V Debate Dolphins 1AC

Parkway West High School Dolphins 1AC
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Plan: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should substantially increase its economic engagement toward Mexico by revising the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act of 1990 to require Mexicos tuna harvesters to designate separate dolphin-safe tuna storage and to provide verification statements from captains and any relevant observers that no dolphins were killed or seriously injured during tuna harvest.
This is Dolphin-ately a winning 1AC. For 2AC cites, email me at ktg9616@seamail.com
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1AC Solvency
Contention 2 is Solvency: Mexico and the US are in a trade dispute involving tuna labeling provisions--the US wants Mexico to accept labeling for tuna that have been caught without harm to Dolphins, but WTO ruling found that these provisions hurt Mexican fishermen. Villarreal 12 (M. Angeles, Specialist/Analyst in International Trade and Finance for the Congressional Research Service,
8/9/12, U.S.-Mexico Economic Relations: Trends, Issues, and Implications, pg. 26-27, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL32934.pdf, DOA 7/11/13, Keerthi)
The United States and Mexico are involved in a trade dispute regarding U.S. dolphin-safe labeling provisions and tuna imports from Mexico. U.S. labeling provisions establish conditions under which tuna products may voluntarily be labeled as dolphin-safe. These products may not be labeled as dolphin-safe if the tuna is caught by intentionally encircling dolphins with nets. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), some Mexican fishing vessels use this method when fishing for tuna. Mexico asserts that U.S. tuna labeling provisions deny Mexican tuna effective access to the U.S. market. In October 2008, Mexico filed a request for World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement consultations with the United States regarding U.S. provisions on voluntary dolphin-safe labeling on tuna products. The United States requested
that Mexico refrain from proceeding in the WTO and that the case be moved to the NAFTA dispute resolution mechanism. Accordin g to the USTR, however, Mexico blocked that process for settling this dispute.82 September that was established in April 2009 final to other WTO Members and the public. This report found that the objectives of U.S. voluntary tuna labeling provisions are legitimate and that any adverse effects felt by Mexican tuna
In
2011, a WTO panel
circulated its
report
the panel also found U.S. labeling provisions to be more restrictive than necessary to achieve the objectives of the measures .83 The Obama Administration is appealing the WTO ruling. Mexicos economy ministry said that it plans to file a counter -appeal.84 The government of Mexico wants the United States to broaden its dolphin-safe rules to include Mexicos longstanding tuna fishing technique. It cites statistics showing that modern equipment has greatly reduced dolphin mortality from its height in the 1960s and that its ships carry independent
producers are the result of choices made by Mexicos own fishing fleet and canners. However, observers who can verify dolphin safety.85 However, some environmental groups that monitor the tuna industry dispute claims by the Mexican government, stating that
even if no dolphins are killed during the chasing and netting, some are wounded and later die. In other cases, they argue, young dolphin calves may not be able to keep pace and are separated from their mothers and later die.
The plan puts verification proposal into action and revises all necessary legal obstacles to solve the dispute (S. Advocate) Smith 13 (Fran, Adjunct Fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, founder of the International Consumers for Civil
Society, BA from University of New Orleans and MA from the State University of NY at Buffalo, 4/10/13, NOAA Proposes TunaDolphin Regulations To Comply With WTO Ruling, Open Market is the Blog of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, http://www.openmarket.org/2013/04/10/noaa-proposes-tuna-dolphin-regulations-to-comply-with-wto-ruling/, DOA 7/11/13, Keerthi)
To comply with a World Trade Organization ruling in a tuna-dolphin complaint brought by Mexico, the U.S. proposed new regulations that would tighten the requirements for allowing tuna to be labeled dolphin safe. The proposal was issued for comments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on April 5. It would revise the Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act (DPCIA) of 1990, which established a dolphin-safe labeling standard for certain tuna products. Under the original rule, a
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dolphin-safe label could be used only for tuna that was caught without using purse-seine, encircling methods. But for tuna caught in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Region (ETPR), additional certification was required
that no dolphins were killed or seriously injured while catching the tuna. In the U.S. regulations, NOAA also established a domestic tracking and verification program that provides for the tracking of tuna labeled dolphin-safe. In
a case brought by Mexico in 2008, Mexico challenged in the WTO the U.S. dolphin-safe labeling system as violating provisions of the WTOs General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994 and its Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT Agreement). Mexicos tuna fishermen catch their fish in the ETPR using purseseine vessels and complained to the WTO that the U.S. rules unfairly discriminated against Mexico. In the case, US-Tuna II, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body on June 13, 2012, adopted earlier WTO reports finding that the U.S. labeling system did indeed discriminate against Mexican tuna and violated the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. In its proposed rule, NOAA would expand its current requirements so all tuna products labeled dolphin-safe not just tuna harvested by large purse seines in the ETP would be required to have verification statements from captains, and in some cases observers, that no dolphins were killed or seriously injured while harvesting the tuna. In addition, there are new storage requirements so tuna caught using gear designated as dolphin-safe has to be stored separately from tuna caught in non-dolphin-safe gear from the time of capture through unloading. This case is an important one as some countries use non-tariff barriers to protect
their domestic industries or to advance environmental goals. (See a 1996 CEI article about the Basel Conventions impact on international trade.)
NOAA key Boxall 13 (Bettina, Pulitzer Prize winner in 2009, 4/6/13, NOAA expanding dolphin-safe tuna certification requirements, LA
Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/06/science/la-sci-sn-noaa-rule-dolphin-safe-tuna-20130405, DOA 7/11/13, Keerthi) What
were trying to do is to bring everybody all around the world to the same standard as weve been applying in the eastern tropical Pacific, said Kevin Chu, deputy southwest regional administrator for
the national fisheries agency. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the author of the 1990 dolphin-safe tuna law, praised the proposal, which will be open to public comment for 30 days. Numerous
times over the last 20 years the dolphin-safe label has been in great jeopardy, she said in a statement. I am pleased that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reaffirmed its commitment to protecting the integrity of this label that consumers have come to trust and rely on.
Plan empirically solves 97% reduction in dolphin deaths Henderson 13

Obama Administration Sides With Consumers and Stands Firm on Dolphin-Safe Tuna Labels; Will the WTO Authorize Trade Sanctions Against the U.S.? Maggie Henderson July 12, 2013 http://www.citizen.org/documents/press-release-noaa-dolphin-tuna-rule-july-2013.pdf NOAAs new policy, supported by Public Citizen and other consumer and environmental groups, addresses the discrimination claim by strengthening the criteria used to assure that tuna caught in other regions and sold under the dolphin-safe label is caught without injuring or killing dolphins. Even before this improvement, the labels contributed to a more than 97 percent reduction in tunafishing-related dolphin deaths in the past 25 years. The labels allow consumers to vote with their dollars for dolphin-safe methods.
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1AC Biodiversity
Contention 1 is Biodiversity: First, Uniqueness: Status quo Dolphin Encircling will kill dolphin biodiversity: A) Indirect effects on Eastern Tropical Pacific stocks---extensive data. Edwards 7 (Elizabeth, Director at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Fishery Effects on
Dolphins Targeted by Tuna Purse-seiners in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean International Journal of Comparative Psychology, DOA 7/17/13, Keerthi) However, despite this dramatic decrease in purse-seine mortality, at least two stocks, northeastern offshore spotted and spinner dolphins, have not been recovering as expected (Gerrodette & Forcada, 2005). Because fishing effort on dolphins remains high (10,000-14,000 purse-seine sets per year (Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, 2004)), with each spotted dolphin being chased about 11 times and captured about 3 times per year, on average (Reilly et al., 2005), it is hypothesized that indirect effects of the fishery may adversely impact ETP dolphins. This potential for ongoing adverse fishery
interactions has led to a - 218 - variety of research projects addressing the possibility that fishery effects (interactions) may be contributing to the lack of population recovery through unobserved effects on
the issue of adverse fishery effects (in addition to direct mortality) on ETP dolphins has been of concern since the early days of the fishery (e.g., Stuntz & Shay, 1979; Cowan & Walker, 1979; Coe & Stuntz, 1980) research through the early 1990s focused primarily on reducing directly-observed mortality in the purse-seines. Once the current low level of purse-seine mortality had been achieved, research focus turned to investigating other types of fishery effects. A major series of research projects was initiated between 1997 and 2002, in accord with mandates of the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act (IDCPA), an amendment to the US Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) (Reilly et al., 2005). IDCPA-mandated fishery effects studies focused on the question is the fishery having a significant adverse impact on ETP dolphins? and included four related projects broadly characterized as stress studies. These included 1) a review of current knowledge of stress physiology in mammals, with emphasis on marine mammal physiology, 2) a necropsy program to examine dolphins killed during purse-seining operations, 3) a chaserecapture experiment in situ using a chartered purse-seine vessel, and 4) various analyses of existing (historical) data (Reilly et al., 2005). The effect of related noise was not specifically investigated as a stressor in these studies, but contributes to fishery- related stress in
dolphin survival or reproduction. Although terms of initiating the significant and prolonged evasion responses typical of dolphin schools chased and encircled by tuna purse-seiners in the ETP (Au & Perryman, 1982; Hewitt, 1985; Chivers & Scott, 2002). The IDCPA research program also included a suite of studies to estimate current abundances, monitor environmental associations and their potential effects, and assess status and trends of these dolphin populations. Results of those studies are not covered here. This paper summarizes results from completed studies and presents status reports for ongoing and proposed studies addressing the question of whether fishery interactions may be negatively affecting population recovery of ETP dolphins
B) Disruption of normal mammalian activities---hurts reproduction and metabolism. Edwards 7 (Elizabeth, Director at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Fishery Effects on
Dolphins Targeted by Tuna Purse-seiners in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean International Journal of Comparative Psychology, DOA 7/17/13, Keerthi)
The stress literature review summarized current knowledge about the effects of physiological and behavioral stress in mammals, and related that information to potential effects on dolphins chased and encircled by tuna purse- seiners (Curry, 1999; St. Aubin, 2002a).
that tuna purse- seine fishing activities entail well-recognized stressors in other mammals, especially wild animals, including prolonged heavy exertion, social disturbance, and disruption of normal activities such as foraging. Typical mammalian responses to such disturbances include changes in metabolism, growth, reproduction, and immune status, any of which, alone or in combination, could significantly affect survival and reproduction. Of particular concern for ETP dolphins prolonged heavy exertion in other wild mammals can lead to capture myopathy , the types of stressors presented by tuna purse-seine activities affect dolphin survival
The review concluded was the observation that . Although specific response levels to specific stressors differ in detail between different mammals and environments, the review found that in general may , but quantitative estimates of the magnitude of these effects are not available (Curry, 1999; Reilly et al., 2005).
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C) Introduces unknown diseases, cardiac problems, and cell damage. Edwards 7 (Elizabeth, Director at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Fishery Effects on
Dolphins Targeted by Tuna Purse-seiners in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean International Journal of Comparative Psychology, DOA 7/17/13, Keerthi) The necropsy study examined various physical characteristics of dolphins accidentally killed during tuna purse-seine operations. Due to logistic difficulties, only 56 dolphins were sampled during the 3-year study, far fewer than the desired minimum (for statistical power) of 300 dolphins per stock. However, although the small sample size precluded population-level conclusions, results provided revealing snapshots of physiological conditions and characteristics of dolphins killed in the nets. Various diseases unrelated to the fishery, but characteristic of normally healthy populations of wild mammals, were found in the majority of the dolphins (Cowan & Curry, 2002). Lymph nodes indicated normal, active lymphoid systems (Romano, Abella, Cowan, & Curry, 2002a). Heart, lungs and kidney contained lesions directly linked to death by asphyxiation, possibly resulting from an overwhelming alarm reaction leading to death by cardiac arrest (Cowan & Curry, 2002). Tissue abnormalities presenting as patchy fibrous scars in heart muscle and associated blood vessels may have formed previously in response to excess secretion of stress hormones, possibly indicating prior stress responses (e.g., possibly to fishery activity or predation attempts), although the direct cause and physiological consequences of the lesions could not be determined (Cowan & Curry, 2002). Opportunistic samples of skeletal muscle showed cell damage similar to that in heart muscle, indicative of a degree of capture myopathy that could lead to unobserved mortality in some cases (Reilly et al., 2005).
D) Mother-Calf separation---specifically with the Bottlenose Dolphin. Edwards 7 (Elizabeth, Director at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center, Fishery Effects on
Dolphins Targeted by Tuna Purse-seiners in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean International Journal of Comparative Psychology, DOA 7/17/13, Keerthi)
Following
discovery of the significant discrepancy between mortality of lactating females and nursing calves (Archer et al., 2001),
additional research
quantified the calf deficit, determining that 75-95% of lactating females killed in tuna purse-seine sets are killed without an accompanying calf (Archer et al., 2004). Given the importance of the mother-calf bond to calf survival, and the potential for mating failure, fetal resorption or abortion in response to fishery activities, research subsequent to the IDCPA has focused on effects that fishery interactions may have on ETP dolphin mother-calf pairs, reproduction and calf survival. Mother-calf research has focused on factors that can be expected to affect the proximity of mothers and calves during attempted evasion of purse-seine sets, with particular emphasis on the swimming behavior known as drafting in echelon position whereby the calf positions itself slightly above and behind the
mothers midsection (Norris & Prescott, 1961). Mathematical and aerodynamic modeling of movement forces (Weihs, 2004; Weihs, Ringel, & Victor, 2006) and empirical kinematic analyses of swimming
motions of bottlenose dolphin mothers and calves from birth through two years postpartum (Noren et al., 2006, Noren et al., 2007) both confirmed and quantified the significant hydrodynamic advantages (decreased cost of swimming and/or increased velocity) enjoyed by dolphin calves swimming in echelon, as well as the hydrodynamic disadvantages (decreased swim performance and increased swim effort) suffered by dolphin mothers (Noren, 2007). Mother dolphins swimming in echelon swim only about half as fast at mothers swimming independently (Noren,
2007), while 0-1 month calves in swimming echelon experience a 28% increase in average swim speed, 22% reduction in fluke stoke amplitude, and 19% increase in distance per stoke compared to calves swimming independently (Noren et al., 2007). Neonate dolphin calves can gain up to 90% of the thrust needed to move through the water alongside the mother at speeds up to 2.4 m/sec (Weihs, 2004), while mean and maximum swim speeds of 0-1 month old calves swimming independently were only 37% and 52% of adult speeds, with adult levels not achieved until at least one - 223 - year postpartum (Noren et al., 2006). Stroke
amplitude and distance covered per stroke were also significantly lower than adult levels for independently swimming calves during the first year postpartum. Lower size-specific swim speed in 0-3 month olds compared to calves older than 10 months indicated that factors other than size (e.g., underdeveloped physiology) act synergistically with small body size to limit independent swim performance in
dolphins during ontogeny (Noren et al., 2006). The modeling studies also revealed the importance of precise positioning for effective
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drafting, and included an observation of disrupted drafting when a neonate calf lost coordination during a respiratory leap attempted during escape-speed swimming in the ETP (Weihs, 2004). The importance of drafting for remaining associated with adults is illustrated by energetics modeling of swim speed duration capacity of independently-swimming (non-drafting) ETP spotted dolphins. Neonate spotted dolphins require 3.6 times more power per kilogram of muscle than an adult, to swim the same speed, and have a burst maximum speed of about 3 m/sec compared to an adults 6 m/sec (Edwards, 2006). Even
at two years of age, spotted dolphin calves must produce about 40% more power per kilogram of muscle than an adult to swim a given speed. Loss of the drafting advantage due to high-speed, fast maneuvering swimming during evasion of tuna purse-seine sets appears to be a significant and plausible source for the observed calf deficit.
E) Calf-orphaning alone makes population recovery impossible---independently, Purse-Seine fishing destroys the ETP ecosystem. Wade et al. 7 (Paul R., George M. Watters, Tim Gerrodette, Stephen B. Reilly, All scientists at
NOAA Fisheries, Alaska Fisheries Science Center and Southwest Fisheries Science Cetner, Protected Resources Division and National Marine Mammal Laboratory, Depletion of spotted and spinner dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific: modeling hypotheses for their lack of recovery, Marin Ecology Progress Series Vol. 343:1-14, http://www.intres.com/articles/feature/m343p001.pdf, DOA 7/17/13, Keerthi) On the other hand, observations of mother calf separation (Archer et al. 2001), declines in the numbers of calves (K. Cramer, W. Perryman, T. Gerrodette unpubl. data), and high fetal mortality (Perrin 1968) are population-level effects that directly address the lack of recovery. The calf deficits estimated from cows that were killed without their calves indicate minimum levels of additional mortality (about 14 % yr 1) not included in Table 1 (Archer et al. 2004). Reduced swimming ability and stamina of dolphin calves make mother-calf separation during fishing activity more likely, particularly during the first 6 mo of life
(Edwards 2006, Noren & Edwards 2007); the implication is that the cryptic loss of calves could be much larger. The proportion of calves declined between 1993 and 2003 for both northeastern offshore spotted and eastern spinner dolphins (K. Cramer, W. Perryman, T. Ger- rodette unpubl. data). In the case of spotted dolphins, the number of dolphin sets negatively affected both the proportion of calves in the population and the length of time calves remained with their mothers. Fetal mortality in these dolphin populations is higher than in other mammals (Perrin 1968), but whether this is natural or due to effects of chase and encirclement is not yet known. Ultimately, although the studies identified here demonstrate both potential and definitive fishery effects, we do not know the degree to which these effects are having cumulative impacts on either dolphin stock. It
during which the purse-seine fishery has operated, there have been changes in the structure of the pelagic ecosystem in the ETP, but these changes have not been linked to the lack of recovery by either dolphin stock. Changes in the physical and ecological environment of the ETP have been documented in (1) oceanography and climate (Fiedler 2002, McPhaden & Zhang 2002, 2004), (2) plankton community structure and dynamics (Bidigare & Ondrusek 1996, Landry et al. 1996), and (3) the abundances of other animals at middle and upper trophic levels (Ballance et al. 2002, Pitman et al. 2002, Watters et al. 2003, Hinke et al. 2004). Fiedler (2002) summarizes the findings of many other
is also clear that, over the past 5 or 6 decades workers who have documented changes in the ETP. In general these changes have not been linked to the dynamics of northeastern offshore spotted and eastern spinner dolphins, because temporal variations in these ecosystem variables largely occur at El Ni o scales, and to some degree at de cadal scales, while this is not the case for temporal
Variations in dolphin abundance have, since the 1960s, primarily been driven by variations in the direct mortality caused by the purse-seine fishery. Nevertheless, the basic principles of ecology tell us
variations in dolphin abundance. that the physical and ecological environment ultimately determines how many dolphins can be supported by the pelagic ecosystem. For example, Watters et al. (2003) predict that a long-term, declining trend in the biomass of large phytoplankton (e.g. diatoms) in the ETP will cause the biomass of dolphins to decline regardless of potential fishery effects. Despite an in- ability to identify ecosystem effects on the recovery of either dolphin stock, this possibility cannot be dismissed.
Its not too late to act- East Pacific Dolphins on the brink play key to solve Fears 13 Dolphin Protection, Tuna Catch in Conflict for U.S., Mexico Darryl Fears;
Washington Post; 05/13/2013 http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_23231971/dolphin-protection-tuna-catch-conflictu-s-mexico#ixzz2ZUOvHDG3 No place in the ocean is like the eastern tropical Pacific, where for reasons that marine biologists don't fully understand, tuna and dolphins swim together. "Marine mammals interact with
most fishing gear only incidentally, but in the ETP tuna fishery, the dolphins are an intrinsic part of the fishing operation," according to NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center. "The fishermen intentionally capture both tuna and dolphins together, then release the dolphins from the net," the center explained in a statement. "The bycatch of dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) purseseine tuna fishery stands apart from marine mammal bycatch in other fisheries, not only in scale but in the way the dolphins interact with the fishery." For several decades starting in the 1950s, an estimated 150,000 dolphins were killed each year by the world's fleets, including those of the United States "estimated to be over 6 million animals, the highest known for any fishery," NOAA
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said. Ship captains have used explosives and sonic noises to round up dolphins and tuna, then circle them with purse-seine nets, huge nets that fold around the prey and are drawn shut. The majority of the dolphins are released alive, NOAA said. In 1988, however, a biologist filmed hundreds of dolphins dying in a purse-seine net from a Panamanian boat, touching off a worldwide boycott of tuna. Two years later, Starkist, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea, the world's largest tuna-canning companies, agreed to stop buying and selling tuna caught in purse-seine nets. Congress blocked tuna fished with purse-seine nets from the U.S. market. In the western and central Pacific, a majority of ships also use purse-seine nets, but take fewer dolphins because they do not swim with tuna as often as in the eastern Pacific, NOAA said. The ships also have the more relaxed level of regulation that prompted Mexico to call foul, NOAA said. About 15 percent of tuna fishing in that area is done by another method, longlines trailing ships with hundreds of baited hooks. The Pew Charitable Trust described longlines as "indiscriminate and wasteful gear" that also "catches and kills more than 80 types" of animals fishermen do not target. The bycatch includes endangered sea turtles, blue and white marlin and severely depleted western Atlantic bluefin tuna. To gain a larger stake of the U.S. market, Mexico works harder than most countries, placing trained observers on larger ships to monitor the dolphin catch. "We make fishermen do things that no other fishery imposes. Very few fisheries require 100 percent observer coverage," Aguilar said. "It's really frustrating because we have answered everything the agreement has called for." NOAA acknowledges that. The
bycatch of dolphins in the ETP tuna fishery has been reduced by more than 99 percent, the agency said. However, NOAA added, "Even at the present level of about 1,000 dolphins per year, it remains among the largest documented cetacean bycatch in the world." Today the dolphin population in the eastern Pacific is struggling to recover. "That's the reason why the [eastern Pacific] is the focal point" of strong regulations, said Rodney McInnis, administrator of the southwest region of NOAA Fisheries. "In other oceans
marine mammals are occasionally harmed, but it's not the practice to intentionally set gear to capture dolphin. That's why we treated it different from the rest of the world."
Next, Internal Links: Dolphins are the lynchpin of ecosystems---proactive measures like the aff are key to save these keystone species. Wells et al. 4 (Randall Wells, Rhinehart, Howard; Hansen, Larry; Sweeney, Jay; Townsend,
Forrest; Stone, Rae; Casper, David R.; Scott, Michael; Hohn, Aleta; Rowles, Teri, September 04, Bottlenose Dolphins as Marine Ecosystem Sentinels: Developing a Health Monitoring System, EcoHealth, Volume 1, Number 3, pp. 246-254) Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus), as long-lived, long-term residents of bays, sounds, and estuaries, can serve as important sentinels of the health of coastal marine ecosystems. As top-level predators on a wide variety of fishes and squids, they concentrate contaminants through bioaccumulation and integrate broadly across the ecosystem in terms of exposure to environmental impacts. A series of recent large-scale bottlenose dolphin mortality events prompted an effort to develop a proactive approach to evaluating risks by monitoring living dolphin populations rather than waiting for large numbers of
carcasses to wash up on the beach. A team of marine mammal veterinarians and biologists worked together to develop an objective, quantitative, replicable means of scoring the health of dolphins, based on comparison of 19 clinically diagnostic blood parameters to normal baseline values. Though the scoring system appears to roughly reflect dolphin health, its general applicability is hampered by interlaboratory variability, a lack of independence between some of the variables, and the possible effects of weighting variables. High score variance seems to indicate that the approach may lack the sensitivity to identify trends over time at the population level. Potential solutions to this problem include adding or replacing health parameters, incorporating only the most sensitive measures, and supplementing these with additional measures of health, body condition, contaminant loads, or biomarkers of contaminants or their effects that can also be replicated from site to site. Other quantitative approaches are also being explored.
Next, Impacts: Specific hotspot biodiversity checks extinction. Key to ag, medicine and disease prevention, and ecosystems. Mittermeier 11 (et al, Dr. Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist, herpetologist and biological anthropologist. He
holds Ph.D. from Harvard in Biological Anthropology and serves as an Adjunct Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has conducted fieldwork for over 30 years on three continents and in more than 20 countries in mainly tropical locations. He is the President of Conservation International and he is considered an expert on biological diversity. Mittermeier has formally discovered several monkey species. From Chapter One of the book Biodiversity Hotspots F.E. Zachos and J.C. Habel (eds.), DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-20992-5_1, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011. This evidence also internally references Norman Myers, a very famous British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity. available at: http://www.academia.edu/1536096/Global_biodiversity_conservation_the_critical_role_of_hotspots)
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Extinction is the gravest consequence of the biodiversity crisis, since it is irreversible. Human activities have elevated the rate of species extinctions to a thousand or more times the natural
background
rate
(Pimm et al. 1995). What are the consequences of this loss? Most obvious among them may be the
lost opportunity for future resource use. Scientists have discovered a mere fraction of Earths species (perhaps fewer than 10%, or even 1%) and understood the biology of even fewer (Novotny et al. 2002). As
species vanish, so too does the health security of every human. Earths species are a vast genetic storehouse that may harbor a cure for cancer, malaria, or the next new pathogen cures waiting to be discovered. Compounds initially derived from wild species
account for more than half of all commercial medicines even more in developing nations (Chivian and Bernstein 2008). Natural forms, processes, and ecosystems provide blueprints and inspiration for a growing array of new materials, energy sources, hi-tech devices, and other innovations (Benyus 2009). The current loss of species has been compared to burning down the worlds libraries without knowing the content of 90% or more of the books. With
loss of species, we lose the ultimate source of our crops and the genes we use to improve agricultural resilience, the inspiration for manufactured products, and the basis of the structure and function of the ecosystems that support humans and all life on Earth
(McNeely et al. 2009). Above and beyond material welfare and livelihoods, biodiversity contributes to security, resiliency, and freedom of choices and actions (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Less
tangible, but no less important, are the cultural, spiritual, and moral costs inflicted by species extinctions. All societies value species for their own sake, and wild plants and animals are integral to the fabric of all the worlds cultures (Wilson 1984). The road to extinction is made even more perilous to people by the
loss of the broader ecosystems that underpin our livelihoods, communities, and economies(McNeely et al.2009). The loss of coastal wetlands and mangrove forests, for example, greatly exacerbates both human mortality and economic damage from tropical cyclones (Costanza et al.2008; Das and Vincent2009), while disease outbreaks such as the 2003 emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in East Asia have been directly connected to trade in wildlife for human consumption(Guan et al.2003). Other consequences of biodiversity loss, more subtle but equally damaging, include the deterioration of Earths natural capital. Lo ss of biodiversity on land in the past decade alone is estimated to be costing the global economy $500 billion annually (TEEB2009). Reduced diversity may also reduce resilience of ecosystems and the human communities that depend on them. For example, more diverse coral reef communities have been found to suffer less from the diseases that plague degraded reefs elsewhere (Raymundo et al.2009). As Earths climate changes, the roles of species and ecosystems will only increase in their importance to humanity (Turner et al.2009). In many respects, conservation is local. People generally care more about the biodiversity in the place in which they live. They also depend upon these ecosystems the most and, broadly speaking, it is these areas over which they have the most control. Furthermore, we believe that all biodiversity is important and that every nation, every region, and every community should do everything possible to conserve their living resources. So, what is the importance of setting global priorities?
Extinction is a global phenomenon, with impacts far beyond nearby administrative borders.
More practically, biodiversity, the threats to it, and the ability of countries to pay for its conservation vary around the world. The vast majority of the global conservation budget perhaps 90% originates in and is spent in economically wealthy countries (James et al.1999). It is thus critical that those globally exible funds available in the hundreds of millions annually be guided by systematic priorities if we are to move deliberately toward a global goal of reducing biodiversity loss. The establishment of priorities for biodiversity conservation is complex, but can be framed as a single question. Given the choice, where
should
action toward reducing the loss of biodiversity be implemented rst ? The eld of conservation planning addresses this question and revolves around a framework of vulnerability and irreplaceability (Margules
and Pressey2000). Vulnerability measures the risk to the species present in a region if the species and ecosystems that are highly threatened are not protected now, we will not get another chance in the future. Irreplaceability measures the extent to which spatial substitutes exist for securing biodiversity. The number of species alone is an inadequate indication of conserva-tion priority because several areas can share the same species. In contrast, areas with high levels of endemism are irreplaceable. We must conserve these places because the unique species they contain cannot be saved elsewhere. Put another way, biodiversity is not evenly distributed on our planet. It is heavily concentrated in certain areas, these areas have exceptionally high concentrations of endemic species found nowhere else, and many (but not all) of these areas are the areas at greatest risk of disappearing because of heavy human impact. Myers seminal paper (Myers1988) was the rst application of the principles of irreplaceability and vulnerability to guide conservation planning on a global scale. Myers
described ten tropical forest hotspots on the basis of extraordinary plant endemism and high levels of habitat loss, albeit without quantitative criteria for the
designation of hotspot status. A subsequent analysis added eight additional hotspots, including four from Mediterranean-type ecosystems (Myers 1990).After adopting hotspots as an institutional blueprint in 1989, Conservation Interna-tional worked with Myers in a rst systematic update of the hotspots. It introduced two strict quantitative criteria: to qualify as a hotspot, a region had to contain at least 1,500 vascular plants as endemics ( > 0.5% of the worlds total), and it had to have 30% or less of its original vegetation (extent of historical habitat cover)remaining. These efforts culminated in an (Mittermeier et al.1999) and scientic publication (Myers et al.2000) that introduced
extensive global review seven new hotspots on the
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basis of both the better-dened criteria and new data. A second systematic update (Mittermeier et al.2004) did not change
the criteria, but revisited the set of hotspots based on new data on the distribution of species and threats, as well as genuine changes in the threat status of these regions. That update redened several hotspots, such as the Eastern Afromontane region, and added several others that were suspected hotspots but for which sufcient data either did not exist or were not accessible to conservation scientists outside of those regions. Sadly, it uncovered another region the East Melanesian Islands which rapid habitat destruction had in a short period of time transformed from a biodiverse region that failed to meet the less than 30% of original vegetation remaining criterion to a genuine hotspot.
Well impact ag and medicine--First, Agriculture is the biggest impact and solves extinction. Lugar 11 (Richard G., U.S. Senator Indiana and Former Chair Senate Foreign Relations
Committee, Plant Power, Our Planet, 14(3), http://www.unep.org/ourplanet/imgversn/143/lugar.html) of the long-range challenges the most daunting of them is meeting the worlds need for food and energy At stake is not only preventing starvation and saving the environment, but also world peace and security states may go to war over access to resources, and that poverty and famine have often bred fanaticism and terrorism Working to feed the world will minimize factors that contribute to global instability and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction the demand for affordable food will increase People in rapidly developing nations will have the means greatly to improve their standard of living and caloric intake This will raise demand for feed grain at the same time that the growing world population will need vastly more basic food to eat As good land disappears, people destroy timber resources and even rainforests as they try to create more arable land to feed themselves. The long-term environmental consequences could be disastrous for the entire globe
In a world confronted by global terrorism, turmoil in the Middle East, burgeoning nuclear threats and other crises, it is easy to lose sight . But we do so at our peril. One of in this century. . History tells us that . people today to 9 billion by mid-century, well beyond current international production levels. . Inevitably, that means eating more meat. . Complicating a solution to this problem is a dynamic that must be better understood in the West: developing countries often use limited arable land to expand cities to house their growing populations. . Productivity revolution To meet the expected demand for food over the next 50 years, we in the United States will have to grow roughly three times more food on the land we have. Thats a tall ord er. My farm in Marion County, Indiana, for example, yields on average 8.3 to 8.6 tonnes of corn per hectare typical for a farm in central Indiana. To triple our production by 2050, we will have to produce an annual average of 25 tonnes per hectare. Can we possibly boost output that much? Well, its been done before. Advances in the use of fertilizer and water, improved machinery and better tilling techniques combined to generate a threefold increase in yields since 1935 on our farm back then, my dad produced 2.8 to 3 tonnes per hectare. Much US agriculture has seen similar increases. But of course there is no guarantee that we can achieve those results again. Given the urgency of that promise to to meet world demand, we must invest much more in scientific research and target that money toward projects
. With the world population expected to grow from 6 billion
expanding food production have significant national and global impact that will be necessary to feed the world. The United States can take a leading position in a productivity revolution. And our success at increasing food production may play a decisive role in the survival of billions of people and the health of our planet
. For the United States, that will mean a major shift in the way we conduct and fund agricultural science. Fundamental research will generate the innovations humanitarian .
Secondly, disease spread causes extinction Yu 9 (Victoria, 5/22/09, Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate. Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of
Science. http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/spring-2009/human-extinction-the-uncertainty-of-our-fate) Citing the CDC and R. Calsbeek, a lecturer at Dartmouth A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the
the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIVs rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the viruss abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIVs use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an
best-known case was error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift
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(point mutations that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus
could produce a new version of influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure.
Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could potentially lead to a global influenza pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain which could only infect birds into a human-viable strain (10).
Independently, ocean ecosystem destruction will ensure planetary extinction Craig 03 Associate Professor at Indiana University School of Law *Robin Kundis, Taking Steps
Toward Marine Wilderness Protection, McGeorge Law Review, Winter, 34 McGeorge L. Rev. 155, LN]
Biodiversity and ecosystem function arguments for conserving marine ecosystems also exist, just as they do for terrestrial ecosystems, but these arguments have thus far rarely been raised in political debates. For example, besides significant tourism values - the most economically valuable ecosystem service coral reefs provide, worldwide - coral reefs protect against storms and dampen other environmental fluctuations, services worth more than ten times the reefs' value for food production. 856 Waste treatment is another significant, non-extractive ecosystem function that intact coral reef ecosystems provide. 857 More generally, "ocean
ecosystems play a major role in the global geochemical cycling of all the elements that represent the basic building blocks of living organisms, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur, as well as other less abundant but necessary elements." 858 In a very real and direct sense, therefore, human degradation of marine ecosystems impairs the planet's ability to support life .
Maintaining biodiversity is often critical to maintaining the functions of marine ecosystems. Current evidence shows that, in general, an ecosystem's ability to keep functioning in the face of disturbance is strongly dependent on its biodiversity, "indicating that more diverse ecosystems are more stable." 859 Coral reef ecosystems are particularly dependent on their biodiversity. [*265] Most ecologists agree that the complexity of interactions and degree of interrelatedness among component species is higher on coral reefs than in any other marine environment. This implies that the ecosystem functioning that produces the most highly valued components is also complex and that many otherwise insignificant species have strong effects on sustaining the rest of the reef system. 860 Thus, maintaining and restoring the biodiversity of marine ecosystems is critical to maintaining and restoring the ecosystem services that they provide. Non-use biodiversity values for marine ecosystems have been calculated in the wake of marine disasters, like the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. 861 Similar calculations could derive preservation values for marine wilderness. However, economic value, or economic value equivalents, should not be "the sole or even primary justification for conservation of ocean ecosystems. Ethical arguments also have considerable force and merit." 862 At the forefront of such arguments should be a recognition of how little we know about the sea - and about the actual effect of human activities on marine ecosystems. The United States has traditionally failed to protect marine ecosystems because it was difficult to detect anthropogenic harm to the oceans, but we now know that such harm is occurring - even though we are not completely sure about causation or about how to fix every problem. Ecosystems like the NWHI coral reef ecosystem should inspire lawmakers and policymakers to admit that most of the time we really do not know what we are doing to the sea and hence should be preserving marine wilderness whenever we can - especially when the United States has within its territory relatively pristine marine ecosystems that may be unique in the world. We
may not know much about the sea, but we do know this much: if we kill the ocean we kill ourselves, and we will take most of the biosphere with us. The Black Sea is almost
dead, 863 its once-complex and productive ecosystem almost entirely replaced by a monoculture of comb jellies, "starving out fish and dolphins, emptying fishermen's nets, and converting the web of life into brainless, wraith-like blobs of jelly." 864 More importantly, the Black Sea is not necessarily unique.
Regardless of any other impact, you have an a-priori obligation to default to bio-d and species extinction---neglecting it makes human extinction possible and its the only impact that transcends this debate. Bookchin 87 (Murray Bookchin, co-founder of the Institute of Social Ecology, 1987, "An
Appeal For Social and Psychological Sanity," The Modern Crisis, Published by Black Rose Books Ltd., ISBN 0920057624, p. 106-108) Industrially and technologically, we are moving at an ever-accelerating pace toward a yawning chasm with our eyes completely blindfolded. From the 1950s onward, we have placed ecological burdens upon our planet that have no precedent in human history. Our impact on our environment has been nothing less than appalling. The problems raised by acid rain alone are striking examples of
[end page 106] innumerable problems that appear everywhere on our planet. The concrete-like clay layers, impervious to almost any kind
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of plant growth, replacing dynamic soils that once supported lush rain forests remain stark witness to a massive erosion of soil in all regions north and south of our equatorial belt. The equatora cradle not only of our weather like the ice caps but a highly complex network of animal and plant lifeis being denuded to a point where vast areas of the region look like a barren moonscape. We no longer "cut" our foreststhat celebrated "renewable resource" for fuel, timber, and paper. We sweep them up like dust with a rapidity and "efficiency" that renders any claims to restorative action mere media-hype. Our
entire planet is thus becoming simplified, not only polluted. Its soil is turning into sand. Its stately forests are rapidly being replaced by tangled wee ds and scrub, that is, where vegetation in any complex form can be sustained at all. Its wildlife ebbs and flows on the edge of extinction, dependent largely on whether one or two nationsor governmental administrationsagree that certain sea and land mammals, bird species, or, for that matter, magnificent trees are "worth" rescuing as lucrative items on corporate balance sheets. With each such loss, humanity, too, loses a portion of its own character structure: its sensitivity toward life as such, including human life, and its rich wealth of sensibility. If we can learn to ignore the destiny of whales and condorsindeed, turn their fate into chic clicheswe can learn to ignore the destiny of Cambodians in Asia, Salvadorans in Central America, [end page 107] and, finally, the human beings who people our communities. If we reach this degree of degradation, we will then become so spiritually denuded that we will be capable of ignoring the terrors of thermonuclear war. Like the biotic ecosystems we have simplified with our lumbering and slaughtering technologies, we will have simplified the psychic ecosystems that give each of us our personal uniqueness. We will have rendered our internal mileau as homogenized and lifeless as our external milieuand a biocidal war will merely externalize the deep sleep that will have already claimed our spiritual and moral integrity. The process of simplification, even more significantly than pollution, threatens to destroy the restorative powers of nature and humanitytheir common ability to efface the forces of destruction and reclaim the planet for life and fecundity. A humanity disempowered of its capacity to change a misbegotten "civilization," ultimately divested of its power to resist, reflects a natural world disempowered of its capacity to reproduce a green and living world.
Recent international accords verify our prior question claim---dolphins fall under deontological and utilitarian calculus- STAR THIS CARD! Bridgeman 6/12 (Laura, 2013, What Indias Decision to Ban Dolphin Captivity Means, Earth
Island Journal Magazine, http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/what_indias_decision_to_ban_d olphin_captivity_means/, Accessed 7/25/13, Keerthi) The Indian Ministry of Environment and Forests decision to ban dolphin captivity within India has been making waves around the world. The unprecedented decision is particularly significant because it reflects an increasing global understanding that dolphins deserve better protections based on who rather than what they are. The decision, outlined in a circular released by the Central Zoo Authority, states that because dolphins are by nature highly intelligent and sensitive, they ought to be seen as nonhuman persons and should have their own specific rights. It says that it is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purposes. "This opens up a whole new discourse of ethics in the animal protection movement in India," Puja Mitra from the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organizations (FIAPO), the
group leading the campaign to ban dolphinariums in India, said after the environment ministry announced its decision last month. The move came after months of protests against a proposed dolphin park in the southern state of Kerala and plans for several other marine mammal parks in other parts of the country. Animal welfare groups have long been arguing that dolphins ought to be considered nonhuman persons, but to many people the concept of personhood remains unclear. It is therefore useful to understand precisely what personhood implies, why it is featured so prominently in the Indian announcement of a ban on dolphinariums, and how it is increasingly relevant within
The concept of nonhuman personhood is grounded in the distinction between who and what. These two broad categories encompass everything on (and off) the planet humans are persons (who), while
discussions of cetacean welfare. things (what) include all nonhuman life and all inanimate objects, from bacteria to monkeys to stars. As Dr. Thomas White explains in his book, In Defense of Dolphins (2007),
for something to be classified as a person, it is recognized as having certain characteristics, such as self-awareness, emotions, cognitive complexity, and other attributes we associate with humans. Having these characteristics means that the organism has basic needs that must be satisfied in order for it to live a fulfilled, healthy life, and that when these needs are not met, it results in suffering. Society bestows certain rights unto persons in order to ensure these
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needs are met and safeguarded. The needs of life, liberty, and freedom from harm, for example, form the basis of human rights. On the other hand, being classified as a thing either denotes an inanimate object or a nonhuman
organism, both of which are assumed as not having the same needs as humans because neither are believed to experience, in a human way, significant pain, pleasure, or similar
Despite the fact that some humane laws exist to prevent unnecessary cruelty, animals are still considered property and are usually denied the basic rights of life, liberty or freedom from harm. The outcome of this blanketing distinction is that dolphins have much the same rights as inanimate objects. The captivity industry benefits from this distinction: they are able to exploit the lives of dolphins by denying them freedom and being allowed to cause them harm (and the
sensations that stem from possessing some degree of mental sophistication. captivity industry has become adept at hiding the harm they cause to dolphins in their care). The assumption that dolphins have no needs is also what allows fishermen Taiji, Japan to post signs that say, These dolphins are owned by Fisherman Association, and why they are allowed to slaughter hundreds of them at the notorious cove each year.
It is proven that dolphins possess most, if not all, of the characteristics to qualify as persons: they are self-aware; they can make decisions and solve complex problems. Their brain structure indicates that they likely experience emotions, they live in complex cultures, and they use tools. It can be safely assumed that they have the capacity to reflect upon their own lives and that their minds allow them to feel and think about pain. The Taiji dolphins know that their family is being slaughtered all around them. (Even scientists say that the way dolphins are slaughtered in Taiji is unnecessarily cruel.) These are the reasons that the Indian circular stipulates that dolphins should be given certain basic rights not the right to vote, mind you, but merely the rights not to be captured, confined, or killed, in order to prevent the suffering that they most likely experience when these rights are violated. So far the announcement has been met with a positive response from governing bodies in India. "(Dolphin captivity) is illegal now," said N. Venugopal, who
The designation of dolphins as property begs for revision in light of what science has revealed about dolphins over the last several decades. heads the Greater Cochin Development Authority, one of the agencies in Kerala that was considering a captive facility proposal. "It is over. We will not allow it anymore." It is expected that all relevant agencies and individuals will adhere to the ban. India has carefully considered whether it is morally acceptable to allow dolphin captivity within its borders and has answered this question with a resounding no. This progressive statement is helping to pave the way towards greater public understanding of who dolphins are. Theres a growing understanding that they are intelligent and emotional beings who deserve to be free .
The United States and other
countries should take notice.
Loss of biodiversity turns evolution and resiliency simple ecosystems are more susceptible to collapse and recovery is impossible- keystone species outweigh regular extinctions. Keim 11 (Brandon Keim, Freelance Science Journalist, Wired Science, October 26, 2011 Mass Species Loss Stunts Evolution for
Millions of Years, citing Delayed recovery of non-marine tetrapods after the end-Permian mass extinction tracks global carbon cycle. By Randall B. Irmis and Jessica H. Whiteside. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Vol. 278 No. 1723, Oct. 26, 2011. )
Ecological chaos reigned, with slight natural perturbations of climate and circumstance repeatedly sending these simple new ecosystems into drastic decline. Another eight million years passed before species abundance and ecological richness recovered to pre-extinction levels. Cause and effect are difficult to establish, especially at the distance of geological time, but the patterns fit with evolutionary simulations that show biodiversity loss limiting post-mass extinction recovery in the early Triassic. We are very interested to see that this specimen-oriented study supports our conclusion, said those simulations
authors, paleobiologists Peter Roopnarine of the California Academy of Sciences and the Field Museums Kenneth Angielczyk, in a joint e -mail. It really is a pioneering
If reduced biological diversity really did make it harder for life to rebound, then the most pressing questions arent historical, but immediate. Scientists say that Earth may now be entering another period of mass extinction, with species dying at a pace seen only five times in lifes history, including the Permian-Triassic. Exactly how current extinction rates compare to those episodes is an open question, all the more pressing if modern extinctions represent not just the loss of a lineage but a constraint on evolution for the foreseeable future, if not millions of years to come. Were showing that low-diversity systems take a long time to recover, said Whiteside. When you destroy links in the food web, effects exist that are difficult to see. Normally when people think of extinctions, its of single species. This is a systems approach. According to Roopnarine and Angielczyk, their analyses differ subtly from Whitesides in more precisely tracing post-extinction instabilities to losses of specific animal groups, especially large predators and herbivores. Those equilibrium-maintaining animals are the ones now dying off fastest. Species that survive are often so rare as to be, in ecological parlance, functionally extinct. My own personal feeling is that many modern communities
approach. Whiteside and Irmis plan to conduct similar studies of other mass extinctions.
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are probably well on their way to the type of instability inferred for the Early Triassic, said Roopnarine. The more we und erstand of the workings of these systems, the better equipped we are to make good choices.
Even if extinctions are inevitable, anthropogenic keystone losses cascade, destroy the environment. Navjot S. Sodhi, Barry W. Brook, and Corey J. A. Bradshaw Causes and Consequences of Species Extinctions, No Date, but from bibiliography, later than 2006, http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s5_8879.pdf
Although extinctions are a normal part of evolution, human modifications to the planet in the last few centuries, and perhaps even millennia, have greatly accelerated the rate at which extinctions occur. Habitat loss remains the main driver of extinctions, but it may act synergistically with other drivers such as over- harvesting and pollution, and, in the future, climate change. Large-bodied species, rare species, and habitat specialists are particularly prone to extinction as a result of rapid human modifications of the planet. Ex- tinctions can disrupt vital ecological processes such as pollination and seed dispersal, leading to cascading losses, ecosystem collapse, and a higher extinction rate overall.
Reject environment indicts from before 2011 studies have changed, the risk is too large to take, and theres no redundancy. Science Daily 11 ("Biodiversity Critical for Maintaining Multiple 'Ecosystem Services'" Cites
McGill University, August 19, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110819155422.htm)
Aug. 19, 2011 As biodiversity declines worldwide, there is concern that this will lead to declines in the services that ecosystems provide for people, such as food production,
until now it has been unclear, whether just a few or in fact a large number of the species in an ecosystem are needed to provide ecosystem services. By combining data from 17 of the largest and longest-running biodiversity experiments, scientists from universities across North America and Europe have found that previous studies have underestimated the importance of biodiversity for maintaining multiple ecosystem services across many years and places. "Most previous studies considered only the number of species needed to provide one service under one set of environmental conditions," says Prof. Michel Loreau from McGill University's biology department who supervised the study. "These studies found that many species appeared redundant. That is, it appeared that the extinction of many species would not affect the functioning of the ecosystem because other species could compensate for their loss." Now, by looking at grassland plant species, investigators have found that most of the studied species were important at least once for the maintenance of ecosystem services, because different sets of species were important during different years, at different places, for different services, and under different global change (e.g., climate
carbon storage, and water purification. But or land-use change) scenarios. Furthermore, the species needed to provide one service during multiple years were not the same as those needed to provide multiple services
This means that biodiversity is even more important for maintaining ecosystem services than was previously thought," says Dr. Forest Isbell, the lead author and investigator of this study. "Our results indicate that many species are needed to maintain ecosystem services at multiple times and places in a changing world, and that species are less redundant than was previously thought." The scientists
during one year. " involved in the study also offer recommendations for using these results to prioritize conservation efforts and predict consequences of species extinctions. "It is nice to know which groups of species promoted ecosystem functioning under hundreds of sets of environmental conditions," says Isbell, "because this will allow us to determine whether some species often provide ecosystem services under environmental conditions that are currently common, or under conditions that will become increasingly common in the
The uncertainty over future environmental changes means that conserving as much biodiversity as possible could be a good precautionary approach.
future." But Michel Loreau, of McGill, adds au cautionary note: "We should be careful when making predictions.
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1AC Navy Power

Contention 2 is Navy: Dolphins key to navy: A) Tech development Zyga 6 Marine technology inspired by dolphins' speed Lisa Zyga Jun 06, 2006 Cites Fish, Frank
E. The myth and reality of Grays paradox: implication of dolphin drag reduction for technology. Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. 1 (2006) R17-R25 http://phys.org/news68812337.html Despite the flaws in Grays paradox, however, the dolphin still possesses superior swimming capabilities compared with technologies from nautical engineering. Throughout the past several decades, scientists have offered a plethora of ideas explaining how the dolphin actually swims as quickly as it does. In his review, Fish examines how these ideas reduce drag, which range from mechanisms for
laminar boundary layer conditions (viscous damping and accelerated flow), strategically located skin ridges, skin shedding/secretions, skin heating and others. The two most significant reasons, Fish concludes, are not special mechanisms, but rather the streamlined body shape and behavioral mechanisms. Dolphins
are among the fastest of marine creatures, said Fish. That ability is powered by large muscles that are mechanically linked to an oscillatory pair of flukes, producing thrust with greater efficiency than conventional marine propellers. A dolphins fusiform body shape with its rounded front, maximum thickness at 34-45% of the body length, and
slowly tapering tail allows water to flow inseparably from the body until the tail region. This delayed separation results in a small wake and reduced drag. Further, the crescent design of the flippers, dorsal fin and tail (flukes) of the dolphin reduce drag and can also efficiently generate lift when needed. Because dolphins belong to the cetacean order, they are mammals that require oxygen. However, wave drag at the surface can reach five times the frictional drag for a dolphin at one-half a body length under water, so the animals use a breathing method called porpoising. While maintaining high speeds, a dolphin partakes in a series of rhythmic leaps to the surface, and scientists calculate that it takes less energy to leap at these speeds than to swim an equivalent distance underwater. A second behavioral mechanism that dolphins employ is gliding, a behavior which allows lung collapse and minimizes buoyancy when descending in deep water, conserving both energy and oxygen. Finally, young dolphins often utilize drafting by swimming below the mid-section of the mother, taking advantage of flow structure and energy savings of up to 60%. Fish concluded that although Grays laminar boundary layer may not have been demonstrated for dolphins, the explanation along with some of the other proposed ideas could
still have technological applications. The need to move more economically on or under the water will necessitate the development of better propulsive systems, he said. This will be more important as we further explore the recesses of the ocean, on this planet or others. We currently rely upon rotating propellers to move ships and boats, but these devices have a limited efficient speed range. Fish predicted that the development of new hull designs, skin mechanics and propulsive systems may take advantage of natures swimming mechanisms. Submarine and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) may benefit from copying the body design of dolphins to enhance not just speed but also maneuverability, said Fish. The elastic structure of the dolphin skin and its underlying blubber may serve as a model for future wetsuits or competitive swim suits. The arrangement of fibers applied to competition suits will reduce drag from vibrations and folds produced by the swimming motions of human swimmers. Perhaps swimmers in the next Olympics will wear suits based on dolphins
to break existing records.
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B) Counter terror, detection, deterrence, humanitarian missions- outweighs ALL other tech and robotics inferior. Larsen 11 Harnessing the military power of animal intelligence Kaj Larsen; served as an
active duty member of the U.S. Navy SEALs for five years and was trained in combat diving; August 3, 2011 http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/31/marine.mammals.program/index.html San Diego (CNN) -- In a little-known part of the counter-terrorism world, one of the most effective detection systems is a 600-pound animal that works for about 20 pounds of fish a day. Since the 1960s, the United States
and a handful of other countries have trained
dolphins
and sea lions to
detect
sea mines and swimmers, and to recover inert torpedoes and testing objects used in Naval exercises. Program officials estimate that the sea lions in the Marine Mammal Program have recovered millions of dollars of U.S. Naval torpedoes and instrumentation dropped on the sea floor. The
U.S. Navy kept its Marine Mammal Program a secret until the 1990s, and this spring CNN became one of only a handful of media outlets to see firsthand how the program works. Watch Kaj take part in U.S. Navy marine mammal exercise The
program trains about 75 Pacific bottlenose dolphins, with natural biosonar that tracks better than any manmade device; and 35 California sea lions, with supurb underwater eyesight. Not only do these trained marine mammals
track and retrieve millions of dollars in U.S. military equipment, they are also helping to save lives. The Navy won't disclose whether the dolphins and sea lions have
effectively intercepted terrorists attempting to do harm to any U.S. facilities. Either way, " it serves as a deterrent effect ," says Christian Harris, operations supervisor for the program.
When animals protect Beasts of war The Navy's 'marine mammal militia' The mammals can be deployed via C-130 cargo aircraft to perform their missions anywhere in the world within 72 hours. They have been used in exercises from Alaska to Hawaii, operating in great temperature and environmental ranges. They also have the capability to operate off vessels. Dolphins
most recently were deployed in the Iraq war, performing mine detection and clearance operations in the Persian Gulf to ensure safe passage for humanitarian ships delivering aid. Some of these Iraq war
"veterans" are now back home, tasked with a new mission: guarding nuclear submarines in their homeports of Bremerton, Washington, and Groton, Connecticut. A
key part of the training program is teaching these mammals how to intercept potentially hostile swimmers. There is an entire domain of port and harbor security devoted to anti-combat swimmer or swimmer defense. Combat diving or swimming is practiced by a small contingent of special operations forces around the world. Using an underwater breathing apparatus, at night, is a very stealthy way to come upon a target unannounced and inflict violence of action with the element of surprise. The German Kampfschwimmers, Israel's Shayatet 13, and the U.S. Navy SEALs are generally considered the premier units that train and conduct combat swimmer operations around the world. The Marine Mammal Program was conceived to defend against these kinds of attacks from hostile nations. The program is also positioned to defend against lone swimmer terrorist attacks as well. In 2002, classified reports from the intelligence community, gleaned from interrogations of suspects in Afghanistan, warned that al Qaeda was planning on using scuba divers to attack U.S. Navy vessels in port or at anchor. And just this week a picture emerged on the Facebook page of Oslo terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik, holding a
modified assault rifle in what appears to be a combat diving set-up. How the program started In the 1960s, the U.S. Navy began studying the hydrodynamics of a Pacific white-sided dolphin in an effort to improve torpedo performance. The Navy quickly realized that the incredibly efficient biosonar of the dolphin was excellent for detecting hard-to-find objects -- and people -- underwater. For the next quarter-century, the U.S. Navy secretly honed the technique of using mammals to find both underwater objects, detect mines and combat swimmers. The Navy
deployed dolphins to Vietnam and the Persian Gulf to perform the swimmer interdiction mission. In the 1990s, the U.S. military declassified the Marine Mammal Program and since
then, it has been headquartered at the Point Loma Naval Base in San Diego. The program is managed jointly by the Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific and military explosive experts, who are the backbone of the program. In addition, civilian marine biologists, veterinarians, scientists and handlers are involved in the program. Researchers from institutions like Sea World to UC San Diego regularly collaborate with them for research purposes. The program has an annual operating budget of $20 million, according to Marine Mammal Program director Mike Rothe who expressed confidence that the
program's future funding is not at
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risk. "We don't anticipate any impacts to our budget based on current issues in D.C.," Rothe said. Dogged by accusations of
animal mistreatment and conspiracy theories that the animals are used for offensive operations like mine placement and swimmer attack, the U.S. Navy has been slowly allowing access to the program. In April, CNN got a rare opportunity to witness firsthand how accurate these animals are at detecting possible threats. Trying to outsmart a dolphin Armed with an inert limpet mine, I dove into the chilly waters of San Diego bay to perform five mock attacks on an experimental Navy ship docked to a pier to see how
well these dolphins can find potential attackers in the water. "I hope that one day [new technology] makes the
mammal program obsolete. But right now, this is the best thing out there. --Mike Rothe, director of U.S. Navy marine mammal program RELATED TOPICS Military Technology Aquatic Mammals Both as a surface swimmer and using scuba gear, my experience was identical. I'd progress toward the ship and out of the murky waters of the bay I would feel an aggressive bump -- sort of like getting hit by a battering ram -- indicating the dolphin had marked me and that security forces were on their way to my location. Despite all my efforts at concealment, I was an easy target for the dolphin in its natural environment. Later, I was intercepted by a sea lion who attached a clamplike device to my leg -- allowing the security boat to reel me in. The
final score
mammals 5, combat swimmer 0

of my day of training in the bay: assets. But according to Rothe, nothing
. While it
seems strange that in this digital era, there's such a seemingly lo-fi approach to guard the Navy's most sophisticated and expensive
in today's hi-tech world can compete with these mammals' biosonar abilities. "I hope that one day there is a robot or a UUV [unmanned underwater vehicle] that makes the mammal program obsolete," he said. "But right now this is the best thing out there ."
Naval power solves war and multiple scenarios for extinction Forbes 13 American Seapower: A Global Navy for a Global Mission Randy Forbes; chairman
of the House Armed Services Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee and Co-Chairman of the Navy-Marine Corps Caucus; April 8, 2013 http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2013/04/08/american_seapower_a_global_navy_for _a_global_mission_106530.html Why does the United States maintain such a robust Navy? It's a fundamental question we should be asking because the answer has both major economic and national security implications. Many assume we have a strong Navy simply because others states that may do us harm also have strong Navies or
because the U.S. is flanked by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, waterways potential enemies may use to bring war to our shores. But if we maintained a Navy just to defend our coasts than our current battle force fleet of 285 ships would be more than sufficient for the task. A better question, then, might be to ask what the Nation expects its Navy to provide. A number of enduring American interests present themselves. First, and most importantly, Americans expect to be safe and secure in their homeland. Our
Navy
provides this direct security through what one naval commentator called an extended "defensive perimeter" each and every day. From just off our shores to distant regions of the world, the Navy provides a flexible and scalable means of protecting American core interest of security here at home. Specifically, it performs drug interdictions in the Gulf Coast, provides seabased ballistic missile defense against rogue states, counters weapons of mass destruction from proliferating, prevents hostile states from operating off our shores, and maintains a sea-based nuclear deterrent against the possibility of great power conflict . Second, Americans seek prosperity and economic stability, both at home and abroad. Our globalized economy is driven by the free-flow of trade across the seas, or what a famous American naval theorist from the early 20th century once called "a great highway... a wide common." In fact, roughly 80% of the world's trade
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travels by sea. Massive container ships carrying everything from computers and televisions to petroleum and other essential commodities transit the world's oceans and critical sea lanes each day. Because the stability of America's economy is indelibly linked to the stability of the global economy, our Navy is sized to protect American shipping as well as the flow of global commerce. This occurs at
the low end of the spectrum, where the U.S. Navy has worked with other partner nations to prevent scourges like piracy that can drive up maritime insurance costs. It is also the case at the high end, where states
like Iran threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz and raise world oil prices or China seeks to alter the current rules-based order at sea by intimidating its neighbors over disputed territorial claims. Of course, America can work
with its allies and partner nations to help support this monumental task, but it can never trust the health of its economy to any other Nation. A day when Iran determines which ships can transit the Strait of Hormuz or China dictates commercial passage through the South China Sea is simply unacceptable to American interests. The U.S. Navy exists to ensure that day never comes. Finally, Americans want to remain confident and effective leaders of the international system. This doesn't mean that our commitments need be endless or that we should seek to involve ourselves in areas that we have no economic interest, but it does require the U.S. to remain actively engaged on the world stage. Seapower
offers the most flexible and economical means to accomplish this task. At the most basic level, Naval forces bolster conventional deterrence, helping to reassure allies and put potential adversaries on notice of our ability to respond decisively to aggression. More importantly, and unlike air or land-power, our Navy and Marine Corps team is a highly versatile force that can be tailored to convey different diplomatic messages depending on the situation. In peacetime, naval forces can operate forward, sustaining a regional presence that sends a latent and durable message of deterrence, improve interoperability with foreign Navies through exercises, and help respond to humanitarian disasters. In a crisis, Naval forces can conduct robust military exercises to signal Washington's intentions and build different packages of military power that are scalable to different circumstances. One minor situation may demand a small surface combatant performing a
presence mission and flying the flag, while a more serious crisis could call for an entire Carrier Strike Group conducting training exercises with partner nations. It
is this flexibility of response that makes naval power uniquely suited to an international security environment that requires scalpels in some instances and axes in others. Building American Seapower to meet our global interests demands a Navy of sufficient quality and quantity. Unfortunately, our Navy is currently under-resourced and undersized to meet its core tasks. The unrelenting decline of America's battle force fleet over the last two decades has
now bottomed-out at 285 ships (the Navy's requirement, which has never been met, has ranged from 306-313 ships), and could be reduced to the 240-ship range if $500 billion in sequestration cuts remain in effect. In recent testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Admiral Samuel Locklear, the Commander of Pacific Command (PACOM) asserted that "285 (ships) is not meeting the global demand for the world we find ourselves in today." Even worse, a reduced fleet size coupled with an increased operational tempo has only pushed fleet maintenance and our volunteer force of Sailors and Marines further to the ragged edge. To remedy this shortfall, an independent panel of defense experts called for a fleet of 346 ships in 2010. But while we certainly need more ships, we also need
to build a Navy with the right ships. Simply growing the fleet to a larger size with small surface combatants or auxiliary ships is not sufficient. We must prioritize growing our
attack submarine, destroyer, and amphibious fleets, while also sustaining a fleet of 11 carriers. These platforms are the core workhorses of the battle force fleet. In addition, we
need to work to revitalize our sea control capabilities. Sea control is our ability to control important sea-lanes and drive enemy ships from the sea where and when necessary. The current era where the U.S. Navy finds itself "out-sticked" by Chinese anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) must be reversed. Complicating this challenge further, since 2000 the
Navy has built DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers (32 destroyers and counting now) without canisters for launching its Harpoon ASCM. Developing a new offensive anti-surface weapon (OASuW) with more range and enabling our DDGs to carry the next-generation Harpoon are critical priorities for enabling effective, credible sea-control in the future. The Navy also needs to extend the range of the Littoral Combat Ship's (LCS) anti-surface missiles. Finally, the Navy should continue to invest in its ability to project power ashore. Ultimately, Navies exist to affect decisions where they are made - on the land. The most direct means they have to do this is by projecting power onto "the beach" using land-attack cruise missiles, naval surface fire-support, or facilitating the flow of Marines and/or material to the shore for a range of peacetime and wartime missions. To sustain its power projection capabilities to more confidently operate in the anti-access/area-denial maritime zones of the future, the Navy should focus on extending the range of the carrier air wing (CVW) with unmanned strike platforms, invest in the the quantity and quality of its stand-off weapons, and build a balanced amphibious fleet capable of meeting the requirements we set for it. The
U.S. Navy remains the surest vehicle for protecting American interests and securing global stability. Its unique breadth of
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capabilities give policymakers the flexibility to skillfully manage the emerging threats of the 21st century, whether deterring aggression or responding to natural disasters. No other instrument of national power offers U.S. leaders the range and scope of options available through Seapower. As we seek to prioritize defense spending in a difficult fiscal environment, Washington would do well to remember Theodore Roosevelt's admonition that a powerful Navy is "not a provocation to war... it is the surest guaranty of peace."
The pursuit of hegemony is inevitable, sustainable, and prevents great power war star this card, it answers all turns
Ikenberry, Brooks, and Wohlforth 13 *Stephen G. Brooks is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College, **John Ikenberry is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, **William C. Wohlforth is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College (Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement, January/February 2013, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138468/stephen-g-brooks-g-johnikenberry-and-william-c-wohlforth/lean-forward) Since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a single grand strategy: deep engagement . In an effort to protect its security and prosperity, the country has promoted a liberal economic order and established close defense ties with partners in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. Its military bases cover the map, its ships patrol transit routes across the globe, and tens of thousands of its troops stand guard in allied countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The details of U.S. foreign policy have differed from administration to administration, including the emphasis placed on democracy promotion and humanitarian goals, but for over 60 years, every president has agreed on the fundamental decision to remain deeply engaged in the world, even as the rationale for that strategy has shifted. During the Cold War, the United States' security commitments to Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East served primarily to prevent Soviet encroachment into the world's wealthiest and most resource-rich regions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the aim has become to make these same regions more secure, and thus less threatening to the United States, and to use these security partnerships to foster the cooperation necessary for a stable and open international order. Now, more than ever, Washington might be tempted to abandon this grand strategy
and pull back from the world. The rise of China is chipping away at the United States' preponderance of power, a budget crisis has put defense spending on the chopping block, and two long wars have left the U.S. military and public exhausted. Indeed, even as most politicians continue to assert their commitment to global leadership, a very different view has taken hold among scholars of international relations over the past decade: that the United States should minimize its overseas military presence, shed its security ties, and give up its efforts to lead the liberal international order.
Proponents of retrenchment argue that a globally engaged grand strategy wastes money by subsidizing the defense of well-off allies and generates resentment among foreign populations and governments. A more modest posture, they contend, would put an end to allies' free-riding and defuse anti-American sentiment. Even if allies did not take over every mission the United States now performs, most of these roles have nothing to do with U.S. security
and only risk entrapping the United States in unnecessary wars. In short, those in this camp maintain that pulling back would not only save blood and treasure but also make the United States more secure. They
are wrong. In making their case, advocates of retrenchment overstate the costs of the current grand strategy and understate its benefits. In fact, the budgetary savings of lowering the United States' international profile are debatable, and there is little evidence to suggest that an internationally engaged America provokes other countries to balance against it, becomes overextended, or gets dragged into unnecessary wars. The benefits of deep engagement, on the other hand, are legion. U.S. security commitments reduce competition in key regions and act as a check against potential rivals . They help maintain an open world economy and give Washington leverage in economic negotiations. And they make it easier for the United States to secure cooperation for combating a wide range of global threats.
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Were the United States to cede its global leadership role, it would forgo these proven upsides while exposing itself to the unprecedented downsides of a world in which the country was less secure, prosperous, and influential. AN AFFORDABLE STRATEGY Many advocates of retrenchment consider the United States' assertive global posture simply too expensive. The international relations scholar Christopher Layne, for example, has warned of the country's "ballooning budget deficits" and argued that "its strategic commitments exceed the resources available to support them." Calculating the savings of switching grand strategies, however, is not so simple, because it depends on the expenditures the current strategy demands and the amount required for its replacement numbers that are hard to pin down. If the United States revoked all its security guarantees,
brought home all its troops, shrank every branch of the military, and slashed its nuclear arsenal, it would save around $900 billion over ten years, according to Benjamin Friedman and Justin Logan of the Cato Institute. But few advocates of retrenchment endorse such a radical reduction; instead, most call for "restraint," an "offshore balancing" strategy, or an "over the horizon" military posture. The savings these approaches would yield are less clear, since they depend on which security commitments Washington would abandon outright and how much it would cost to keep the remaining ones.
If retrenchment simply meant shipping foreign-based U.S. forces back to the United States, then the savings would be modest at best, since the countries hosting U.S. forces usually cover a large portion of the basing costs. And if it meant maintaining a major expeditionary capacity, then any savings would again be small, since the Pentagon would still have to pay for the expensive weaponry and equipment required for projecting power abroad. The other side of the cost equation, the price of
continued engagement, is also in flux. Although the fat defense budgets of the past decade make an easy target for advocates of retrenchment, such
high levels of spending aren't needed to maintain an engaged global posture. Spending skyrocketed after
9/11, but it has already begun to fall back to earth as the United States winds down its two costly wars and trims its base level of nonwar spending. As of the fall of 2012, the Defense Department was planning for cuts of just under $500 billion over the next five years, which it maintains will not compromise national security. These reductions would lower military spending to a little less than three percent of GDP by 2017, from its current level of 4.5 percent. The Pentagon could save even more with no ill effects by reforming its procurement practices and compensation policies. Even
without major budget cuts, however, the country can afford the costs of its ambitious grand strategy. The significant increases in military spending proposed by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, during the 2012 presidential campaign
would still have kept military spending below its current share of GDP, since spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would still have gone down and Romney's proposed nonwar spending levels would not have kept pace with economic growth. Small wonder, then, that the case for pulling back rests more on the nonmonetary costs that the current strategy supposedly incurs. UNBALANCED One such alleged
cost of the current grand strategy is that, in the words of the political scientist Barry Posen, it "prompts states to balance against U.S. power however they can." Yet there is no evidence that countries have banded together in anti-American alliances or tried to match the United States' military capacity on their own or that they will do so in the future. Indeed, it's hard to see how the current grand strategy could generate true counterbalancing. Unlike past hegemons, the United States is geographically isolated , which means that it is far less threatening to other major states and that it faces no contiguous great-power rivals that could step up to the task of balancing against it. Moreover, any competitor would have a hard time matching the U.S. military. Not only is the United States so far ahead militarily in both quantitative and qualitative terms, but its security guarantees also give it the leverage to prevent allies from giving military technology to potential U.S. rivals. Because the United States dominates the high-end defense industry, it can trade access to its defense market for allies' agreement not to transfer key military technologies to its competitors. The embargo that the United States has convinced the EU to maintain on military sales to China since 1989 is a case in point. If U.S. global leadership were prompting balancing, then one would expect actual examples of pushback especially during the administration of George W. Bush, who pursued a foreign policy that seemed particularly unilateral. Yet since the Soviet Union collapsed, no major powers have tried to balance against the United States by seeking to match its military might or by assembling a formidable alliance; the prospect is simply too daunting.
Instead, they have resorted to what scholars call "soft balancing," using international institutions and norms to constrain Washington. Setting aside the fact that soft
balancing is a slippery concept and difficult to distinguish from everyday diplomatic competition, it is the global leader, the United States benefits from employing soft-balancing-style leverage more than any other country. After all, today's rules and institutions
wrong to say that the practice only harms the United States. Arguably, as came about under its auspices and largely reflect its interests, and so they are in fact tailor-made for soft balancing by the United States itself. In 2011, for example, Washington coordinated action with several Southeast Asian states to oppose Beijing's claims in the South China Sea by pointing to established international law and norms. Another
argument for retrenchment holds that the United States will fall
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prey to the same fate as past hegemons and accelerate its own decline. In order to keep its ambitious strategy in place, the logic goes, the country will have to divert resources away from more productive purposes infrastructure, education, scientific research, and so on that are necessary to keep its economy competitive. Allies, meanwhile, can get away with lower military expenditures and grow faster than they otherwise would. The historical evidence for this phenomenon is thin; for the most part, past superpowers lost their leadership not because they pursued hegemony but because other major powers balanced against them a prospect that is not in the cards today. (If anything, leading states can use their position to stave off their decline.) A bigger problem with the warnings against "imperial overstretch" is that there is no reason to believe that the pursuit of global leadership saps economic growth. Instead, most studies by economists find no clear relationship between military expenditures and economic decline.
To be sure, if the United States were a dramatic outlier and spent around a quarter of its GDP on defense, as the Soviet Union did in its last decades, its growth and competitiveness would suffer. But in 2012, even as it fought a war in Afghanistan and conducted counterterrorism operations around the globe, Washington spent just 4.5 percent of GDP on defense a relatively small fraction, historically speaking. (From 1950 to 1990, that figure averaged 7.6 percent.) Recent economic difficulties might prompt Washington to reevaluate its defense budgets and international commitments, but that does not mean that those policies caused the downturn. And any money freed up from dropping global commitments would not necessarily be spent in ways that would help the U.S. economy. Likewise, U.S. allies' economic growth rates have nothing to do with any security subsidies they receive from Washington. The contention that lower military expenditures facilitated the rise of Japan, West Germany, and other countries dependent on U.S. defense guarantees may have seemed plausible during the last bout of declinist anxiety, in the 1980s. But these states eventually stopped climbing up the global economic ranks as their per capita wealth approached U.S. levels -- just as standard models of economic growth would predict. Over the past 20 years, the United States has maintained its lead in per capita GDP over its European allies and Japan, even as those countries' defense efforts have fallen further behind. Their failure to modernize their militaries has only served to entrench the United States' dominance. LED NOT INTO TEMPTATION The costs of U.S. foreign policy that matter most, of course,
are human lives, and critics
of an expansive grand strategy worry that the United States might get dragged into unnecessary wars. Securing smaller allies, they argue, emboldens those states to take risks they would not otherwise
accept, pulling the superpower sponsor into costly conflicts -- a classic moral hazard problem. Concerned about the reputational costs of failing to honor the country's alliance commitments, U.S. leaders might go to war even when no national interests are at stake. History
shows, however, that great powers anticipate the danger of entrapment and structure their agreements to protect themselves from it. It is nearly impossible to find a clear case of a smaller power luring a reluctant great power into war. For decades, World War I served as the canonical example of entangling alliances supposedly drawing great powers into a fight, but an outpouring of new historical research has overturned the conventional wisdom, revealing that the war was more the result of a conscious decision on Germany's part to try to dominate Europe than a case of alliance entrapment. If anything, alliances reduce the risk of getting pulled into a conflict . In East
Asia, the regional security agreements that Washington struck after World War II were designed, in the words of the political scientist Victor Cha, to "constrain anticommunist allies in the region that might engage in aggressive behavior against adversaries that could entrap the United States in an unwanted larger war." The same logic is now at play in the U.S.-Taiwanese relationship. After cross-strait tensions flared in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, U.S. officials grew concerned that their ambiguous support for Taiwan might expose them to the risk of entrapment. So the Bush administration adjusted its policy, clarifying that its goal was to not only deter China from an unprovoked attack but also deter Taiwan from unilateral moves toward independence. For many advocates of retrenchment, the problem is that the mere possession of globe-girdling military capabilities supposedly inflates policymakers' conception of the national interest, so much so that every foreign problem begins to look like America's to solve. Critics also argue
that the country's military superiority causes it to seek total solutions to contend, the United States' outsized military creates
security problems, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, that could be dealt with in less costly ways. Only a country that possessed such awesome
military power and faced no serious geopolitical rival would fail to be satisfied with partial fixes, such as containment, and instead embark on wild schemes of democracy building, the argument goes. Furthermore, they
a sense of obligation to do something with it even when no U.S. interests are at stake. As Madeleine Albright, then the U.S.
ambassador to the un, famously asked Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when debating intervention in Bosnia in 1993, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?" If the U.S. military scrapped its forces and shuttered its bases, then the country would no doubt eliminate the risk of entering needless wars, having tied itself to the mast like Ulysses. But if it instead merely moved its forces over the horizon, as is more commonly proposed by advocates of retrenchment, whatever temptations there were to intervene would not disappear. The bigger problem with the idea that a forward posture distorts conceptions of the national interest, however, is that it rests on just one case: Iraq. That war is an outlier in terms of both its high costs (it accounts for some two-thirds of the casualties and budget costs of all U.S. wars since 1990) and the degree to which the United States shouldered them alone. In the Persian Gulf War and the interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya, U.S. allies bore more of the burden, controlling for the size of their economies and populations. Besides, the
Iraq war was not an inevitable consequence of pursuing the United States' existing grand strategy; many scholars and policymakers who prefer an engaged America strongly opposed the war. Likewise, continuing the current grand strategy in no way condemns the United States to more wars like it. Consider how the country, after it lost in Vietnam, waged the rest
of the Cold War with proxies and highly limited interventions. Iraq has generated a similar reluctance to undertake large expeditionary operations -what the political scientist John Mueller has dubbed "the Iraq syndrome." Those
contending that the United States' grand strategy ineluctably leads the country into temptation need to present much more evidence before their case can be convincing. KEEPING THE PEACE Of course, even if it is true that the costs of deep engagement fall far This is Dolphin-ately a winning 1AC. For 2AC cites, email me at ktg9616@seamail.com
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below what advocates of retrenchment claim, they would not be worth bearing unless they yielded greater benefits. In fact, they do. The
most obvious benefit of the current strategy is that it reduces the risk of a dangerous conflict. The United States' security commitments deter states with aspirations to regional hegemony from contemplating expansion and dissuade U.S. partners from trying to solve security problems on their own in ways that would end up threatening other states. Skeptics discount this benefit by arguing that U.S. security guarantees aren't necessary to prevent dangerous rivalries from erupting. They maintain that the high costs of territorial conquest and the many tools countries can use to signal their benign intentions are enough to prevent conflict. In other words, major powers could peacefully manage regional multipolarity without the American pacifier. But that outlook is too sanguine. If Washington got out of East Asia, Japan and South Korea would likely expand their military capabilities and go nuclear , which could provoke a destabilizing reaction from China. It's worth noting that during the Cold War, both South Korea and Taiwan tried to obtain nuclear weapons; the only thing that stopped them was the United States, which used its security commitments to restrain their nuclear temptations. Similarly, were the United States to leave the Middle East, the countries currently backed by Washington notably, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia might act in ways that would intensify the region's security dilemmas. There would even be reason to worry about Europe.
Although it's hard to imagine the return of great-power military competition in a post-American Europe, it's not difficult to foresee governments there refusing to pay the budgetary costs of higher military outlays and the political costs of increasing EU defense cooperation. The result might be a continent incapable of securing itself from threats on its periphery, unable to join foreign interventions on which U.S. leaders might want European help, and vulnerable to the influence of outside rising powers. Given how easily a
U.S. withdrawal from key regions could
lead to dangerous competition , advocates of retrenchment tend to put forth another argument: that such rivalries wouldn't actually
hurt the United States. To be sure, few doubt that the United States could survive the return of conflict among powers in Asia or the Middle East but at what cost? Were
states in one or both of these regions to start competing against one another, they would likely boost their military budgets, arm client states, and perhaps even start regional proxy wars, all of which should concern the United States, in part because its lead in military capabilities would narrow. Greater regional insecurity could also produce cascades of nuclear proliferation as powers such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan built nuclear forces of their own. Those countries' regional competitors might then also seek nuclear arsenals. Although nuclear deterrence can
promote stability between two states with the kinds of nuclear forces that the Soviet Union and the United States possessed, things get shakier when there are multiple nuclear rivals with less robust arsenals. As
the number of nuclear powers increases, the probability of illicit transfers, irrational decisions, accidents, and unforeseen crises goes up. The case for abandoning the United States' global role misses the underlying security logic of the current approach. By reassuring allies and actively managing regional relations , Washington dampens competition in the world's key areas, thereby preventing the emergence of a hothouse in which countries would grow new military capabilities. For proof that this strategy is working, one need look no further than the defense budgets of the current great powers: on average, since 1991 they have kept their military expenditures as a percentage of GDP to
historic lows, and they have not attempted to match the United States' top-end military capabilities. Moreover, all of the world's most modern militaries are U.S. allies, and the United States' military lead over its potential rivals is by many measures growing. On top of all this, the
current grand strategy acts as a hedge against the emergence regional hegemons. Some supporters of retrenchment
argue that the U.S. military should keep its forces over the horizon and pass the buck to local powers to do the dangerous work of counterbalancing rising regional powers. Washington, they contend, should deploy forces abroad only when a truly credible contender for regional hegemony arises, as in the cases of Germany and Japan during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Yet there is already a potential contender for regional hegemony -- China -- and to balance it, the United States will need to maintain its key alliances in Asia and the military capacity to intervene there. The implication is that the United States should get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, reduce its military presence in Europe, and pivot to Asia. Yet that is exactly what the Obama administration is doing. MILITARY DOMINANCE, ECONOMIC PREEMINENCE Preoccupied with security issues, critics of the current grand strategy miss one of its most important benefits: sustaining an open global economy and a favorable place for the United States within it. To be sure, the sheer size of its output would guarantee the United States a major role in the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet
the country's military dominance undergirds its economic leadership. In addition to protecting the world economy from instability, its military commitments and naval superiority help secure the sea-lanes and other shipping corridors that allow trade to flow freely and cheaply. Were the United States to pull back from the world, the task of securing the global commons would get much harder. Washington would have less leverage with which it could convince countries to cooperate on economic matters and less access to the military bases throughout the world needed to keep
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the seas open. A global role also lets the United States structure the world economy in ways that serve its particular economic interests. During the Cold War, Washington used its overseas security commitments to get
allies to embrace the economic policies it preferred -- convincing West Germany in the 1960s, for example, to take costly steps to support the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. U.S. defense agreements work the same way today. For example, when negotiating the 2011 free-trade agreement with South Korea, U.S. officials took advantage of Seoul's desire to use the agreement as a means of tightening its security relations with Washington. As one diplomat explained to us privately, "We asked for changes in labor and environment clauses, in auto clauses, and the Koreans took it all." Why? Because they feared a failed agreement would be "a setback to the political and security relationship." More broadly, the United States wields its security leverage to shape the overall structure of the global economy. Much of what the United States wants from the economic order is more of the same: for instance, it likes the current structure of the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund and prefers that free trade continue. Washington wins when U.S. allies favor this status quo, and one reason they are inclined to support the existing system is because they value their military alliances. Japan, to name one example, has shown interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Obama administration's most important free-trade initiative in the region, less because its economic interests compel it to do so than because Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda believes that his support will strengthen Japan's security ties with the United States. The
United States' geopolitical dominance also helps keep the U.S. dollar in place as the world's reserve currency, which confers enormous benefits on the country, such as a greater ability to borrow money. This is perhaps clearest with Europe: the EU's dependence on the
United States for its security precludes the EU from having the kind of political leverage to support the euro that the United States has with the dollar. As with other aspects of the global economy, the United States does not provide its leadership for free: it extracts disproportionate gains. Shirking that responsibility would place those benefits at risk. CREATING COOPERATION What goes for the global economy goes for other forms of international cooperation. Here, too, American leadership benefits many countries but disproportionately helps the United States. In transnational threats, such as
order to counter terrorism, piracy, organized crime, climate change , and pandemics , states have to work together and take collective action. But cooperation does not come about effortlessly, especially when national interests diverge. The United States' military efforts to promote stability and its broader leadership make it easier for Washington to launch joint initiatives and shape them in ways that reflect U.S. interests. After all, cooperation is hard to come by in regions where chaos reigns, and it flourishes where leaders can anticipate lasting stability. U.S. alliances are about security first, but they also provide the political framework and channels of communication for cooperation on nonmilitary issues. NATO, for example, has spawned new institutions, such as the Atlantic Council, a think tank, that make it easier for
Americans and Europeans to talk to one another and do business. Likewise, consultations with allies in East Asia spill over into other policy issues; for example, when American diplomats travel to Seoul to manage the military alliance, they also end up discussing the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Thanks to conduits such as this, the United States can use bargaining chips in one issue area to make progress in others. The benefits of these communication channels are especially pronounced when it comes to fighting the kinds of threats that require new forms of cooperation, such as terrorism and pandemics . With its alliance system in place, the United States is in a stronger position than it would otherwise be to advance cooperation and share burdens. For example, the intelligence-sharing network within NATO, which was originally designed to gather information on the Soviet Union, has been adapted to deal with terrorism. Similarly, after a tsunami in the
Indian Ocean devastated surrounding countries in 2004, Washington had a much easier time orchestrating a fast humanitarian response with Australia, India, and Japan, since their militaries were already comfortable working with one another. The operation did wonders for the United States' image in the region. The
United States' global role also has the more direct effect of facilitating the bargains among governments that get cooperation going in the first place. As the scholar Joseph Nye has written, "The
American military role in deterring threats to allies, or of assuring access to a crucial resource such as oil in the Persian Gulf, means that the provision of protective force can be used in bargaining situations. Sometimes the linkage may be direct; more often it is a factor not mentioned openly but present in the back of statesmen's minds." THE DEVIL WE KNOW Should America come home? For many prominent scholars of international relations, the answer is yes -- a view that seems even wiser in the wake of the disaster in Iraq and the Great Recession. Yet their arguments simply don't hold up.
There is little evidence that the United States would save much money switching to a smaller global posture. Nor is the current strategy self-defeating: it has not provoked the formation of counterbalancing coalitions or caused the country to spend itself into economic decline. Nor will it condemn the United States to foolhardy wars in the future. What the strategy does do is help prevent the outbreak of conflict in the world's most important regions, keep the global economy humming, and make international cooperation easier. Charting a different course would threaten all these benefits. This
is not to say that the United States' current foreign policy can't be adapted to new circumstances and challenges. Washington does not need to retain every commitment at all costs, and there is nothing wrong with rejiggering its strategy in response to new opportunities or setbacks. That is what the Nixon administration did by winding down the Vietnam War and increasing the United States' reliance on regional partners to contain Soviet power, and it is what the Obama administration has been doing after the Iraq war by pivoting to Asia. These episodes of rebalancing belie the argument that a powerful and internationally engaged America cannot tailor its policies to a changing world. A
grand strategy of actively managing global security and promoting the liberal economic order has served the United States
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exceptionally well for the past six decades, and there is no reason to give it up now. The country's globespanning posture is the devil we know, and a world with a disengaged America is the devil we don't know. Were American leaders to choose retrenchment, they would in essence be running a massive experiment to test how the world would work without an engaged and liberal leading power. The results could well be disastrous.
Even anti-hegemonic authors agree that in the new political climate the pursuit of hegemony is inevitable
Posen 13 Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Barry R. Posen, January/February 2013, Pull Back: The Case for a Less Activist Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138466/barry-r-posen/pull-back) Despite a decade of costly and indecisive warfare and mounting fiscal pressures, the long-standing consensus among American policymakers about U.S. grand strategy has remained remarkably intact. As the presidential campaign made clear, Republicans and Democrats may quibble over foreign policy at the margins, but they agree on the big picture: that the United States should dominate the world militarily , economically, and politically, as it has since the final years of the Cold War, a strategy of liberal hegemony. The country, they hold, needs to preserve its massive lead in the global balance of power, consolidate its economic preeminence, enlarge the community of market democracies, and maintain its outsized influence in the international institutions it helped create.
Humanitarian missions key to soft power an independent link to leadership PORTH 2008 (Jacquelyn S, Staff Writer for America.gov,
http://www.america.gov/st/peacesecenglish/2008/June/20080627150217sjhtrop0.657818.html) They also expose local populations to U.S. naval forces, cultivating a familiarity and receptivity that Cossa said could come in handy in the event of future crises while building up a reservoir of goodwill. For the other partnering nations, they promote better communications and more fluid operations among participating naval personnel. Cossa said humanitarian missions like the Mercy's are win-win in every sense of the word: They promote confidence and build trust. Offering this kind of assistance leaves a lasting impression of American values and ideals, he said. It underscores what is best about America. This is the essence of American soft power, Cossa said. It enhances the image not only of the U.S. Navy and the military, but of America in general.
Soft power preserves peace, re-builds failed states, deters rogues, and prevents terrorism. Michael Hirsh, former Foreign Editor of Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, September/October, 2002
There is a middle choice between the squishy globalism that the Bush sovereigntists despise and the take-it-or-leave-it unilateralism they offer up as an alternative. A new international consensus, built on a common vision of the international system, is possible. In today's world, American military and economic dominance is a decisive factor and must be maintained -- as the right believes -- but mainly to be the shadow enforcer of the international system Americans have done so much to create in the last century, in which the left places much of its trust. It is this international system and its economic and political norms that again must do the groundwork of keeping order and peace: deepening the ties that bind nations together; coopting failed states such as Afghanistan, potential rogues, and "strategic competitors"; and isolating, if not destroying, terrorists. As Henry Kissinger wrote, "the dominant trend in American foreign-policy thinking must be to transform power into consensus so that the international order is based on agreement rather than reluctant acquiescence." Or, as Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican increasingly critical of the administration, recently summed it up, "We need friends."
24 Keerthi Gondi
Independently, Dolphins key to mitigating Hormuz conflictiran will close. Weinberger 12 Robots replace costly US Navy mine-clearance dolphins Sharon Weinberger;
Science & Environment Animal Technology; 8 November 2012; http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121108-final-dive-for-us-navy-dolphins But, the shift comes at a critical time. Earlier this year, Iran threatened to mine the Strait of Hormuz, shutting down the critical waterway to commerce. That threat prompted a renewed debate over investment in mine warfare technology, which many naval experts feel has been long neglected. The difficulty of finding and clearing mines is why dolphins capabilities are so prized: their use of echolocation to spot objects is the biological equivalent of sonar, making them an ideal tool for hunting mines. "We've got dolphins," retired Admiral Tim Keating, who commanded the US 5th Fleet in Bahrain, told National Public Radio, when asked how the US might respond if Iran makes good on its threats. Pensioned porpoise These sea mammals have been a highly prized part of the US Navy ever since the 1960s, when military
researchers began to try to understand the dolphins senses and capabilities. The rapid realisation that untethered dolphins could be trained to carry out tasks in open water, meant the research quickly evolved into a classified training programme, prompting rumours that the Navy was honing an elite cadre of killer dolphins. The project was eventually declassified in the early 1990s, and these days, it is out in the open (the dolphins are not used for killing anyone), with the Navy taking great pains to demonstrate its care for these sea creatures.
Dolphin numbers are key Iran is closing the dolphin gap Teller 12 The Emerging Dolphin Gap Amidst False Flags Waving in the Real Fog of War
Edward Teller; Registered Democrat and past party officer, former Green Party member, former Republican; January 15, 2012 http://my.firedoglake.com/edwardteller/tag/straits-of-hormuz/
I. Dont tell the GOP presidential primary candidates, but theyre missing an issue far more substantive than 99% of what they argue about in their debates and campaign ads:
The emerging Dolphin Gap in the Straits of Hormuz
(hat tip to Harry
Law): The US:
Weve got dolphins, said retired Adm. Tim Keating in a
Wednesday interview with NPR. Keating commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain during the run-up to the Iraq war. He sounded uncomfortable with elaborating on the Navys use of the lovable mammals but said in a situation like the standoff in Hormuz, Navy-trained dolphins would come in handy: KEATING: They are astounding in their ability to detect underwater objects . NPRs TOM BOWMAN: Dolphins were
sent to the Persian Gulf as part of the American invasion force in Iraq. KEATING: Id rather not talk about whether we used them or not. They were present in theater. BOWMAN: But you cant say whether you used them or not. KEATING: Id rather not. The Russians: It sounds like the plot from a stupid B-movie, but its true: A
marine mammal trainer and former Soviet militiaman just sold four killer dolphins and a white beluga whale to Iran. According to a BBC report, the dolphins and whale were trained by the Soviet navy to attack enemy frogmen with harpoons attached to their backs and carry out kamikaze strikes against enemy ships. The animals learned to distinguish between Soviet and foreign submarines by the sounds of their propellers and were taught to carry mines to the hulls of enemy vessels to blow them (and themselves) up. If the Iranians have four dolphins and Belugas, they might have plans for 400. They may be less than two months from this , let alone two years, as has been said of their ability to create a nuclear weapon for at least the past 20 years. When the GOP candidates get wind of this, they might challenge Obama about letting the Dolphin Gap get out of hand, as John F. Kennedy used the fictitious Missile Gap to close in on Richard M. Nixon in the 1960 White House contest.
Hormuz closure escalates to World War III and collapses the global economy.
*Joint Chiefs of Staff says US will attack if Strait is closed
25 Keerthi Gondi
Flores 12 Multi-awarded literary writer and has worked at Indonesias Ministry of Foreign
Affairs since 1992 (Jamil, January 16, 2012, Jamil Maidan Flores: World War III? http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/columns/jamil-maidan-flores-world-war-iii/491396)DR. H Thats when Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz. Thats not just another waterway. Its the most important strait in the world. Some 35 percent of global seaborne oil exports pass through that sea lane. Close it and the global economy becomes a hospital case. Can Iran do it? Like drinking a glass of water, says its naval commander, Habibollah Sayyari. If that happened, says Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, America would have to reopen it. That means minesweepers, battleships, aircraft carriers and everything the US Navy can throw at the Iranians, including the kitchen sink. UK Prime Minister David Cameron says if that happened, the whole world would
come together to make sure the Strait stayed open. He also talks of an embargo on Iranian oil. One of the few remaining cooler heads in the international community is Indonesia. It has appealed for calm and restraint on the part of all concerned. Meanwhile, pundits are constructing all sorts of grim scenarios. Most predict that if
Iran closes the Strait, its navy will get acquainted with the bottom of the ocean, but that the US will also suffer heavy losses in the ensuing asymmetrical warfare. Irans Revolutionary Guards can launch kamikaze attacks with their speedboats. Some cite the ghastly possibility of Israel firing its nukes, while Russia and China join the radioactive fray on the side of Iran. Still I do not
worry. Not until Indonesian ambassadors in the Middle East start making frantic calls to the Foreign Ministry to quickly send in planes to bring home the migrant workers. In that event,
World War III may have begun.
Economic decline increases the risk of warthere is strong statistical support. Royal, Director at the Department of Defense, 2010 Jedidiah Royal, Director of
Cooperative Threat Reduction at the U.S. Department of Defense, M.Phil. Candidate at the University of New South Wales, 2010 (Economic Integration, Economic Signalling and the Problem of Economic Crises, Economics of War and Peace: Economic, Legal and Political Perspectives, Edited by Ben Goldsmith and Jurgen Brauer, Published by Emerald Group Publishing, ISBN 0857240048, p. 213-215) Less intuitive is how periods of economic decline may increase the likelihood of external conflict . Political
science literature has contributed a moderate degree of attention to the impact of economic decline and the security and defence behaviour of interdependent states. Research in this vein has been considered at systemic, dyadic and national levels. Several notable contributions follow. First,
rhythms in the global economy are associated with the rise and fall of a pre-eminent power and the often bloody transition from one pre-eminent leader to the next. As such, exogenous shocks such as economic crises could
on the systemic level, Pollins (2008) advances Modelski and Thompson's (1996) work on leadership cycle theory, finding that
usher in a redistribution of relative power (see also Gilpin. 1981) that leads to uncertainty
balances,
about power
increasing the risk of miscalculation
(Feaver, 1995). Alternatively, even a relatively certain redistribution of power
could lead to a permissive environment for conflict as a rising power may seek to challenge a declining power (Werner. 1999). Separately, Pollins (1996) also shows that global economic cycles combined with parallel leadership cycles impact the likelihood of conflict among major, medium and small powers, although he suggests that the causes and connections between global economic conditions and security conditions remain unknown. Second, on a dyadic level, Copeland's (1996, 2000) theory of trade expectations suggests that 'future expectation of trade' is a significant variable in understanding economic conditions and security behaviour of states. He argues that interdependent states are likely to gain pacific benefits from trade so long as they have an optimistic view of future trade relations. However, if the expectations
of future trade decline, particularly for difficult [end page 213] to replace items such as energy resources, the likelihood for conflict increases , as states will be inclined to use force to gain access to those resources. Crises could potentially be the trigger for decreased trade expectations either on its own or because it triggers protectionist moves by interdependent states.4 Third, others
have considered the link between economic decline and external armed conflict at a national level. Blomberg and Hess (2002) find a strong correlation between internal conflict and external conflict, particularly during periods of economic downturn. They write, The linkages
between internal and external conflict and prosperity are strong and mutually reinforcing . Economic conflict tends to spawn internal conflict, which in turn returns the favour . Moreover, the presence of a recession tends to amplify the extent to which international and external conflicts selfreinforce each other. (Blomberg & Hess, 2002. p. 89) Economic decline has also been linked with an
Parkway West High School Dolphins 1AC increase in

the likelihood of
26 Keerthi Gondi
(Blomberg, Hess, & Weerapana, 2004), which
terrorism
has the capacity to spill
across borders and lead to external tensions . Furthermore, crises generally reduce the popularity of a sitting government. Diversionary theory" suggests that, when facing unpopularity arising from economic decline, sitting governments have increased incentives to fabricate external military conflicts to create a 'rally around the flag' effect. Wang (1996), DeRouen (1995). and Blomberg, Hess, and Thacker (2006) find supporting
evidence showing that economic decline and use of force are at least indirectly correlated. Gelpi (1997), Miller (1999), and Kisangani and Pickering (2009) suggest that the tendency towards diversionary tactics are greater for democratic states than autocratic states, due to the fact that democratic leaders are generally more susceptible to being removed from office due to lack of domestic support. DeRouen (2000) has provided evidence showing that periods
of weak economic performance in the United States, and thus weak Presidential popularity, are statistically linked to an increase in the use of force. In summary, recent economic scholarship positively correlates economic integration with an increase in the frequency of economic crises, whereas political science scholarship links economic decline with external conflict at systemic, dyadic and national levels .5 This implied
connection between integration, crises and armed conflict has not featured prominently in the economic-security debate and deserves more attention.
This observation is not contradictory to other perspectives that link economic interdependence with a decrease in the likelihood of external conflict, such as those mentioned in the first paragraph of this chapter. [end page 214] Those studies tend to focus on dyadic interdependence instead of global interdependence and do not specifically consider the occurrence of and conditions created by economic crises. As such, the view presented here should be considered ancillary to those views.

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