values, and of crucial
importance is the activation of public opinion. Without going into details, we may note that a
general list of steps to undertake and fields to cover would include: a) Conceptual clarification of
the terms and scope of contemporary militarism and militarization. This calls for critical
interdisciplinary research on the organization, behavior, attitudes, role in state and international
impact of the military. Both case studies and research on international linkages are important. A
good mapping of military regimes and the extent of militarization in the international community
would be most helpful. b) In-depth study an analysis of the interrelation between militarism
dynamics and armament dynamics. A better comprehension of these issues is basic for
devising ways and means for a succesful anti-militaristic strategy. In the final instance,
disarmament should be one of the most effective ways to combat militarism. c) In-depth study of
the interrelation between militarism dynamics and problems of development in the Third World.
There is a need to make the interrelation clearer, and to develop intellectual tools for a
fundamental critique of military regimes in developing countries. d) Most of all, together with
studies to broaden our knowledge and understanding of the phenomena of militarism and
militarization, we need a world-wide educational campaign which can shed light on the essence and consequences of militarism, and aiming
actively to engage broad strata of citizens all over the world against the evil of military rule. A coalition of concerned organizations - political, religious,
and professional - is urgently needed to undertake this
2AC Perm – Militarism
Radical rejection fails - the plan’s the most pragmatic check on militarism
Bacevich ‘13 (Andrew, Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University and Ph.D. in
American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, The New American Militarism, p. 205-210)
There is, wrote H. L. Mencken, “always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”1 Mencken’s
To imagine that there exists a simple antidote to the
aphorism applies in spades to the subject of this account.
“military metaphysic” to which the people and government of the United States have fallen prey is to misconstrue the
problem. As the foregoing chapters make plain, the origins of America’s present-day infatuation with military power are anything
but simple. American militarism is not the invention of a cabal nursing fantasies of global empire and manipulating an
unsuspecting people frightened by the events of 9/11. Further, it is counterproductive to think in these terms—
to assign culpability to a particular president or administration and to imagine that throwing the bums out will put
things right. Yet neither does the present-day status of the United States as sole superpower reveal an essential truth, whether
positive or negative, about the American project. Enthusiasts (mostly on the right) who interpret America’s possession of
unrivaled and unprecedented armed might as proof that the United States enjoys the mandate of heaven are deluded. But
so too are those (mostly on the left) who see in the far-flung doings of today’s U.S. military establishment
substantiation of Major General Smedley Butler’s old chestnut that “war is just a racket” and the American soldier “a gangster for
capitalism” sent abroad to do the bidding of Big Business or Big Oil.2 Neither the will of God nor the venality of
Wall Street suffices to explain how the United States managed to become stuck in World War IV. Rather, the new
American militarism is a little like pollution—the perhaps unintended, but foreseeable by-product of prior choices and
decisions made without taking fully into account the full range of costs likely to be incurred. In making the industrial revolution, the
captains of American enterprise did not consciously set out to foul the environment, but as they harnessed the waters, crisscrossed
the nation with rails, and built their mills and refineries, negative consequences ensued. Lakes and rivers became choked with
refuse, the soil contaminated, and the air in American cities filthy. By the time that the industrial age approached its zenith in the
middle of the twentieth century, most Americans had come to take this for granted; a degraded environment seemed the price you
had to pay in exchange for material abundance and by extension for freedom and opportunity. Americans might not like pollution,
Americans
but there seemed to be no choice except to put up with it. To appreciate that this was, in fact, not the case,
needed a different consciousness. This is where the environmental movement, beginning more or less
in the 1960s, made its essential contribution. Environmentalists enabled Americans to see the natural world and their
relationship to that world in a different light. They argued that the obvious deterioration in the environment was unacceptable and not
Alternatives did exist. Different policies and practices could stanch and even
at all inevitable.
reverse the damage . Purists in that movement insisted upon the primacy of environmental needs,
everywhere and in all cases. Theirs was (and is) a principled position deserving to be heard. To act on their
recommendations, however, would likely mean shutting down the economy, an impractical and
politically infeasible course of action. Pragmatists advanced a different argument. They suggested that it
was possible to negotiate a compromise between economic needs and environmental
imperatives. This compromise might oblige Americans to curtail certain bad habits, but it did not
require changing the fundamentals of how they lived their lives. Americans could keep their cars and
continue their love affair with consumption; but at the same time they could also have cleaner air and cleaner water. Implementing
this compromise has produced an outcome that environmental radicals (and on the other side, believers in laissez-faire capitalism)
today find unsatisfactory. In practice, it turns out, once begun negotiations never end. Bargaining is continuous, contentious, and
Settling for half a loaf when
deeply politicized. Participants in the process seldom come away with everything they want.
you covet the whole is inevitably frustrating. But the results are self-evident . Environmental
conditions in the United States today are palpably better than they were a half century ago. Pollution
has not been vanquished, but it has become more manageable. Furthermore, the nation has achieved those
improvements without imposing on citizens undue burdens and without preventing its entrepreneurs from innovating, creating, and
turning a profit. Restoringa semblance of balance and good sense to the way that Americans think about military
power will require a similarly pragmatic approach . Undoing all of the negative effects that result from
having been seduced by war may lie beyond reach, but Americans can at least make them more
manageable and thereby salvage their democracy. In explaining the origins of the new American militarism, this
account has not sought to assign or to impute blame. None of the protagonists in this story sat down after Vietnam and consciously
plotted to propagate perverse attitudes toward military power any more than Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller plotted to
despoil the nineteenth-century American landscape. The clamor after Vietnam to rebuild the American arsenal and to restore
American self-confidence, the celebration of soldierly values, the search for ways to make force more usable: all of these came
about because groups of Americans thought that they glimpsed in the realm of military affairs the solution to vexing problems. The
soldiers who sought to rehabilitate their profession, the intellectuals who feared that America might share the fate of Weimar, the
strategists wrestling with the implications of nuclear weapons, the conservative Christians appalled by the apparent collapse of
traditional morality: none of these acted out of motives that were inherently dishonorable. To the extent that we may find fault with
the results of their efforts, that fault is more appropriately attributable to human fallibility than to malicious intent. And yet in the
end it is not motive that matters but outcome . Several decades after Vietnam, in the aftermath of a century filled to
overflowing with evidence pointing to the limited utility of armed force and the dangers inherent in relying excessively on military
power, the American people have persuaded themselves that their best prospect for safety and salvation lies with the sword. Told
that despite all of their past martial exertions, treasure expended, and lives sacrificed, the world they inhabit is today more
dangerous than ever and that they must redouble those exertions, they dutifully assent. Much as dumping raw sewage into
American lakes and streams was once deemed unremarkable, so today “global power projection”—a phrase whose sharp edges we
have worn down through casual use, but which implies military activism without apparent limit—has become standard practice, a
normal condition, one to which no plausible alternatives seem to exist. All of this Americans have come to take for granted: it’s who
we are and what we do. Such a definition of normalcy cries out for a close and critical reexamination. Surely, the surprises,
disappointments, painful losses, and woeful, even shameful failures of the Iraq War make clear the need to rethink the fundamentals
of U.S. military policy. Yet a meaningful reexamination will require first a change of consciousness, seeing war and America’s
relationship to war in a fundamentally different way. Of course, dissenting views already exist. A rich tradition of American
pacifism abhors the resort to violence as always and in every case wrong. Advocates of disarmament argue that by their very
existence weapons are an incitement to violence. In the former camp, there can never be a justification for war. In the latter camp,
deserve a
the shortest road to peace begins with the beating of swords into ploughshares. These are principled views that
hearing, more so today than ever. By discomfiting the majority, advocates of such views serve the common good. But to
make full-fledged pacifism or comprehensive disarmament the basis for policy in an intrinsically
disordered world would be to open the U nited States to grave danger . The critique proposed here
—offering not a panacea but the prospect of causing present-day militaristic tendencies to abate
—rests on ten fundamental principles.
2AC Impact Framing
2AC AT Endless War
No risk of endless warfare
Gray ‘07 (Colin, Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies and Professor of International Relations and
Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, graduate of the Universities of Manchester and Oxford, Founder and
Senior Associate to the National Institute for Public Policy, formerly with the International Institute for Strategic
Studies and the Hudson Institute, “The Implications of Preemptive and Preventive War Doctrines: A Reconsideration,”
July 2007, http://www.ciaonet.org/wps/ssi10561/ssi10561.pdf)
7. A policy that favors preventive warfare expresses a futile quest for absolute security. It could do so. Most controversial policies
contain within them the possibility of misuse. In
the hands of a paranoid or boundlessly ambitious political leader,
prevention could be a policy for endless warfare. However, the American political system, with
its checks and balances, was designed explicitly for the purpose of constraining the executive
from excessive folly. Both the Vietnam and the contemporary Iraqi experiences reveal clearly
that although the conduct of war is an executive prerogative, in practice that authority is disciplined by public
attitudes. Clausewitz made this point superbly with his designation of the passion, the sentiments, of the people as a vital
component of his trinitarian theory of war. 51 It is true to claim that power can be, and indeed is often, abused, both personally and
nationally. It is possible that a state could acquire a taste for the apparent swift decisiveness of preventive warfare and overuse the
option. One might argue that the easy success achieved against Taliban Afghanistan in 2001, provided fuel for the urge to seek a
similarly rapid success against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In other words, the delights of military success can be habit forming. On
balance, claim seven is not persuasive, though it certainly contains a germ of truth. A country with unmatched wealth and power,
unused to physical insecurity at home—notwithstanding 42 years of nuclear danger, and a high level of gun crime—is vulnerable to
demands for policies that supposedly can restore security. But we ought not to endorse the argument that the
United States should eschew the preventive war option because it could lead to a futile, endless
search for absolute security. One might as well argue that the United States should adopt a defense policy and
develop capabilities shaped strictly for homeland security approached in a narrowly geographical sense. Since a president
might misuse a military instrument that had a global reach, why not deny the White House even
the possibility of such misuse? In other words, constrain policy ends by limiting policy’s military
means. This argument has circulated for many decades and, it must be admitted, it does have a certain elementary logic. It is the
opinion of this enquiry, however, that the claim that a policy which includes the preventive option might
lead to a search for total security is not at all convincing . Of course, folly in high places is always
possible, which is one of the many reasons why popular democracy is the superior form of government . It would be absurd
to permit the fear of a futile and dangerous quest for absolute security to preclude prevention as
a policy option. Despite its absurdity, this rhetorical charge against prevention is a stock favorite
among prevention’s critics. It should be recognized and dismissed for what it is, a debating point
with little pragmatic merit. And strategy, though not always policy, must be nothing if not pragmatic.
2AC AT Endless War
No endless war – the public checks and no budget
Ben Ami ’11 (Shlomo, VP of Toledo International Centre for Peace, July 1, “Arab Spring, Western Fall” Project
Syndicate, http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/benami55/English)
The old vocation of what Rudyard Kipling called the “White Man’s Burden” – the
driving idea behind the West’s quest
for global hegemony from the days of imperial expansion in the nineteenth century to the current, pathetically
inconclusive, Libyan intervention – has clearly run out of steam . Politically and economically
exhausted , and attentive to electorates clamoring for a shift of priorities to urgent domestic
concerns, Europe and America are no longer very capable of imposing their values and
interests through costly military interventions in faraway lands. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was
stating the obvious when he recently lambasted NATO’s European members for their lukewarm response to the alliance’s missions,
and for their poor military capabilities. (Ten weeks into the fighting in Libya, the Europeans were already running out of munitions.)
He warned that if Europe’s attitude to NATO did not change, the Alliance would degenerate into “collective military irrelevance.”
Europe’s reluctance to participate in military endeavors should not come as a revelation. The Old Continent has been immersed
since World War II in a “post-historical” discourse that rules out the use of force as a way to resolve conflicts, let alone to bring about
regime change. And now it is engaged in a fateful struggle to secure the very existence and viability of the European Union. As a
result, Europe is retreating into a narrow regional outlook – and assuming that America will carry the burden of major global issues.
But America itself is
reconsidering its priorities. These are trying economic times for the US, largely
owing to imperial overstretch financed by Chinese credit. Admiral Mike Mullen, the US Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, recently defined America’s colossal fiscal deficits as the biggest threat to its national security. Indeed, at a time of
painful budget cuts – the US is facing a $52 trillion shortfall on public pensions and health care in the coming decades – the US can
no longer be expected to maintain its current level of global military engagement. But the fiscal crisis is not the whole story. The
dire lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will shape future debate about America’s
international role in the twenty-first century. At an address in February to cadets at the US Military Academy at West Point,
Gates said that “any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land
army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” Gates’s recent statements
are by no means those of a lonely isolationist in an otherwise interventionist America. He expressed a widely perceived imperative
for strategic reassessment. In 1947, in a landmark article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which he signed as “X,” George Kennan
defined America’s foreign-policy strategy for the Cold War as one of containment and deterrence. It is difficult to imagine a more
marked departure from Kennan’s concepts than a report recently released by the Pentagon – A National Strategic
Narrative – authored by two active-duty military officers who signed as “Y.” The report can be dismissed as just the musings of
two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff writing in their “personal capacity.” But its real power stems from the degree to which
it reflects America’s mood in an era of declining global influence and diminishing expectations regarding the relevance of military
power to sustaining US global hegemony. Just as Kennan’s “X” article was fully reflective of the mood in America at the time, so the
Narrative expresses the current American Zeitgeist. Thus, the idea that “Y” might turn out to be a latter-day “X” – defining the nature
of America’s international role in the twenty-first century – may not be far-fetched. Conspicuously, there is much in the Narrative that
coincides with Europe’s emphasis on soft power. The authors call for a shift from outdated Cold War strategies of
“power and control” to one of civic engagement and sustainable prosperity. Security, they
maintain, means more than defense. It means engagement whereby America should not seek “to bully,
intimidate, cajole, or persuade others to accept our unique values or to share our national objectives.” America, “Y” argues,
must first put its own house in order if it is to recover credible global influence as a beacon of prosperity and justice.
This would require improving America’s diplomatic capabilities, as well as regaining international competitiveness through greater
The message emanating now from the US is not one of non-
investment in education and infrastructure at home.
interventionism, but a strategy of restraint that assumes that there are limits to American power
and seeks to minimize the risk of entanglement in foreign conflicts. As Gates put it in his West Point
address, the US Army would no longer be “a Victorian nation-building constabulary designed
to chase guerrillas, build schools, or sip tea.”
2AC No Root Cause
No root cause of nukes or war
Horgan ‘14 (John, Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology, “To End War,
Focus on Culture Rather than "Root Causes"”, Scientific American, 8-18, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-
check/to-end-war-focus-on-culture-rather-than-root-causes/)
When I started researching war, I also assumed that to get rid of war, we have to get rid of its root causes.
The trouble is, scholars have identified countless causes of war. One pseudo-explanation (which
I'm glad Kloor does not mention, and which I rebut early on in my book and in posts such as this) is that war stems from a
compulsion bred into our ancestors by natural selection. Biology underpins war, as it underpins all human behaviors. The crucial
question is, why does war break out in certain places and times and not others? The most popular non-biological
explanations of war are what I call the Malthusian and Marxist hypotheses. The first posits that war
stems from our tendency to over-reproduce and hence fight over land and other resources. The
second holds that war stems from inequality, the tendency of societies (especially capitalist
ones) to divide into haves and have-nots. Scholars have also blamed wars on religion, racism
and nationalism, which Kloor mentions above, as well as such fundamental social traits as hierarchy,
sexism and injustice. If you cherry pick, you always find evidence to support your favorite
theory. But as scholars such as Lewis Fry Richardson (whom my friend David Berreby recently profiled) have shown,
neither the Malthusian and Marxist theories nor any of the other explanations above can account for the vast
diversity of wars. Moreover, some factors that provoke conflict, such as religion, can also inhibit it.
Religion has inspired some of our greatest antiwar leaders, notably Gandhi and Martin Luther King. I have found only one
theory of war that fits the facts. The theory holds that war is a self-perpetuating, contagious meme,
which can propagate independently of other social and environmental factors. As anthropologist
Margaret Mead put it in a famous 1940 essay, "Warfare Is Only an Invention—Not a Biological Necessity." In other words, the major
cause of war is war itself, which has a terrible tendency to spread even to societies that would prefer to remain peaceful. I make this
point in my book and in a 2010 blog post, "Margaret Mead’s war theory kicks butt of neo-Darwinian and Malthusian models." Here is
an edited excerpt: In his 1997 book War Before Civilization, anthropologist Lawrence Keeley notes that war among North American
Indians often stemmed from the aggression of just a few extremely warlike tribes, "rotten apples that spoiled their regional barrels."
He added, "Less aggressive societies, stimulated by more warlike groups in their vicinity, become more bellicose themselves."
Societies in a violent region, the political scientist Azar Gat emphasizes in his 2006 book War in Human Civilization, have a strong
incentive to carry out preemptive attacks. Societies may "attack the other side in order to eliminate or severely weaken them as a
potential enemy. Indeed, this option only makes the other side more insecure, rendering the security dilemma more acute. War can
thus become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The fear of war breeds war." Many
people are pessimistic about ending
war because they assume it will require radical social engineering. World peace will require
eliminating poverty, inequality, sexism, racism or [fill in the blank]. We will need to eradicate religion, or
all embrace the same religion. We will need to get rid of all nation states and become anarchists, or form a single global
government. My analysis of war suggests that if we want to end war, we don't need to create a
society radically different from our own, let alone a utopia. If we want to end war, we should
focus on ending war and the culture of war rather than on supposed causal factors. If we can do
that, we will take a major step toward solving many of our other social problems, as I argued in my
previous post. And that brings me to Keith Kloor's final challenge to me. He devotes much of his column to a discussion of how
extremists on both sides of the conflict between Israel and Palestine have "hijacked the peace process. Horrific spasmodic cycles of
Kloor
violence and death is the result." He asks me how we can "rid the world of extremist groups that sow the seeds of war."
has his causation backwards. Just as war promotes poverty, tyranny, inequality and resource
depletion at least as much as vice versa, so war promotes fanaticism. Once militarism seizes hold of a society, it
can transform vast populations into virtual sociopaths. It turns decent, ethical, reasonable people into intolerant fanatics capable of
the most heinous acts. Breaking
out of what Kloor calls "spasmodic cycles of violence and death" can be
extraordinarily difficult,
but history offers many examples of societies that have done just that.
Germany and France were bitter, bloody rivals for centuries. But it is now inconceivable that
Germany and France—or any members of the European Union--would go to war against each other. One of my
favorite examples of a nation that has renounced militarism is Costa Rica. Like many of its neighbors in
Central American, Costa was once wracked by terrible violence. But after a bloody civil war in the 1940s, Costa
Rica disbanded its army, freeing up more funds for education, health care, transportation and tourism. It is often ranked as
one of the most peaceful, healthy, "happy" nations in the world.
2AC No Root Cause
Root cause logic is reductive—it subverts change
Morson ‘07 (Gary, Professor of Slavic Studies, Russian Literature and History at Northwestern, “Anna
Karenina In Our Time: Seeing More Wisely,” P. 152-4)
If Levin resembled so may intellectuals in his time and ours, he might seek “root cause” (as we would call it today) of
all these failures. Much as the generals an historians satirized in War and Peace mistakenly seek the cause of historical events in a
single decision, an much as revolutionaries often reduce the complexities of social ills to a single
conspiracy or institution, so intellectuals often view complexity as a delusion to be explained
away by a few simple underlying laws. It is just this habit of thought that feeds utopianism,
because if the diversity of evil an misery had a single cause, then one could eliminate it by
changing only one thing What could be easier? Abolish private property, alter the way children are
educated, pass laws to regulate morals according to a given code, and evil will disappear or, at least, radically diminish.
Behold, I make all new things But Levin learns that there is no single cause for what has gone wrong. Looking back on the
twentieth century, we may wonder whether the root cause of the worst human misery is the belief
that there is a root cause of human misery. In fact, many things happen contingently, just “for some reason.” ¶
Friction¶ When l.evin attends the elections, he tries to handle some business for his sister, but discovers that somehow it cannot be
done. In Dostoevsky, the reason would be "administrative ecstasy," the sheer delight bureaucrats take in making petitioners cringe,
plead, or wait. But nothing of the sort happens here, and the problem is not one of intent at all. No one has any interest in thwarting
Levin, so he cannot understand what goes wrong.¶ When conspiracy theorists find they cannot accomplish something as easily as
expected, they typically ask cut bono? (who benefits?) ro discover the obstacle. Some person or group must have caused the
failure. Defeat means sabotage. This way of thinking presumes that behind every action there must be an intent, ¶ whether
conscious or unconscious. Such a view rules out the possibility that mere contingency or friction accounts for the difficulty. ¶ flic
military theorist Carl von Clauscwitz deemed friction, in this special metaphorical sense, an essential concept in understanding
armies. Without using this word, Tolstoy regarded the same phenomenon as pertaining not just to war but to everything social. "If
one has never personally experienced war," Clauscwitz explains, ¶ one cannot understand in what difficulties constantly mentioned
really consist. . . . Everything looks simple; the knowledge required docs not look remarkable, the strategic options are so obvious
that by comparison the simplest problem of higher mathematics has an impressive scientific dignity. Once war has actually been
seen the difficulties become clear; but it is extremely difficult to describe the unseen, all-pervading element that brings about this
change of perspective. Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. 'Die difficulties accumulate and end by
producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war. (Clausewitz, 119) ¶ The unseen, all-pervading
element: For Tolstoy, similar difficulties arise when dealing with bureaucracy, introducing changes in agriculture, and implementing
reforms. A Tolstoyan perspective is easily imagined today. Social problems look so simple: people in underdeveloped countries are
poor, so give their governments foreign aid; workers arc unemployed, so hire them to perform needed government services; schools
do not educate, so raise teachers' salaries; the state regulatory commission keeps energy prices too high, so partially privatize the
system: answers seem so obvious, but in practice reforms rarely have the intended effect. They produce unintended consequences,
which themselves have consequences; and, as Isaiah Berlin liked to point our, no one can foresee the consequences of
consequences of consequences. Experience may teach one to expect certain kinds of difficulties, but some can never be
anticipated, lhcrc is always friction: "Countless minor incidents —the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the
general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal" (Clauscwitz, 119). ¶ No one is deliberately
impeding Levin's efforts for his sister. By the same token, no one is trying to thwart his agricultural reforms. Sabotage is out of the
question. "All this happened not because anyone felt ill will toward Levin or his farm; on the contrary, he knew that they [rhe
peasants] liked him [and] thought him a simple gentleman (their highest praise)" (340). ¶ Friction defeats the reforms. But where
does this friction come from and how might one best deal with it?¶ TTic Elemental Force¶ 'Ihe bailiff and peasants recognize in
advance when a plan is bound to fail, and at lasr l.evin, instead of growing angry, pays artention to what they say: ¶ The bailiff
listened attentively, and obviously made an effort to approve of his employer's projects. But still he had that look Levin knew so well
that always irritated him, a look of hopelessness and despondency. That look said: " Ihat's all very well, but as God wills." Nothing
mortified Levin so much as that tone. But it was common to all the bailiffs he had ever had. They had all taken up that attitude
toward his plans, and so now he was not angered by it but mortified, and felr all the more roused ro struggle against this, as it
seemed, elemental force continually ranged against him, for which he could find no other expression than "as God wills." (165) ¶ Ihe
elementalforce: this concept is central to both Tolstoy's great novels. Tolstoy uses a few similar terms for it. In War and Peace, he
refers to an elemental force shaping individual lives (W&P, 648) and to "the elemental life of the swarm" constituting the cumulative
effect of countless people's small actions governed by no overarching law. In Anna Karentna, he calls the elemental force a "brutal
force" when its outcome is cruel. Ihe rough equivalent of friction for Clause-witz, the elemental force applies more widely. ¶
Clauscwitz's explanation stops at friction, but Tolstoy takes the elemental force as a starting point for understanding why some plans
arc more likely to fail than others.¶ In
order to grasp the course of events more easily, we tend to reduce the
countless infinitesimal forces making up the elemental force to a single cause. After all, it is impossible to
enumerate innumerable actions. And so historians and social scientists naturally look for some super-cause that
sums up all those small actions. They may presume laws or postulate narrative neatness. Tolstoy relentlessly
exposed the logical fallacies in both forms of simplification, which, at some point, either assume what is to
be proven or proceed as if it were already proven. ¶ Historians, social theorists, and biographers
favor generalizations or symmetries permitting a clear analysis or simple story. They find what they
seek, their success demonstrates not that complexity has been adequately explained but that when a discipline
demands a certain sort of explanation it is bound to be “discovered.” In disciplines
pretending to be social sciences, it is repeatedly discovered that things are
2AC Predictions Inevitable
Policymakers will inevitably make predictions – failure to use explicit risk
calculation causes poor decision-making
Fitzsimmons ‘07 (Michael, Winter, Defence Analyst, “The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning”
Survival)
In defence of prediction Uncertainty is not a new phenomenon for strategists. Clausewitz knew that ‘many intelligence reports in
war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain’. In coping with uncertainty, he believed that ‘what one can
reasonably ask of an officer is that he should possess a standard of judgment, which he can gain only from knowledge of men and
affairs and from common sense. He should be guided by the laws of probability.’34 Granted, one can certainly allow for
epistemological debates about the best ways of gaining ‘a standard of judgment’ from ‘knowledge of men and affairs and from
common sense’. Scientific inquiry into the ‘laws of probability’ for any given strategic question may not always be possible or
appropriate. Certainly, analysis cannot and should not be presumed to trump the intuition of decision-makers. Nevertheless,
the burden of proof in any debates about planning should belong
Clausewitz’s implication seems to be that
to the decision-maker who rejects formal analysis, standards of evidence and probabilistic
reasoning. Ultimately, though, the value of prediction in strategic planning does not rest primarily in
getting the correct answer, or even in the more feasible objective of bounding the range of correct answers. Rather,
prediction requires decision- makers to expose, not only to others but to themselves, the beliefs
they hold regarding why a given event is likely or unlikely and why it would be important or
unimportant. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May highlight this useful property of probabilistic reasoning in their renowned study
of the use of history in decision-making, Thinking in Time. In discussing the importance of probing presumptions, they contend:
The need is for tests prompting questions, for sharp, straightforward mechanisms the decision makers and their aides might readily
recall and use to dig into their own and each others’ presumptions. And they need tests that get at basics somewhat by indirection,
not by frontal inquiry: not ‘what is your inferred causation, General?’ Above all, not, ‘what are your values, Mr. Secretary?’ ... If
someone says ‘a fair chance’ ... ask, ‘if you were a betting man or woman, what odds would you put on that?’ If others are present,
ask the same of each, and of yourself, too. Then probe the differences: why? This is tantamount to seeking and then arguing
assumptions underlying different numbers placed on a subjective probability assessment. We know of no better way to force
clarification of meanings while exposing hidden differences ... Once differing odds have been quoted, the question ‘why?’ can
follow any number of tracks. Argument may pit common sense against common sense or analogy against analogy. What is
important is that the expert’s basis for linking ‘if’ with ‘then’ gets exposed to the hearing of other experts before the lay official has
to say yes or no.’35 There are at least three critical and related benefits of prediction in strategic planning. The first reflects
Neustadt and May’s point – prediction enforces a certain level of discipline in making explicit the
assumptions, key variables and implied causal relationships that constitute decision-makers’
beliefs and that might otherwise remain implicit. Imagine, for example, if Shinseki and Wolfowitz
had been made to assign probabilities to their opposing expectations regarding post-war Iraq.
Not only would they have had to work harder to justify their views, they might have seen more
clearly the substantial chance that they were wrong and had to make greater efforts in their
planning to prepare for that contingency. Secondly, the very process of making the relevant
factors of a decision explicit provides a firm, or at least transparent, basis for making choices. Alternative
courses of action can be compared and assessed in like terms. Third, the transparency and discipline of the
process of arriving at the initial strategy should heighten the decision-maker’s sensitivity toward
changes in the environment that would suggest the need for adjustments to that strategy. In this
way, prediction enhances rather than under-mines strategic flexibility. This defence of prediction does not
imply that great stakes should be gambled on narrow, singular predictions of the future. On the contrary, the central problem of
uncertainty in planning remains that any given prediction may simply be wrong. Preparations for those eventualities must be
made. Indeed, in many cases, relatively unlikely outcomes could be enormously consequential, and therefore merit extensive
preparation and investment. In order to navigate this complexity, strategists must return to the distinction between uncertainty and
risk. Whilethe complexity of the international security environment may make it somewhat
resistant to the type of probabilistic thinking associated with risk, a risk-oriented approach
seems to be the only viable model for national-security strategic planning. The alternative
approach, which categorically denies prediction, precludes strategy. As Betts argues, Any assumption that some
knowledge, whether intuitive or explicitly formalized, provides guidance about what should be done is a presumption that there is
reason to believe the choice will produce a satisfactory outcome – that is, it is a prediction, however rough it may be. If there is no
hope of discerning and manipulating causes to produce intended effects, analysts as well as politicians and generals should all quit
and go fishing.36 Unless they are willing to quit and go fishing, then, strategists must sharpen their tools of risk assessment. Risk
assessment comes in many varieties, but identification of two key parameters is common to all of them: the consequences of a
harmful event or condition; and the likelihood of that harmful event or condition occurring. With no perspective on likelihood, a
strategist can have no firm perspective on risk. With no firm perspective on risk, strategists cannot purposefully discriminate among
alternative choices. Without purposeful choice, there is no strategy. * * * One of the most widely read books in recent years on the
complicated relationship between strategy and uncertainty is Peter Schwartz’s work on scenario-based planning, The Art of the
Long View. Schwartz warns against the hazards faced by leaders who have deterministic habits of mind, or who deny the difficult
implications of uncertainty for strategic planning. To overcome such tendencies, he advocates the use of alternative future
scenarios for the purposes of examining alternative strategies. His view of scenarios is that their goal is not to predict the future,
but to sensitise leaders to the highly contingent nature of their decision-making.37 This philosophy has taken root in the strategic-
planning processes in the Pentagon and other parts of the US government, and properly so. Examination of alternative futures and
the potential effects of surprise on current plans is essential. Appreciation of uncertainty also has a number of organisational impli-
cations, many of which the national-security establishment is trying to take to heart, such as encouraging multidisciplinary study and
training, enhancing information sharing, rewarding innovation, and placing a premium on speed and versatility. The arguments
advanced here seek to take nothing away from these imperatives of planning and operating in an uncertain environment. But
appreciation of uncertainty carries hazards of its own. Questioning assumptions is critical, but assumptions
must be made in the end. Clausewitz’s ‘standard of judgment’ for discriminating among alternatives must be applied.
Creative, unbounded speculation must resolve to choice or else there will be no strategy. Recent history suggests that
unchecked scepticism regarding the validity of prediction can marginalise analysis, trade significant
cost for ambiguous benefit, empower parochial interests in decision-making, and undermine flexibility.
Accordingly, having fully recognised the need to broaden their strategic-planning aperture, national-security policymakers would do
well now to reinvigorate their efforts in the messy but indispensable business of predicting the future.
2AC Reps Not First
Reps alone can’t explain action – need a combined approach
Tuathail ‘96 (Gearoid, Department of Georgraphy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), p.
664, science direct)
While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse
and concerns of foreign-policy decision- makers are quite different, so different that they
constitute a distinctive problem- solving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that
academics assume that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of
foreign policy and the exercise of power than they really are. This is not, however, to minimize the obvious
importance of academia as a general institutional structure among many that sustain certain epistemic communities in particular
states. In general, I do not disagree with Dalby’s fourth point about politics and discourse except to note that his
statement-‘Precisely because reality could be represented in particular ways political decisions could
be taken, troops and material moved and war fought’-evades the important question of agency that I noted in my
review essay. The assumption that it is representations that make action possible is inadequate by
itself. Political, military and economic structures, institutions, discursive networks and
leadership are all crucial in explaining social action and should be theorized together with
representational practices. Both here and earlier, Dalby’s reasoning inclines towards a form of idealism. In response to
Dalby’s fifth point (with its three subpoints), it is worth noting, first, that his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration.
He analyzes certain CPD discourses, root the geographical reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor its public-policy
reasoning on national security. Dalby’s book is narrowly textual; the general contextuality of the Reagan administration is not dealt
with. Second, let me simply note that I find that the distinction between critical theorists and post- structuralists is a little too rigidly
and heroically drawn by Dalby and others. Third, Dalby’s interpretation of the reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as
heavily influenced by dissident peace researchers in Europe is highly idealist, an interpretation that ignores the structural and
ideological crises facing the Soviet elite at that time. Gorbachev’s reforms and his new security discourse were also strongly self-
interested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist Party and a discredited regime of power from disintegration. The
issues raised by Simon Dalby in his comment are important ones for all those interested in the practice of critical geopolitics. While I
there is a
agree with Dalby that questions of discourse are extremely important ones for political geographers to engage,
danger of fetishizing this concern with discourse so that we neglect the institutional and the
sociological, the materialist and the cultural, the political and the geographical contexts within
which particular discursive strategies become significant. Critical geopolitics, in other words, should not be a
prisoner of the sweeping ahistorical cant that sometimes accompanies ‘poststructuralism nor convenient reading strategies like the
identity politics narrative; it needs to always be open to the patterned mess that is human history.
2AC Reps Not First
Reps don’t shape security policy
Balzacq 5 (Thierry, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Namur University, “The Three
Faces of Securitization: Political Agency, Audience and Context” European Journal of International Relations,
London: Jun 2005, Volume 11, Issue 2)
However, despite important insights, this position remains highly disputable. The reason behind this qualification is not hard to
understand. With great trepidation my contention is that one of the main distinctions we need to take into account while examining
securitization is that between 'institutional' and 'brute' threats. In its attempts to follow a more radical approach to security problems
wherein threats are institutional, that is, mere products of communicative relations between agents, the CS has neglected the
importance of 'external or brute threats', that is, threats that do
not depend on language mediation to be what
they are - hazards for human life. In methodological terms, however, any framework over-emphasizing either institutional or brute
threat risks losing sight of important aspects of a multifaceted phenomenon. Indeed, securitization, as suggested earlier, is
successful when the securitizing agent and the audience reach a common structured perception of an ominous development. In this
how problems are 'out there' is
scheme, there is no security problem except through the language game. Therefore,
exclusively contingent upon how we linguistically depict them. This is not always true. For one,
language does not construct reality; at best, it shapes our perception of it. Moreover, it is not
theoretically useful nor is it empirically credible to hold that what we say about a problem would
determine its essence. For instance, what I say about a typhoon would not change its essence. The
consequence of this position, which would require a deeper articulation, is that some security problems are the attribute of the
development itself. In short, threats are not only institutional; some of them can actually wreck entire political
communities regardless of the use of language. Analyzing security problems then becomes a matter of
understanding how external contexts, including external objective developments, affect securitization. Thus, far
from being a departure from constructivist approaches to security, external developments are central to it.
2AC AT Structural Violence
War turns structural violence
Goldstein ‘01 (Joshua, Prof PoliSci @ American University, War and Gender , P. 412)
Many peace scholars and
First, peace activists face a dilemma in thinking about causes of war and working for peace.
activists support the approach, "if you want peace, work for justice". Then if one believes that sexism
contributes to war, one can work for gender justice specifically (perhaps among others) in order to pursue peace. This approach
rests on the assumption that injustices
brings strategic allies to the peace movement (women, labor, minorities), but
cause war. The evidence in this book suggests that causality runs at least as strongly the other
way . War is not a product of capitalism, imperialism, gender, innate aggression, or any other
single cause, although all of these influences wars' outbreaks and outcomes. Rather, war has in
part fueled and sustained these and other injustices. So, "if you want peace, work for peace." Indeed, if you
want justice (gener and others), work for peace . Causality does not run just upward through the levels of analysis
from types of individuals, societies, and governments up to war. It runs downward too. Enloe suggests that changes in
attitudes toward war and the military may be the most important way to "reverse women's
oppression " The dilemma is that peace work focused on justice brings to the peace movement energy, allies and moral
grounding, yet, in light of this book's evidence, the emphasis on injustice as the main cause of war seems to be empirically
inadequate.
2AC Util Good
Action without regard for consequences is a hollow gesture that
guarantees violence
Condit ‘15 (Celeste, PhD, Distinguished Research Professor of Communication Studies at the University of
Georgia, “Multi-Layered Trajectories for Academic Contributions to Social Change,” Quarterly Journal of Speech,
101.1)
Thus, when Žižek and others urge us to “Act” with violence to destroy the current Reality, without a
vision of an alternative, on the grounds that the links between actions and consequences are
never certain, we can call his [the] appeal both a failure of imagination and a failure of reality. As for
reality, we have dozens of revolutions as models, and the historical record indicates quite clearly
that they generally lead not to harmonious cooperation (what I call “AnarchoNiceness” to gently mock the
romanticism of Hardt and Negri) but instead to the production of totalitarian states and/or violent
factional strife. A materialist constructivist epistemology accounts for this by predicting that it is not possible for symbol-
using animals to exist in a symbolic void. All symbolic movement has a trajectory, and if you have not
imagined a potentially realizable alternative for that trajectory to take, then what people will
leap into is biological predispositions—the first iteration of which is the rule of the strongest
primate. Indeed, this is what experience with revolutions has shown to be the most probable
outcome of a revolution that is merely against an Evil . The failure of imagination in such rhetorics
thereby reveals itself to be critical, so it is worth pondering sources of that failure. The rhetoric of “the kill” in social theory in
the past half century has repeatedly reduced to the leap into a void because the symbolized alternative that the context of the
twentieth century otherwise predispositionally offers is to the binary opposite of capitalism, i.e., communism. That rhetorical option,
The hard
however, has been foreclosed by the historical discrediting of the readily imagined forms of communism (e.g., Žižek9).
work to invent better alternatives is not as dramatically enticing as the story of the kill: such
labor is piecemeal , intellectually difficult , requires multi-disciplinary understandings, and
perhaps requires more creativity than the typical academic theorist can muster. In the
absence of a viable alternative, the appeals to Radical Revolution seem to have been sustained by
the emotional zing of the kill, in many cases amped up by the appeal of autonomy and manliness (Žižek uses the former
term and deploys the ethos of the latter). But if one does not provide a viable vision that offers a
reasonable chance of leaving most people better off than they are now, then Fox News has a
better offering (you'll be free and you'll get rich!). A revolution posited as a void cannot succeed as a
horizon of history, other than as constant local scale violent actions, perhaps connected by shifting
networks we call “terrorists.” This analysis of the geo-political situation, of the onto-epistemological character of language, and of the
the focal project for progressive Left
limitations of the dominant horizon of social change indicates that
Academics should now include the hard labor to produce alternative visions that appear
materially feasible.
2AC Offense
2AC Alt Fails
Case disproves the critique – the alts normative ethical vision for IR is
unattainable and gets coopted. Managing insecurity through the plan is
better than the alt – AND only evaluate link args if they win alt solvency
Chandler ’13 (David, IR Prof @ University of Westminster, “No emancipatory alternative, no critical security
studies,” Critical Studies on Security, 2013 Vol. 1, No. 1, 46–63)
We would argue that the removal of the prefix ‘critical’ would also be useful to distinguish security study based on critique of the
world as it exists from normative theorising based on the world as we would like it to be. As long as we keep the ‘critical’
nomenclature, we are affirming that government and international policy-making can be understood and critiqued against the goal of
emancipating the non-Western Other. Judging policy-making and policy outcomes, on the basis of this imputed
goal, may provide ‘critical’ theorists with endless possibilities to demonstrate their normative
standpoints but it does little to develop academic and political understandings of the world we
live in. In fact, no greater straw [person] man could have been imagined, than the ability to become
‘critical’ on the basis of debates around the claim that the West was now capable of undertaking
emancipatory policy missions. Today, as we witness a narrowing of transformative aspirations on
behalf of Western policy elites, in a reaction against the ‘hubris’ of the claims of the 1990s (Mayall
and Soares de Oliveira 2012) and a slimmed down approach to sustainable, ‘hybrid’ peacebuilding, CSS
has again renewed its relationship with the policy sphere. Some academics and policy-makers
now have a united front that rather than placing emancipation at the heart of policy-making it
should be ‘local knowledge’ and ‘local demands’. The double irony of the birth and death of CSS is not
only that CSS has come full circle – from its liberal teleological universalist and emancipatory
claims, in the 1990s, to its discourses of limits and flatter ontologies, highlighting differences and pluralities in the
2010s – but that this ‘critical’ approach to security has also mirrored and mimicked the policy discourses
of leading Western powers. As policy-makers now look for excuses to explain the failures of the promise of liberal
interventionism, critical security theorists are on hand to salve Western consciences with analyses of
non-linearity, complexity and human and non-human assemblages. It appears that the world cannot be
transformed after all. We cannot end conflict or insecurity, merely attempt to manage them. Once
critique becomes anti-critique (Noys 2011) and emancipatory alternatives are seen to be merely expressions of
liberal hubris, the appendage of ‘critical’ for arguments that discount the possibility of transforming
the world and stake no claims which are unamenable to power or distinct from dominant
philosophical understandings is highly problematic. Let us study security, its discourses and its
practices, by all means but please let us not pretend that study is somehow the same as
critique.
2AC Deterrence Good
Security is key to deterrence – solves extinction
Quackenbush 10 (Stephen L, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Missouri,
January 2010, “International Interactions General Deterrence and International Conflict: Testing Perfect Deterrence
Theory,” International Interactions, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 60-85)
Case selection has been the biggest obstacle to the empirical analysis of general deterrence
(Huth 1999). The only previous quantitative study focusing on direct general deterrence is by Huth and Russett (1993:63, emphasis
added), who argue that “the population of enduring rivalries in the international system includes all dyadic relations in which a
dispute created the possibility of one or both parties resorting to overt military force to achieve a gain or redress a grievance.”
According to this line of reasoning, then, enduring rivalries are the proper cases for the study of general
deterrence. Similarly, Diehl and Goertz focus attention on rivalries, whether or not they become enduring, and argue that “the
rivalry approach provides a solution” (Diehl and Goertz 2000:91) to problems with deterrence case selection. According to Diehl and
a dyad is in a rivalry if they engage in a militarized interstate dispute. Thus, selecting all
Goertz (2000),
However,
rivalries as cases of general deterrence would capture (by definition) all failures of general deterrence.4
deterrence in dyads that have not fought would be ignored , which is particularly
problematic because those are the dyads where deterrence has always worked .
Furthermore, identification of the length of a rivalry, and thus the span of general deterrence, requires the assumption that the rivalry
begins either with the first dispute (and thus deterrence failed when it was attempted for the first time), or at some arbitrary length of
time before the first dispute and after the last.5 Therefore, the
rivalry approach is limited as a path to general
deterrence case selection. However, one can safely assume that every state wishes to deter
attacks against itself—this is the basic rationale for the maintenance of armed forces (Morgan 1983). This assumption is
equivalent to the alliance portfolio literature’s assumption that every state has a defense pact with itself (Bueno de Mesquita 1975;
Signorino and Ritter 1999).6 Hence, the difficult part of general deterrence case selection is not
determining who makes deterrent threats (everyone does), but rather what states the threats
are directed against. General deterrent threats are directed against any state that might
consider an attack; these are states that have the opportunity for conflict. Thus, the key to
selecting cases of general deterrence is identifying opportunity for conflict.7 To identify cases
where opportunity exists, I use the recently developed concept of politically active dyads (Quackenbush 2006a). A
dyad is politically active “if at least one of the following characteristics applies: the members of the dyad
are contiguous, either directly or through a colony, one of the dyad members is a global power, one of the dyad
members is a regional power in the region of the other, one of the dyad members is allied to a state that is
contiguous to the other, one of the dyad members is allied to a global power that is in a dispute with the
other, or one of the dyad members is allied to a regional power (in the region of the other) that is in a dispute
with the other” (Quackenbush 2006a:43). Quackenbush (2006a) finds that politically active dyads are able to
identify opportunity as a necessary condition for international conflict, while previous
measures of opportunity such as politically relevant dyads and regional dyads are unable to do
so. Thus, we can have confidence that all politically active dyads could fight if they had the
willingness to do so. The goal of deterrence is to dissuade other states from attacking the
deterring state. In other words, states seek to ensure that other states—those with the opportunity to
attack—do not gain the willingness to attack, and they do this through deterrence. While other empirically
verified causes of war certainly impact deterrence outcomes, opportunity is the key to general deterrence case selection. Some
readers might be concerned that there is no attempt to determine whether the challenger actually
intends to attack, and thus, whether the lack of an attack can meaningfully be considered general deterrence success. This
issue does not actually pose a problem for the analysis here. The predictions being tested, from Table 1,
are about particular game outcomes, not a dichotomous measure of deterrence “success”
and “failure.” Furthermore, these predictions explicitly cover the case where the challenger has absolutely no interest in
attacking. While the three non-status quo outcomes are essentially different categories of general deterrence failure, the status quo
outcome is not necessarily the result of successful deterrence. For example, if Challenger prefers Status Quo to Defender
Concedes, the only rational outcome is Status Quo. Although Challenger’s decision to not challenge the status quo in this case is
not really “successful deterrence,” it is predicted by perfect deterrence theory. For the cases that are selected (because
they are politically active), I employ a directed-dyad-year unit of analysis. Within a directed dyad, the direction of
interaction is important; for example, United States→Japan is one directed dyad and Japan→United States is another. The
Unilateral Deterrence Game theoretically differentiates between the roles played by each state in a dyad, so employing directed-
dyads enables empirical differentiation between the states in a dyad as well. Furthermore, since each state in a politically active
dyad has the opportunity for conflict with the other, each state has an opportunity to challenge the status quo. Therefore, each state
is considered to be a potential challenger. For example, in the United States→Japan directed dyad, the United States is Challenger
and Japan is Defender, while in the Japan→United States directed dyad, Japan is Challenger and the United States is Defender.
Because most international relations data are based on annual observations, the year is the time period used for the cross-sectional
time series data analysis conducted here. Therefore, each politically active directed-dyad-year constitutes an
observation. Since general deterrence deals with the outbreak, rather than the continuation, of
international conflict, I eliminate dyad-years marked by a conflict continuing from the previous
year as well as ‘joiner’ dyads. Furthermore, I drop the directed dyad B→A in years with a continuing conflict in the directed dyad
A→B.8 This results in a total of 384,865 [three hundred eighty-four thousand]
politically active directed-dyad-years for the time period 1816–2000.9
2AC Heg Good
Unipolarity is sustainable and creates a structural disincentive for great
power war and escalation – power vacuums causes cascade prolif and
extinction
Brands ‘15 (Hal, On the faculty at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University The Elliott School of
International Affairs The Washington Quarterly Summer 2015 38:2 pp. 7–28)
both U.S. influence and international stability are thoroughly interwoven

The fundamental reason is that
with a robust U.S. forward presence. Regarding influence, the protection that Washington has
afforded its allies has equally afforded the United States great sway over those allies’ policies.43
During the Cold War and after, for instance, the United States has used the influence provided by its
security posture to veto allies’ pursuit of nuclear weapons, to obtain more advantageous
terms in financial and trade agreements, and even to affect the composition of allied nations’ governments.44 More broadly,
it has used its alliances as vehicles for shaping political, security, and economic agendas in key regions and bilateral relationships, thus giving the
United States an outsized voice on a range of important issues. To be clear, this influence has never been as pervasive as U.S. officials might like, or
as some observers might imagine. But by any reasonable standard of comparison, it has nonetheless been remarkable. One can tell a
similar story about the relative stability of the post-war order. As even some leading offshore balancers have
acknowledged, the lack of conflict in regions like Europe in recent decades is not something that
has occurred naturally. It has occurred because the “American pacifier” has suppressed
precisely the dynamics that previously fostered geopolitical turmoil. That pacifier has
limited arms races and security competitions by providing the protection that allows
other countries to under-build their militaries. It has soothed historical rivalries by affording a
climate of security in which powerful countries like Germany and Japan could be revived
economically and reintegrated into thriving and fairly cooperative regional orders. It has
induced caution in the behavior of allies and adversaries alike, deterring aggression and
dissuading other destabilizing behavior. As John Mearsheimer has noted, the United States “effectively acts as a night
watchman,” lending order to an otherwise disorderly and anarchical environment.45 What would happen if Washington backed
away from this role? The most logical answer is that both U.S. influence and global stability would
suffer. With respect to influence, the United States would effectively be surrendering the most
powerful bargaining chip it has traditionally wielded in dealing with friends and allies, and
jeopardizing the position of leadership it has used to shape bilateral and regional agendas for
decades. The consequences would seem no less damaging where stability is concerned.
As offshore balancers have argued, it may be that U.S. retrenchment would force local powers to spend more on defense, while
perhaps assuaging certain points of friction with countries that feel threatened or encircled by U.S. presence. But it equally stands to
reason that removing the American pacifier would liberate the more destabilizing influences that
U.S. policy had previously stifled. Long-dormant security competitions might reawaken as
countries armed themselves more vigorously; historical antagonisms between old rivals
might reemerge in the absence of a robust U.S. presence and the reassurance it provides.
Moreover, countries that seek to revise existing regional orders in their favor—think Russia in
Europe, or China in Asia—might indeed applaud U.S. retrenchment, but they might just as plausibly feel
empowered to more assertively press their interests. If the United States has been a kind of Leviathan in key
regions, Mearsheimer acknowledges, then “take away that Leviathan and there is likely to be big
trouble.”46 Scanning the global horizon today, one can easily see where such trouble might arise. In
Europe, a revisionist Russia is already destabilizing its neighbors and contesting the post-Cold
War settlement in the region. In the Gulf and broader Middle East, the threat of Iranian
ascendancy has stoked region-wide tensions manifesting in proxy wars and hints of an
incipient arms race, even as that region also contends with a severe threat to its stability in the
form of the Islamic State. In East Asia, a rising China is challenging the regional status quo
in numerous ways, sounding alarms among its neighbors—many of whom also have historical
grievances against each other. In these circumstances, removing the American pacifier would
likely yield not low-cost stability, but increased conflict and upheaval. That conflict and
upheaval, in turn, would be quite damaging to U.S. interests even if it did not result in the nightmare scenario
of a hostile power dominating a key region. It is hard to imagine, for instance, that increased instability and
acrimony would produce the robust multilateral cooperation necessary to deal with
transnational threats from pandemics to piracy. More problematic still might be the
economic consequences. As scholars like Michael Mandelbaum have argued, the enormous progress
toward global prosperity and integration that has occurred since World War II (and now the Cold War)
has come in the climate of relative stability and security provided largely by the United States.47
One simply cannot confidently predict that this progress would endure amid escalating
geopolitical competition in regions of enormous importance to the world economy. Perhaps
the greatest risk that a strategy of offshore balancing would run, of course, is that a key region
might not be able to maintain its own balance following U.S. retrenchment. That prospect might
have seemed far-fetched in the early post-Cold War era, and it remains unlikely in the immediate future. But in East Asia
particularly, the rise and growing assertiveness of China has highlighted the medium- to long-
term danger that a hostile power could in fact gain regional primacy. If China’s economy
continues to grow rapidly, and if Beijing continues to increase military spending by 10 percent or more each year, then
its neighbors will ultimately face grave challenges in containing Chinese power even if they join
forces in that endeavor. This possibility, ironically, is one to which leading advocates of retrenchment have been attuned.
“The United States will have to play a key role in countering China,” Mearshimer writes, “because its Asian neighbors are not strong
enough to do it by themselves.”48 If this is true, however, then offshore
balancing becomes a dangerous and
potentially self-defeating strategy. As mentioned above, it could lead countries like Japan and South
Korea to seek nuclear weapons, thereby stoking arms races and elevating regional tensions.
Alternatively, and perhaps more worryingly, it might encourage the scenario that offshore balancers seek to
avoid, by easing China’s ascent to regional hegemony. As Robert Gilpin has written, “Retrenchment by
its very nature is an indication of relative weakness and declining power, and thus
retrenchment can have a deteriorating effect on relations with allies and rivals.”49 In East
Asia today, U.S. allies rely on U.S. reassurance to navigate increasingly fraught relationships
with a more assertive China precisely because they understand that they will have great
trouble balancing Beijing on their own. A significant U.S. retrenchment might therefore tempt these countries to acquiesce
to, or bandwagon with, a rising China if they felt that prospects for successful resistance were diminishing as the United States retreated.50 In the
same vein, retrenchment would compromise alliance relationships, basing agreements, and other assets that might help Washington check Chinese
power in the first place—and that would allow the United States to surge additional forces into theater in a crisis. In sum, if one expects that Asian
countries will be unable to counter China themselves, then reducing U.S. influence and leverage in the region is a curious policy. Offshore balancing
might promise to preserve a stable and advantageous environment while reducing U.S. burdens. But upon closer analysis, the probable outcomes of
the strategy seem more perilous and destabilizing than its proponents acknowledge.
2AC Human Security Good
Human security is able to challenge the foundational notions of state
control—moral based approaches to international relations reproduce a
society with less violence and suffering
Chandler ’11 (David Chandler, Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, United
Kingdom. He is author of several books and edits the Journal of Statebuilding and Intervention, 2011,“Critical
Perspectives on Human Security: Rethinking Emancipation and Power in International Relations,” PRIO New Security
Studies, pp. 114-128, Sept 13, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lib/umichigan/detail.action?
docID=557253, Accessed on 06/25/19)
Writing in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, constructivist theorising, which challenged the structural fixity of neoliberal and
neo-realist thought, found a ready audience. It appeared that the study of states and state interests could no longer adequately
explain international politics. Instead, the research focus shifted away from fixed identities and narrow material interests to one
which emphasised the power of norms and ideas. Alexander Wendt argued that it was not just the distribution of power that was
important but also the ‘distribution of knowledge’: the intersubjective understandings which constitute the state’s conception of its
self and its interests. As examples, he stated that having a powerful neighbor in the US meant something different to Canada than it
did for Cuba and that British missiles would have seemed more of a threat to the Soviet Union than to the US (1992: 397). It was
the interaction between states that shaped their identities and interests. Rather than power, it was
subjective conceptions that were important; therefore: ‘if the United States and Soviet Union decide that they are no longer enemies,
“the cold war is over”’ (1992: 397). The collapse of the Soviet Union, through implosion rather than military defeat, fundamentally
challenged realist perspectives of state interests and the importance of military power, and thereby facilitated the revival of more
idealist perspectives of change – based on social interaction rather than material interests. As Wendt famously stated, inversing the
rationalist framework: ‘Identities are the basis of interests’ (1992: 398). The focus on ideas, rather than interests, led to a more
expansive understanding of social interaction, giving a central role to idea-promoting and idea-generating non-state actors,
particularly activist NGOs. It is at this point that the concept of transnational or global relations comes in, in distinction to
international relations, i.e. relations between states. The international sphere is no longer seen as one in which
states project their national interests, instead the process is reversed; through participation in international and
transnational relations, the national interests of states are constituted. In this way, the end of the Cold War could be
held not just to discredit realist approaches but also to provide compelling evidence of the role of non-state actors in the
development of state ‘identities’ and interests. Over this period, the growth of international human security approaches and
frameworks is one of the leading examples, held to demonstrate the strength of constructivist approaches: ‘because
international human-centred norms challenge state rule over society and national sovereignty,
any impact on domestic change would be counter-intuitive’ (Risse and Sikkink 1999: 4). The assumption that
human security norms challenge nationstate interests therefore asserts that norm changes
cannot come solely from state agency but must also stem from the influence of transnational
non-state actors. Even where states may use the normative rhetoric, such as human rights
concerns, it is the influence of non-state actors which serves to prevent these from being used
in a purely instrumental way. For constructivist theorists, the shift in the articulation of foreign-policy
goals, from a narrow framing of national interests to global framings of human security,
demonstrated the growing capacity of moral values to constrain the interests of power. A leading
article in Foreign Affairs , for example, argued: ‘Humanitarian intervention . . . is perhaps the most dramatic example of the new
power of morality in international affairs’ (Gelb and Rosenthal 2003: 6). As Mary Kaldor asserts: The changing international norms
The changing
concerning humanitarian intervention can be considered an expression of an emerging global civil society.
norms do reflect a growing global consensus about the equality of human beings and the
responsibility to prevent suffering . . . Moreover, this consensus, in turn, is the outcome of a global public debate on
these issues. (2001: 110) Crucial for the constructivist perspective was the belief that this ‘global public
debate’ took place not on the terms of power but those of morality. Sikkink argues that activities of
non-state actors have been able to ‘transform’, ‘modify’ and ‘reshape’ the meaning of
sovereignty because sovereignty is a product of a set of ‘shared’ or ‘intersubjective
understandings about the legitimate scope of state authority’ (Sikkink 1993: 413, 441). The human
security orientated debates on international humanitarian intervention and human rights form
the core of the idealist constructivist thesis. Jack Donnelly, for example, views this dialogue as a ‘promising sign for
the future’ because it is a debate which takes ‘place largely within a space delimited by a basic moral commitment’ to the human
rights cause (1999: 99– 100).
The constructivist ‘turn’ in international relations fundamentally
challenged the previous rationalist assumptions of the pursuit of pre-formed state interests in
the international sphere. It was alleged that in today’s globalised world, with the emergence of
transnational linkages, committed transnational ethical campaigners were capable of changing
the identity, and thereby the interests, of leading states. What is crucial to this thesis is the socially-constructed
identity of the state actor rather than the alleged structural constraints, where ideas are understood to be merely a reflection of pre-
given material interests. The non-instrumentalist assumptions made for discourses of human security rest heavily on the
constructivist framework, which assumes a connection between moral or ethical discourse and a power to shape identities and
interests. Very few commentators have attempted to understand the rise of ‘human security’ frameworks outside the constructivist
framework and, as will be drawn out, this framework forms the basis of the critical shift against human security after the end of the
1990s. The fundamental break involved in the constructivist approach was that of inversing the relationship between states and the
international or global sphere. Where, previously, states were the key objects of study – as the core actors and instrumentally-
orientated rational subjects constituting the international sphere – within the constructivist framework, state policy frameworks were
the products of international or global discourse. The subject of study switched from privileging the formation of state interests at the
domestic level to privileging their communicative interaction, the declarations of norms and values, which were held to shape state
identities and policy-making. Taking on board the starting logic of realism – that states pursue their narrow strategic self-interests –
constructivists assumed that it was the external pressures of global interaction and campaigning NGOs which explained the shifting
nature of the discourses of foreign policy. While the constructivist focus on discourse remains very much central to dominant
perceptions of human security, the constructivist framework, outlined earlier, tends to reflect the sensibilities of the 1990s rather than
the 2000s.
2AC IR Focus Good
Studying international relations is key to producing good scholarship –
remedies the split between the ivory tower and practical realities
Walt ‘11 (Stephen, Prof Intl Affairs @ Harvard, “International Affairs and the Public Sphere”,
http://publicsphere.ssrc.org/walt-international-affairs-and-the-public-sphere/)
Most social
scientists would like to believe that their profession contributes to solving pressing
global problems. Indeed, the United States and many other modern societies subsidize university-based research and
teaching on the assumption that scholars will develop useful knowledge about today’s world, communicate that knowledge to their
students and to the broader public, and, where appropriate, offer rigorous, well-informed advice to interested policymakers. There is
today no shortage of global problems that social scientists should study in depth: ethnic and religious conflict within and
between states, the challenge of economic development, terrorism, the management of a fragile
world economy, climate change and other forms of environmental degradation, the origins and impact of great power
rivalries, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, just to mention a few. In this complex and contentious world, one might
think that academic expertise about global affairs would be a highly valued commodity. Scholars
would strive to produce useful knowledge, students would flock to courses that helped them understand the world in
which they will live and work, and policymakers and the broader public would be eager to hear what
academic experts had to say. One might also expect scholars of international relations to play a
prominent role in public debates about foreign policy, along with government officials, business interests,
representatives of special interest groups, and other concerned citizens. Social scientists are far from omniscient,
but the rigor of the scientific process and the core values of academia should give university-
based scholars an especially valuable role within the broader public discourse on world affairs.
At its best, academic scholarship privileges creativity, validity, accuracy, and rigor and places little explicit
value on political expediency. The norms and procedures of the academic profession make it less likely that scholarly
work will be tailored to fit pre-conceived political agendas. When this does occur, the self-correcting nature of academic research
makes it more likely that politically motivated biases or other sources of error will be exposed. Although we know that scholarly
communities do not always live up to this ideal picture, the existence of these basic norms gives the academic world some important
advantages over think tanks, media pundits, and other knowledge-producing institutions. Yet the precise role that academic scholars
of international affairs should play is not easy to specify. Indeed, there appear to be two conflicting ways of thinking about this
matter. On the one hand, there is a widespread sense that academic research on global affairs is of declining practical value, either
Former policymakers complain
as a guide to policymakers or as part of broader public discourse about world affairs.
that academic writing is “either irrelevant or inaccessible to policy-makers. . . locked within the
circle of esoteric scholarly discussion.” This tendency helps explain Alexander George’s recollection that
policymakers’ eyes “would glaze as soon as I used the word theory.”[1] As Lawrence Mead noted in 2010: “Today’s political
scientists often address very narrow questions and they are often preoccupied with method and
past literature. Scholars are focusing more on themselves, less on the real world. . . . Research
questions are getting smaller and data-gathering is contracting. Inquiry is becoming obscurantist and ingrown.”[2]
Within the field of international affairs, this trend has led to repeated calls to “bridge the gap” between the
ivory tower and the policy community.[3] Consistent with that aim, a number of prominent scholars have recently
organized workshops or research projects seeking to challenge this “cult of irrelevance” and deprogram its adherents, although it is
not clear whether these efforts will succeed in reversing the current drift.[4] This online symposium reflects a similar concern: how
can the academic world contribute to a healthy public conversation about our collective fate, one that leads to more effective or just
solutions to contemporary problems and helps humankind avoid major policy disasters? On the other hand, closer engagement with
the policy world and more explicit efforts at public outreach are not without their own pitfalls. Scholars who enter government service
or participate in policy debates may believe that they are “speaking truth to power,” but they run the risk of being corrupted or co-
opted in subtle and not-so-subtle ways by the same individuals and institutions that they initially hoped to sway. Powerful interests
are all-too-willing to use the prestige associated with academic scholars to advance particular policy goals, and scholars are hardly
immune to temptations that may cloud their judgment or compromise their objectivity. Furthermore, scholars who embrace the role
of a “public intellectual” may be tempted to sensationalize their findings to attract a larger audience or find themselves opining on
topics on which they have no particular expertise. Instead of improving the quality of public discourse, such behavior may actually
degrade it. The remainder of this essay explores these themes in greater detail. I begin by discussing the unique contributions that
academic scholars could make to public discourse on world affairs—at least in theory—highlighting their capacity to serve as an
authoritative source of knowledge about the world and as an independent voice in debates about contemporary issues (→Why Is
Academic Scholarship Valuable?). I then consider why there is a growing gap between university-based scholars and both the
this trend is due largely to the professionalization of
policy world and the public sphere, and suggest that
academic disciplines and the concomitant rise of a quasi-academic community of think tanks with
explicit political agendas (→Why Is There a Gap between Academia and the Public Sphere?). Next, I identify some of the pitfalls
that scholars face when they become more active participants in the public sphere (→The Pitfalls of Engagement). I conclude by
proposing several reforms that could help the social sciences make a more vital contribution to public understanding and policy
formation in the broad domain of global affairs (→What Is To Be Done?). Why Is Academic Scholarship Valuable? Academics
can make at least three distinct contributions to public discourse on global affairs. First, although
the digital revolution has made a wealth of information from around the world accessible on a near real-time basis, most of us
still lack both extensive direct data on events in far-flung areas and the background knowledge
necessary to understand what new developments mean. If our town’s school district is troubled or the local
economy is suffering, we can observe that for ourselves and make reasonably well-informed judgments about what might be done
about it. But if the issue is the war in Afghanistan, an uprising in Yemen, a naval confrontation in the South China Sea
or the prospects that some battered economy will be bailed out successfully, most of us will lack the factual
knowledge or conceptual understanding to know what is really going on. Even when basic information is
readily available, it may be hard for most of us to put it in the appropriate context or make sense of what it means. When
citizens and leaders seek to grasp the dizzying complexity of modern world politics, therefore, they must
inevitably rely upon the knowledge and insights of specialists in military affairs, global trade and finance,
diplomatic/international historians, area experts, and many others. And that means relying at least in part on academic scholars who
have devoted their careers to mastering various aspects of world affairs and whose professional stature has been established
through the usual procedures of academic evaluation (e.g., peer review, confidential assessments by senior scholars, the give-and-
take of scholarly debate, etc.). Second, and more importantly, an independent academic community is an
essential counterweight to official efforts to shape public understanding of key foreign policy
issues. Governments enjoy enormous information asymmetries in many areas of political life, but these
advantages are especially pronounced when dealing with international affairs.[5] Much of what we know about the
outside world is ultimately derived from government sources (especially when dealing with national security
affairs), and public officials often go to considerable lengths to shape how that information is reported to the public. Not only do
governments collect vast amounts of information about the outside world, but they routinely use
secrecy laws to control public access to this information. Government officials can shape public
beliefs by leaking information strategically, or by co-opting sympathetic journalists whose professional success
depends in part on maintaining access to key officials.[6]Given these information asymmetries and their obvious interest in retaining
public support for their preferred policies, it is hardly surprising that both democratic and non-democratic leaders use their privileged
access to information to build support for specific policies, at times by telling outright lies to their own citizens.[7] This situation
creates few problems when the policies being sold make good strategic sense, but the results can be disastrous when they don’t. In
such cases, alternative
voices are needed to challenge conventional wisdoms and official
rationales, and to suggest different solutions to the problem(s) at hand. Because scholars are protected
by tenure and cherish the principle of academic freedom, and because they are not directly dependent on government support for
are uniquely positioned to challenge prevailing narratives and policy rationales
their livelihoods, they
and to bring their knowledge and training to bear on vital policy issues. If we believe that unfettered
debate helps expose errors and correct missteps, thereby fostering more effective public policies, then a sophisticated, diverse and
engaged scholarly community is essential to a healthy polity. Third, the scholarly world also offers a potentially valuable model of
constructive political disagreement. Political discourse in many countries (and especially the United States) has become increasingly
personal and ad hominem, with little attention paid to facts and logic; a trend reinforced by an increasingly competitive and loosely
regulated media environment. Within academia, by contrast, even intense disputes are supposed to be conducted in accordance
with established canons of logic and evidence. Ad hominem attacks and other forms of character assassination have no place in
scholarly discourse and are more likely to discredit those who employ them than those who are attacked. By bringing the norms of
academic discourse into the public sphere, academic scholars could help restore some of the civility that has been lost in recent
it is highly desirable for university-based scholars to play a significant
years. For all of these reasons,
role in public discourse about key real-world issues and to engage directly with policymakers
where appropriate. As I have argued elsewhere, academic research can provide policymakers with relevant
factual knowledge, provide typologies and frameworks that help policymakers and citizens make
sense of emerging trends, and create and test theories that leaders can use to choose among
different policy instruments. Academic theories can also be useful when they help policymakers
anticipate events, when they identify recurring tendencies or obstacles to success, and when they facilitate the
formulation of policy alternatives and the identification of benchmarks that can guide policy evaluation. Because
academic scholars are free from daily responsibility for managing public affairs, they are in an ideal position to develop new
concepts and theories to help us understand a complex and changing world.[8] The picture sketched here is obviously something of
an ideal type, and I am not suggesting that that the academic world consistently lives up to these expectations. As noted above,
university-based scholars of international affairs—and especially the disciplines of political science and history—have increasingly
focused on narrow and arcane topics and are contributing less and less to policy formation or public discourse.[9] And when
academics do address topics of obvious policy relevance or public interest, the results are often presented in impenetrable, jargon-
ridden prose and disseminated in venues that neither policymakers nor the public are likely to read. Even when scholars have
something useful to say, in short, their tendency to “speaking in tongues” diminishes their impact on the public sphere.
2AC Militarism Good
Military power is necessary to maintaining US global influence – the
alternative is comparatively worse
Dunlap ‘13 (Charles, JD, professor at Duke University School of Law, where he teaches courses on national
security law and the use of force in international law, Deputy Judge Advocate General, Headquarters U.S. Air Force,
Distinguished Graduate of the National War College, National Defense University, Executive Director, Center on Law,
Ethics and National Security and Professor of the Practice of Law, Duke University School of Law, “The Role of
Peacebuilding and Conflict Management in a Future American Grand Strategy: Time for an “Off Shore” Approach?” in
Conflict Management and Peacebuilding: Pillars of a New American Grand Strategy 133-157)
AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY AND CONFLICT

Quite obviously, the values of an American grand strategy so defined thrive best in a conflict-free environment. Historically—and,
indeed, to this day—the primary purpose of the state is to create that environment. The means of doing so frequently was—and, it
seems, still is—to organize the means of violence on behalf of the state—or collection of states—and to apply it whenever the
condition of peace was disturbed or threatened.In a perfect world, individuals and states inclined to disrupt
peace would be deterred from doing so by the prospect of conflict that, as a matter of logic, would be
an inefficient and cost-prohibitive means of resolving disputes.
It is not, of course, a perfect world. Some individuals and states have perceived, and likely will
continue to perceive, a security asymmetry that can be exploited to their benefit. What is more, for a
variety of reasons—religion, ideology, cultural identity, and more—they can rationalize a sense of
entitlement of superiority for themselves. Such perceptions can translate—however illogically—into a
belief that those so disposed possess the power to achieve their ends by force. Efforts to dissuade such conclusions
can be effective, but have their limits simply because intransigence can also be a feature of the human mind, and one
that can contaminate the thinking of entire societies, to include those who are otherwise cosmopolitan and even generally pacific.
we must accept that the nature
Plato reportedly adroitly observed that “only the dead have seen the end of war.” Thus,
of the human condition is such that for the foreseeable future—irrespective of any grand strategy
—the vagaries of the human condition—not to mention humanity’s aggressive impulses—will
continue to challenge the success of an American grand strategy as I defined it.
Yet the inevitability of human conflict does not mean we should abandon efforts to avoid it. Every
instance of success represents lives saved and futures preserved. Even where violence cannot
be avoided, efforts to ameliorate and limit its effects are patently worthy endeavors because
they readily encourage a minimization of human suffering, as well as help create a space, so to speak, for liberal
democracy and free enterprise to take root and prosper.
The question then is how best to create those spaces in an era of the ever present risk of violence? In an interesting article in the
March/April 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs entitled “A Clear and Present Safety,” the authors Micha Zenko and Michael A. Cohen
assert that America is safer and more secure than ever before, and faces no great power rival and no serious threats.5 According to
Zenko and Cohen, the United States needs a foreign policy that reflects that reality.
The article also contends that:
because of the chronic exaggeration of the threats facing the United States, Washington overemphasizes military approaches to
problems (including many that could best be solved by nonmilitary means).6
It goes on to insist that:
although U.S. military strength has occasionally contributed to creating a conducive environment for positive change, those
improvements were achieved mostly through the work of civilian agencies and nongovernmental actors in the private and nonprofit
sectors.7
Zenko and Cohen are not alone in their views. In his recent book, Winning the War on War, Joshua Goldstein made a similar
claim, arguing that, “in fact, the world is becoming more peaceful.”8 Goldstein gives great credit not to the United
States, but to the United Nations (UN) for its peacekeeping and other operations that he argues could be even more successful
were they better funded and supported.
While there is much to commend about Zenko and Cohen’s essay (as well as the Goldstein book), the problem with the thesis that
both propound is the insufficient appreciation of what the world will be like if U.S. military power is perceived as compromised. If that
were to become the case, there is the extraordinarily dangerous prospect that opportunistic nations will destabilize the world if they
get the impression that U.S. military power is on the wane, let alone being deliberately diminished. Some around the globe may
cheer but, unfortunately, many are not necessarily the friends of peace.
The real value of U.S. military power is that its mere existence in many instances permits—and
gives gravitas to—the very civilian/nongovernmental organization (NGO) soft power concepts Zenko et al. endorse. To be sure,
it is quite true that many successes in the past were the product of diplomatic, humanitarian, economic, and other
distinctly nonmilitary efforts, but they were accomplished in a world where enormous American military power
was always lurking in the background. The reality, as uncomfortable as it may be for many, is that the U.S.
military is the irreplaceable peace enabler in today’s world.
There is little reason to assume that the same kind of soft-power victories that Zenko and others celebrate would be possible if the
military equation is altered in a serious way. Should the overwhelming U.S. conventional—and unconventional
—capability recede, adversaries may see opportunity, perhaps not today, but in the foreseeable future. Once a
capability is dismantled—as has been done by the United States with the F-22 manufacturing line9 —it is very difficult, if
not impossible, to resurrect it. We must never forget that U.S. military power takes the military option off the
table for many competitors. Economic, social, political, etc., competitions remain, but creating an environment where the
military option becomes conceivable is hardly a desirable outcome.
To be clear, one might rightly agree that U.S. military spending must come down to some degree in order
to help get our economic house in order, and that the nonmilitary elements of American power need to be better brought to bear in
Yet, some still believe that U.S. military might must
the execution of American grand strategy in the years to come.
remain the fundamental—if not central—element of American grand strategy for as long as we can imagine.
PEACEBUILDING AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT: THE LESSONS LEARNED
Of course, devising a fresh approach to peacebuilding and conflict management requires an
unvarnished examination of the operations of the past decade, and there are certainly many lessons to be
learned from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The effort to reorient entire societies in Iraq and
Afghanistan via a strategy that was manpower-intensive and ground-centric has proven to be flawed.
Certainly, the American Soldier, given enough time and enough resources, can accomplish almost anything, to include the remaking
of entire countries. The problem is that doing so first requires the application of military force to the existing ruling cadre and its
instruments of power so sternly and persistently as to imprint upon the society a sense of defeat so complete that the environment is
created where a completely new and—it is to be hoped—more peaceful and democratic society can emerge and the likelihood of
resistance is markedly diminished.
Norman Friedman suggests this in his 2004 article Is Modern War Too Precise?10 In it, he indicates that for all its faults and
shortcomings, the devastating World War II aerial bombardment of Germany may not have won many “hearts and minds” among
the German people “but it did help preclude any post-surrender violence like what is now being seen in Iraq.”11 Regrettably, in Iraq,
an ill-considered “race to Baghdad” in 2003 stretched logistic lines and enabled Saddam’s Fedayeen to achieve some tactical
success against support troops poorly prepared for infantry combat. This became something of a “proof of concept” for Iraqi
insurgents that U.S. troops were, in fact, vulnerable.
It would have been far better to have exercised more patience and allowed American air and artillery to progressively devastate
Iraq’s elite military formations. Instead, they were allowed to melt away and form the core of the insurgency, which was never really
crushed in nearly a decade of occupation. The Iraqi people—to include especially those who became the resistance—never
internalized the shattering sense of defeat that enabled the Germans and Japanese at the end of World War II to abandon their
deeply embedded militaristic, racist, and totalitarian ideologies.
Despite the experience with Japan and Germany, American leaders do not seem to fully comprehend what it takes to truly transform
entire societies in a timeline shorter than several generations. Curiously, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin
Dempsey admitted that the aim of purging Afghanistan of the Taliban could have been achieved militarily, since the United States:
could have started at one end of Afghanistan and fundamentally overrun it, destroyed it, created a situation where we would make it
a near certainty that the Taliban couldn’t come back, because there wouldn’t be anything to come back to. . . .12
General Dempsey hastened to add that such a forceful effort was “not who we are.”13 There are, of course, several observations to
American values extant during World War II are not necessarily
be made here, starting with the idea that
ones to be abandoned. More specifically, if the suggestion is that focusing on the destruction of the
enemy—the Taliban in this instance—invariably involves the wholesale obliteration of civilians and their
property, he underestimates the revolutionary capabilities of a technological revolution that
allows force to be applied in a discrete way that is fully lawful and moral. That technological
revolution has, according to retired General Barry R. McCaffrey, “fundamentally changed the nature of
warfare” by allowing the rise of persistent, long-term reconnaissance and precision strikes.14
It is becoming increasingly clear that force—particularly in counterinsurgency (COIN) situations—is the proven
solution, especially when rapid results are needed. As Professor Anna Simons of the Naval Postgraduate School contends:
Not only does COIN’s own history reflect the need for a stunning amount of brutality, but the fact that in campaign after campaign,
commanders have found themselves desperate to be able to apply decisive force reveals what every generation ends up
(re)discovering the hard way: soft approaches don’t impel enough people to change their ways fast
enough.15 Her conclusion fits with that of an ever-widening range of experts. Jill Hazelton of Harvard’s Belfer Center contends,
contrary to popular wisdom, that
[s]uccess in COIN does not require the protection of the populace, good governance, economic development, or winning the
allegiance or the loyalty of the great majority of the population.
Importantly, she says it “does not require building up all of the institutions of the state.”16 The grim realities
of which she speaks should give pause to COIN theorists who disparage the efficacy of force. In April 2011, the Washington Post
reported that in Afghanistan, the:
security improvements have been the result of intense fighting and the use of high-impact weapons systems not normally
associated with the protect-the-population counterinsurgency mission. 17
Nevertheless, because the U.S. military establishment was dominated by ground-centric
thinkers, the “solution” to the challenge of peacebuilding and conflict management necessarily had to involve
ground forces, and lots of them. In the case of COIN, that solution doctrinally eschewed force. Such was the nature of
Field Manual (FM) 3-24, 18 published in 2006. It was, as one pundit put it, “warfare for northeastern graduate
students” and other “people who would never own a gun.”19 Among other things, it called for enormous
numbers of counterinsurgents (to comprise about 5 percent of the populations), with each Soldier prepared, as the FM
said, to become “a social worker, a civil engineer, a school teacher, a nurse, a boy scout.”20 Nation building quite obviously was a
critical element of the doctrine.
Executing the doctrine espoused in FM 3-24 justified huge increases in the size of American ground
forces. Unfortunately, it ignored some key history about COIN operations and the presence of a large
number of foreign troops. COIN expert William R. Polk insists that the “fundamental motivation” for
insurgents is an “aim primarily to protect the integrity of the native group from foreigners.”21
Likewise, in 2008, former Army Chief of Staff General John Wickham warned that “[l]arge military forces alienate local
populations, succeed less and cost more.”22
More recently, John Brennan, Assistant to the President
for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism,
pointed out:
Countries typically don’t want foreign soldiers in their cities and towns. In fact, large, intrusive
military deployments risk playing into al-Qa’ida’s strategy of trying to draw us into long, costly
wars that drain us financially, inflame anti-American resentment and inspire the next generation
of terrorists.23
THE FUTURE: “OFF SHORE” PEACEBUILDING AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT
So what does all this mean for the future of peacebuilding and conflict management, At given the grand strategy
I have outlined? the outset, it is essential to understand that it does not mean that the United States should
abandon peacebuilding and conflict management efforts. Nor does it mean that it is utterly inconceivable that
the United States might again conduct a large-footprint operation à la Iraq or Afghanistan. What it does mean, however, is that
largefootprint operations for peacebuilding and conflict management missions need to undergo fundamental rethinking.
Part of this requires the acceptance, however unwanted, of certain cold political realities, which include the fact that public support
Not only do 78 percent of Americans favor withdrawing
for the large-footprint war in Afghanistan is collapsing.
troops,24 66 percent believe that the war has not been “worth fighting.”25 With respect to the latter, beyond
the human cost, our present strategy is extremely costly. The expense of deploying one American Soldier to Afghanistan for 1 year
has ballooned to $1.2 million,26 a figure to which planners must be especially sensitive now that the U.S. public is supporting
substantial cuts in defense spending.27
While it does seem that it might be cheaper to deploy civilians to accomplish many of the nationbuilding tasks currently performed
by the military, the viability of that option is suspect.28 As a Congressional Research Service report dated February 2, 2012, entitled
Building Civilian Interagency Capacity for Missions Abroad: Key Proposals and Issues for Congress, reveals, the U.S. Government’s
ability to conduct such missions remains deeply flawed, if not in disarray.29 In any event, there is a tyranny of numbers involved, as
even the most optimistic assessments do not contemplate many more than 2,000 experts would be involved, even if resources
outside of government were tapped.30
Just as problematic is the sheer difficulty of peacebuilding and conflict management in deeply flawed societies under circumstances
where, as indicated above, the political decision has been made not to use force to the extent that has proven successful in past
in conflict management situations,
situations, even if it can be applied in a way that is fully lawful and moral. Still,
force will necessarily have to be employed, but likely not via large numbers of American ground
forces. The models for the future are more likely to be along the lines of the Kosovo intervention of the late 1990s and Libya in
2011. As the New York Times put it:
Libya proved that the leaders of some medium-size powers can be overthrown from a distance, without putting American boots on
the ground, by using weapons fired from sea and air with the heaviest load carried by partner nations—in the case of Libya,
European allies and even some Arab states. 31
In essence, this
might be called “offshore conflict management.” This is not an especially new concept,
and has been suggested for a number of scenarios of potential conflict. Retired Marine Colonel Thomas
X. Hammes has, for example, developed a proposal he calls “Offshore Control” aimed at leveraging U.S. technical advantages as a
means of addressing the security challenge of China without necessarily putting a large mass of American troops on the Chinese
mainland.32
In a sense, options
for conflict management that avoid large troop deployments seem consonant
with the Barack Obama administration’s emphasis on counterterrorism operations aimed at key enemy
leaders conducted by drones and special operations forces. In fact, the President recently explicitly stated that in
Afghanistan, his “goal is not to build a country in America’s image” but rather “to destroy [al-Qaeda].”33 To the extent this involves
drone attacks against alQaeda leadership, it has enormous support from the American people, with 83 percent
approving of their use.34
2AC Positivism Good
Positivism is the best lens for framing IR—the alt creates epistemic
anarchy and destroys empirical analysis
Brown ‘11 (Vernon, Cardiff U, “The Reflectivist Critique of Positivist IR Theory”, http://www.e-ir.info/?p=7328)
There is a great deal of support for the positivist approach in IR despite the critiques presented
above. As the survey by Maliniak et al. showed, seventy percent of American IR scholars still consider
themselves as positivists with a number of the rest not yet reflectivist. This is significant as the United States
is still considered to be the major force in IR scholarship. There are many reasons for this continued
success of positivism in IR, the majority of which have to do with either the continued reliance on
empirical methods or the failure of many reflectivists, especially the post-modernists, to offer
any suggestions to fill the epistemological void left by their passing. David Houghton (2008, p.118)
addresses both of these by writing that despite their critique, reflectivists continue to use
empirical, observational methods and that it is not possible to be anything but positivist because,
as he writes, ‘truth claims about the world have to come from somewhere’. He also suggests that
reflectivists are essentially engaging in what can only be perceived as a negative exercise since
by continually deconstructing theories one will eventually be left with nothing that is considered
a legitimate theory. Another issue raised in response to the reflectivist critique focuses on the pluralism which scholars have
called for in the face of epistemological relativism. Lapid (1989, p.249) warns that such pluralism, ‘If adopted
uncritically or taken to its logical conclusion, [can] deteriorate into a condition of epistemological anarchy
under which almost any position can legitimately claim equal hearing’, and that in such a state it
would become nearly impossible to distinguish theoretical proliferation from theoretical growth.
Positivism defends itself by claiming that scholarship is inherently observational, therefore
empirical, and that if reflectivism is followed to its logical endpoint there would be no legitimate theories left because they would
have been either deconstructed or created without a means of testing their legitimacy. Conclusion: The critique of
positivism by the reflectivists is fundamentally an epistemological one. Each side can and does make
compelling arguments showing the strength of their position. While it is important to acknowledge the positivists’ attempts to ground
the discipline in a naturalist, scientific area there is still the obvious fact that the assumptions on which their epistemology is based
are too easily deconstructed when they attempt to explain phenomena and make predictions in the socially constructed world which
IR purports to study. As Milja Kurki (2009, p.442) suggests, positivism fails to acknowledge the possibility that all theories are at
some level ‘politically and socially contextualized’. This creates the possibility for positivist theories to create predictions that are
fundamentally flawed as they have failed to take into account the context within which their facts are constructed. This in turn allows
the reflectivist theorists to deconstruct the predictions due to misunderstandings that arise from the lack of context in the positivists’
The question of what positivism has to say in a socially constructed and interpreted
predictions.
world is still an important one, however, since the study of IR is still in many ways observational
and therefore empirical. There is also the valid claim that in the face of the possible anarchical
pluralism or lack of legitimate theories left by reflectivist critiques there needs to be some sense
of scientific and theoretical grounding, and that positivism provides that very thing. In the end,
reflectivism performs a valuable service in widening the range of legitimate research that is possible by IR scholars and allowing
such research to take into account the understanding that the issues studied are birthed by social conventions. There still must be,
while
however, some framework within this study to prevent the anarchy that could follow in the wake of reflectivism and
positivism is in no ways perfect, or even close to it, it still provides such a framework that if made to
be self-reflective and continually evolving, could provide the stability needed.
2AC Realism Good
Realism solves war – any other model leads to a power vacuum
Edelstein ‘10 (2010, David, PhD in Political Science, Associate Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of
Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University, “Why realists don’t go for bombs and
bullets,” http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/07/21/why-realists-dont-go-for-bombs-and-bullets/)
Thanks to Steve Walt for inviting me to contribute to his blog while he is away on vacation. I have been a regular reader of Steve’s
blog since it launched, and for my first post, I wanted to pick up on a motif that I have seen running through Steve’s posts: Will
realists ever again support the use of military force by the United States?
Followers of this blog will by now have little doubt about how Walt felt about the Iraq War or how he views the prospects for U.S.
success in Afghanistan. In fact, throughout the history of his blog, I can only recall one case in which Walt advocated the use of U.S.
military force (and I think the realist credentials in that case are rather dubious).
There is a common perception in the field of political science that realists are war-mongering
Neanderthals anxious to use military force at the drop of a hat. Attend any meeting (if you must) of the American Political
Science Association or the International Studies Association, and one will find realists derided as the "bombs and
bullets guys" as if we were all direct descendants of Curtis LeMay. What is notable about this — and what has been
notable about Steve’s blog — is just how infrequently realists have supported the use of American
military force. Take the U.S. interventions of the post-Cold War period: Panama, the Gulf War, Somalia, Haiti,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Of those interventions, Afghanistan was the only one
that received anything close to strong support from most realists. Others, most notably the Iraq
War, received vehement opposition from the vast majority of realists. Even in the case of
Afghanistan, realists expressed trepidation about the prospects for ultimate success despite early
victories.
Go back to the Cold War, and realists like Kenneth Waltz and Hans Morgenthau were famously
opposed to the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Lest one think this is an academic phenomenon,
realist policymakers like Brent Scowcroft were equally critical of the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq,
and George F. Kennan was skeptical of the U.S. interventions in both Korea and Vietnam. Today, should
anyone dare to suggest the use of military force in new contexts such as Iran, they are
summarily dismissed by prominent realists. Not a single (self-proclaimed or attributed) realist I know of
has advocated the use of military force against Iran in response to its apparent development of nuclear
weapons, and most are adamantly opposed to it.
From one perspective, this opposition is surprising. It is realists, after all, who so value material power, in particular military
capabilities. It is not difficult to understand why so many would assume that realists are anxious to use military force because
realists are anxious to focus on military capabilities as a primary explanatory variable for international politics.
But it
is precisely because realists have spent so much time studying military force that
they are also so reluctant to use military force. Though realists themselves are divided on the question,
many have concluded that the use of military force is often counterproductive, inviting balancing coalitions that
simply make life more difficult. Moreover, as I have argued elsewhere, using military force to reorder societies is very difficult and
unlikely to succeed except in uncommon circumstances.
2AC Scenario Planning Good
Scenario planning is good pedagogy – leads to better IR education,
deconstructs preexisting assumptions, and enables best research
practices
Mahnken and Junio 13 (Thomas, PhD, Jerome E. Levy Chair of Economic Geography and National Security at the U.S.
Naval War College and a Visiting Scholar at the Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at The Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H.
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, and Timothy, Predoctoral Fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation,
Stanford University, PhD in Political Science expected 2013, “Conceiving of Future War: The Promise of Scenario Analysis for
International Relations,” International Studies Review Volume 15, Issue 3, pages 374–395, September 2013)
This article introduces political scientists to scenarios—future counterfactuals—and demonstrates their value
in tandem with other methodologies and across a wide range of research questions. The authors
describe best practices regarding the scenario method and argue that scenarios contribute to theory building and
development, identifying new hypotheses, analyzing data-poor research topics, articulating “world
views,” setting new research agendas, avoiding cognitive biases, and teaching. The article also
establishes the low rate at which scenarios are used in the international relations subfield and situates scenarios in the broader
context of political science methods. The conclusion offers two detailed examples of the effective use of scenarios.
In his classic work on scenario analysis, The Art of the Long View, PeterSchwartz commented that “social scientists
often have a hard time [building scenarios]; they have been trained to stay away from ‘what if?’
questions and concentrate on ‘what was?’” (Schwartz 1996:31). While Schwartz's comments were impressionistic
based on his years of conducting and teaching scenario analysis, his claim withstands empirical scrutiny. Scenarios—
counterfactual narratives about the future—are woefully underutilized among political scientists.
The method is almost never taught on graduate student syllabi, and a survey of leading international relations (IR)
journals indicates that scenarios were used in only 302 of 18,764 sampled articles. The low rate at which political
scientists use scenarios—less than 2% of the time—is surprising; the method is popular in fields as
disparate as business, demographics, ecology, pharmacology, public health, economics, and
epidemiology (Venable, Li, Ginter, and Duncan 1993; Leufkens, Haaijer-Ruskamp, Bakker, and Dukes 1994; Baker, Hulse,
Gregory, White, Van Sickle, Berger, Dole, and Schumaker 2004; Sanderson, Scherbov, O'Neill, and Lutz 2004). Scenarios
also are a common tool employed by the policymakers whom political scientists study.
This article seeks to elevate the status of scenarios in political science by demonstrating their
usefulness for theory building and pedagogy . Rather than constitute mere speculation
regarding an unpredictable future, as critics might suggest, scenarios assist scholars with
developing testable hypotheses, gathering data, and identifying a theory's upper and lower bounds.
Additionally, scenarios are an effective way to teach students to apply theory to policy . In the
pages below, a “best practices” guide is offered to advise scholars, practitioners, and students, and an argument is developed in
favor of the use of scenarios. The article concludes with two examples of how political scientists have invoked the scenario method
to improve the specifications of their theories, propose falsifiable hypotheses, and design new empirical research programs.
2AC Trade Good
Trade reduces inequality – empirics prove de-globalization’s worse
Hillebrand 10 (Evan E., professor at the University of Kentucky, “Deglobalization Scenarios: Who Wins? Who
Loses?”, Global Economy Journal, Volume 10, Issue 2, http://www.ifs.du.edu/assets/documents/hilldeglob.pdf)
Economists have used the Stolper-Samuelson (1941) theorem to show that trade is likely to have distributional
effects on society, especially that the scarce factor of production (in the US case, labor) might be disadvantaged in favor of
capital, and vice versa in a labor abundant country such as China. The IFs model captures distributional effects by tracing the
impact of trade on economic output by sector, each sector employing differing sets of labor skills and capital intensity (Hughes and
Hossain, 2003). In general, relative
returns increase for skilled labor as the overall level of development
increases and as manufacturing increases its share in total value added relative to agriculture. In these trade-restricting
simulations, which tend to increase the relative size of the manufacturing sector in many of the non-OECD countries, we would
expect the share of the work force engaged in manufacturing to increase, resulting in more
highly paid workers and thus reducing poverty and income inequality . Reducing imports of
manufactured goods and FDI, however, reduces technological advance especially in the poorer countries. Slower technological
advance results in slower productivity gains and smaller wage gains in all sectors. How these conflicting forces affect incomes,
poverty headcounts, and inequality depends on the interaction of many institutional and historical factors for each country
represented in the model.
The overall results, however, are quite clear: while
deglobalization may encourage poor countries to
increase the relative size of the domestic manufacturing industry and this may shift the
relative wage structure in a way that increases overall equality (in 61 out of 155 non-OECD7
countries the Gini8 coefficient fell), the slower growth in productivity resulting from a slowing of
international trade results in low er GDP growth, lower average income growth and higher
poverty headcounts in all but a very few countries (Table 3).
The results for Guatemala are typical. Imports of manufactured goods in the forecast period fall
dramatically between scenarios, both in absolute terms and as a share of total imports. Domestic value added in the
manufacturing sector rises very slightly in absolute terms, but productivity growth for the economy as a whole
and in the manufacturing sector slows by about a half percentage point a year due to reduced
competition and reduced capital flows. Overall GDP and wage growth slows, but wages fall
relatively more in the high-skilled jobs because the slowdown in productivity growth is greater in sectors that are
skillintensive. In addition, returns to capital are lowered in this low-productivity environment. These three
forces result in a shift in the income distribution in favor of the poor. The estimated Gini coefficient in 2035 is .573 vs. .584 in the
globalization scenario. But this gain
in equality comes at the expense of lower incomes for both the rich
and the poor. Real GDP per capita in 2035 is 23 percent less than in the globalization scenario
and the number of people living in extreme poverty is 340,000 more.
The results are worse for China, a country whose growth has been dependent on exports of
manufactured goods. In China, exports of manufactured goods are down 70 percent by 2035 and value-added by the
manufacturing sector falls by 40 percent. Overall GDP growth averages 1.1 percent a year less than in the globalization scenario
and average GDP per capita in 2035 is 37 percent less. This huge fall in income is not
compensated by a rise in equality : the decline in manufacturing pushes more workers back
into agriculture and the service sector which have more unskilled, low-wage jobs. The estimated Gini
coefficient in 2035 is .489 vs. .483 in the globalization scenario.
The policy changes in the deglobalization scenario tend to increase the relative size of the manufacturing sector in the non-OECD
countries that were not already deeply integrated into the globalized trading system. One hundred and five of the 155 non-OECD
countries increase the relative size of their manufacturing sectors in the deglobalization scenario, but this rarely has positive national
benefits. Only 33 countries increase the absolute size of their manufacturing sector and only 9 countries are able to raise their
average GDP per capita. These nine are among the smallest, poorest, and least globalized countries in the world.9 Only one
country—Eritrea—is able to increase average GDP per capita, reduce inequality, and reduce its poverty headcount. For all the rest,
the decrease in imports of manufactured goods and capital tends to reduce equality or average
incomes or increase poverty, or, in most cases, all three because the growth-inhibiting aspects
of trade and capital slowdowns overwhelm any positive distribution affects that may result
from structural changes in the economy.
2AC Transition Wars DA
Transition to the alternative guarantees war – radical changes in existing
security architecture collapse threat perception
Yoon ‘03 (Young-Kwan, Professor of International Relations at Seoul National University; former Foreign
Minister of South Korea “Introduction: Power Cycle Theory and the Practice of International Relations”, International
Political Science Review 2003; vol. 24; p. 7-8)
In history, the effort to balance power quite often tended to start too late to protect the security
of some of the individual states. If the balancing process begins too late, the resulting amount of
force necessary to stop an aggressor is often much larger than if the process had been started
much earlier. For example, the fate of Czechoslovakia and Poland showed how non-intervention or
waiting for the “automatic” working through of the process turned out to be problematic. Power
cycle theory could also supplement the structure-oriented nature of the traditional balance of
power theory by incorporating an agent-oriented explanation. This was possible through its focus on the
relationship between power and the role of a state in the international system. It especially highlighted the fact that a discrepancy
between the relative power of a state and its role in the system would result in a greater possibility for systemic instability. In order to
prevent this instability from developing into a war, practitioners of international relations were to become aware of the dynamics of
changing power and role, adjusting role to power. A statesperson here was not simply regarded as a prisoner of structure and
therefore as an outsider to the process but as an agent capable of influencing the operation of equilibrium. Thus power cycle theory
could overcome the weakness of theoretical determinism associated with the traditional balance of power. The question is often
raised whether government decision-makers could possibly know or respond to such relative power shifts in the real world.
According to Doran, when the “tides of history” shift against the state, the push and shove of world politics reveals these matters to
the policy-maker, in that state and among its competitors, with abundant urgency. (2) The Issue of Systemic Stability Power cycle
theory is built on the conception of changing relative capabilities of a state, and as such it shares the realist assumption
emphasizing the importance of power in explaining international relations. But its main focus is on the longitudinal dimension of
power relations, the rise and decline of relative state power and role, and not on the static power distribution at a particular time. As
a result, power cycle theory provides a significantly different explanation for stability and order within the international system. First
of all, power cycle theory argues that what matters most in explaining the stability of the
international system or war and peace is not the type of particular international system
(Rosecrance, 1963) but the transformation from one system to another. For example, in the 1960s there
was a debate on the stability of the international system between the defenders of bipolarity
such as Waltz (1964) and the defenders of multi-polarity such as Rosecrance (1966), and Deutsch and
Singer (1964). After analyzing five historical occasions since the origin of the modern state system, Doran concluded that
what has been responsible for major war was not whether one type of system is more or less
conducive to war but that instead systems transformation itself led to war (Doran, 1971). A non-
linear type of structural change that is massive, unpredicted, devastating to foreign policy
expectation, and destructive of security is the trigger for major war, not the nature of a particular
type of international system.

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UTNIF Security K – 2019-2020

The aff perpetuates discourse of the imagined threatening identity of China

This investment in securitization sustains an affective economy of

Their descriptions of Russian domestic unrest stems from a narcissistic

This investment in securitization sustains an affective economy of

This investment in securitization sustains an affective economy of

A final example – modern Israel – which is testament to the non-passage 3 of sovereignty. In

from the wider historical perspective of air power

the contemporary politics of security is additionally characterized by

To begin,portraying education as an issue of US national security relies first on the representation

The aff’s approach to Taiwanese conflict is structured by normative

The consequences of counterterrorism’s epistemological crisis

this system of arms limitation is the way in which it is

militarism itself is a major, but

For decades, statesmen and stateswomen, diplomats, and politicians

Realism has been the dominant IR theory in the discourses on

security, new insights and policy options can be generated.

endowed with the power to imagine—and create—new forms of danger to engineer

infrastructures of militarism, technoscience, surveillance, and affect in a constantly emerging

Prominent American scholars have conceptualised national security policymaking in terms of a

Perhaps just as alarming is the proliferation of the phenomenon of vigilante-citizens, as subjects

It is tempting for critics to forgo

I prefer progress within paradigms rather than war between paradigms,

Our knowledge of China is accurate—their authors have flawed information

No impact to China containment threat discourse – bad reps don’t

IV. Discussion and Conclusion

development cannot proceed

In keeping with pragmatist tenets, my approach to the problem of practical institutionalisation is a

both U.S. influence and international stability are thoroughly interwoven

AMERICAN GRAND STRATEGY AND CONFLICT

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