Over 400 LD Impacts

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**TERMINAL IMPACTS**........................................5
AIDS.....................................................................6
Aids turns military readiness...............................7
Air Pollution.........................................................8
Anthrax................................................................9
Biodiversity........................................................10
Bioterror............................................................11
Bioterror............................................................12
Bird Flu..............................................................13
Constitution.......................................................14
Democracy........................................................15
Democracy Good- Democide.............................16
Dehumanization................................................17
Disease..............................................................18
Disease turns military readiness........................19
Disease turns military readiness........................20
Economy............................................................21
Econ- US Key.....................................................22
Econ- developing countries................................23
Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution.............24
Econ Collapse Bad.............................................25
Econ interdependence prevents war..................26
Impacts Economic Decline Nuclear War......27
Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy...............28
Impacts Econ Turns Heg..................................34
Impacts Econ Turns Prolif.................................36
Impacts Econ Turns Disease............................37
Impacts Econ Turns Warming/Environment.....38
Impacts Econ Turns Famine.............................40
Impacts Econ Turns Racism.............................41
Impacts Econ Turns Russia War.......................42
Impacts Econ Solves War................................43
Impacts Econ Solves Poverty...........................44
Impacts War Turns Gender Violence................45
Impacts Econ Turns Terrorism..........................46
Economic decline turns TB, Malaria, AIDS..........47
Economic Decline Turns Soft Power...................48
Econ turns heg...................................................49
Econ turns heg...................................................51
US Econ Collapse global................................52
Econ growth good- environment........................53
Growth in the economic is beneficial to the
environment......................................................53
Econ Growth good- environment.......................54
Econ growth good- environment........................55
Econ growth good- Poverty................................56
Countries with higher economic growth rates will
face poverty alleviation.....................................56
Econ growth good- poverty/environment...........57
Economic growth is key to reducing poverty and
helping the environment....................................57
Econ growth good- social services.....................58
Econ growth good- poverty................................59
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AT: Dedev-No mindshift......................................60

Econ growth good-violence................................61
Econ growth good- social services.....................62
Economic growth helps increase social services,
leading to a decrease in poverty........................62
Economic growth helps increase social welfare,
which is the objective of governments..............62
AT: Trainer..........................................................63
Econ defense.....................................................64
Econ Defense.....................................................65
Environmental Destruction/opop turns disease..66
Environment Impact/ turns disease...................67
Environment turns war/economy.......................68
Environmental destruction turns agriculture......69
Freedom.............................................................70
Genocide...........................................................71
Heg....................................................................72
Homophobia War...........................................73
Human Rights: Credibility..................................74
Human Rights Promo Good- Terrorism...............75
Human Rights Promo Good- Iran Prolif...............76
Human Rights Promo Good- Democracy............78
Human Rights Promo Good- Central Asia...........79
Oceans...............................................................81
Ozone................................................................82
Patriarchy..........................................................83
Patriarchy War...............................................84
Patriarchy War...............................................85
Patriarchy War...............................................86
Patriarchy War...............................................87
Poverty..............................................................88
Racism...............................................................89
SARS..................................................................90
Space Exploration bad.......................................91
Space Weaponization: NASA Key.......................92
Space Weaponization Bad: Nuclear Annhilation.93
SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA.................94
SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA.................96
US-CHINA
CONFLICT
IS
A
ZERO-SUM
COMPETITION....................................................96
WEAPONIZTION BAD: A2: PEACEFUL NUKES......97
SPACE WEAPONIZATION IMPOSSIBLE: NASA......98
SPACE WEAPONIZATION ALREADY HAPPENED....99
TB (1/4)............................................................100
TB (2/4)............................................................101
TB (3/4)............................................................102
TB (4/4)............................................................103
TB....................................................................104
Terror...............................................................105
Terrorism turns Econ........................................106
Terrorism Defense............................................107
Terrorism Defense............................................108
Terrorism doesnt hurt the economy................109
So whats the impact?
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Warming..........................................................111
**HEG**...........................................................112
Heg Declining and Unsustainable....................113
Hard Power doesnt solve Heg.........................116
Heg collapse turns economy............................117
Kagan..............................................................118
Decline Inev.....................................................121
Econ T/.............................................................122
**WAR IMPACTS**............................................123
War causes dehumanization............................124
War Turns Disease............................................125
War turns Gender violence..............................126
War turns Human Right Violations...................127
War turns human rights/ disease.....................128
War Turns Racism.............................................129
War Turns Everything.......................................130
War Turns Mental Health..................................131
War turns Health..............................................132
War turns domestic violence............................133
War turns the environment..............................134
War outweighs disease....................................135
AIDS.................................................................137
Animal Rights T/...............................................138
Biodiversity......................................................139
Cap..................................................................140
Civil Liberties T/...............................................141
Dehumanization T/...........................................142
Democracy T/..................................................143
Disease T/........................................................144
Disease T/........................................................145
Domestic Violence T/.......................................146
Econ T/.............................................................147
Edelman..........................................................148
Environment....................................................149
Environment....................................................150
Fascism............................................................151
Gendered Violence T/.......................................152
Health T/..........................................................153
Heg T/..............................................................154
Homelessness..................................................155
Homophobia....................................................157
Inequality.........................................................158
Mental Health T/..............................................160
Poverty............................................................161
Poverty............................................................162
Woman Rights T/..............................................163
Racism.............................................................164
Rape................................................................165
Rights T/..........................................................166
Rights T/..........................................................167
Social Service T/..............................................168
Starvation........................................................169
Terror...............................................................170
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**X TURNS CASE**...........................................171

AIDS T/ Readiness............................................172
AIDS T/ Readiness............................................173
Disesase T/ Readiness.....................................174
Disease T/ Readiness.......................................175
Disease T/ War.................................................176
Ecodestruction T/ Disease................................177
Ecodestruction T/ Disease................................178
Ecodestruction T/ War......................................179
Ecodestruction T/ Agriculture...........................180
**NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIOS**........................181
Central Asian Conflict......................................182
China-US..........................................................183
Economic Collapse...........................................184
India/Pakistan War...........................................185
Iraq Pullout......................................................186
Iran..................................................................187
Japanese Relations (Spratly Islands)................188
Japanese Relations (Middle Eastern Conflict). . .189
Japanese Relations (China/Taiwan Conflict)......190
Japanese Relations (Korea)..............................191
Japanese Relations (Sino-Russian Ties)............192
North Korea......................................................193
Pakistan Collapse.............................................194
Sino-Russian Conflict.......................................195
Sunni/Shiite Conflict.........................................196
Russia-US.........................................................197
Taiwan/China War............................................198
Taiwan..............................................................199
Terrorism Nuclear Escalation........................200
Terror = Extinction...........................................201
**NUKE WAR IMPACTS**...................................202
Nuclear War Disease....................................203
Nuclear War Extinction................................204
Nuclear War Pollution...................................206
Nuclear War Phytoplankton Scenario...........207
Nuclear War Ozone Scenario.......................208
Nuke War Oceans........................................209
Nuclear War Biodiversity Scenario (1/2)......210
Nuclear War Biodiversity Scenario (2/2)......211
**NUKE WAR PROBABILITY**............................212
Nuclear War Evaluated First.............................213
Schell...............................................................215
Nuclear War Likely...........................................216
Nuclear War Likely Escalation........................217
Nuclear War Likely Middle East Prolif.............218
Great Power War Likely....................................219
Nuke War Not Likely.........................................220
Nuke War Not Likely US Russia......................221
Nuke War Not Likely Rising Costs..................222
Nuke War Not Likely Deterrence....................223
Nuke War Not Likely International System.....224
Nuke War Not Likely North Korea...................226
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Nuke War Not Likely Pakistan........................227

No Nuclear Terror.............................................228
No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken
(1/6).................................................................229
(2/6).................................................................231
(3/6).................................................................232
(4/6).................................................................233
(5/6).................................................................234
(6/6).................................................................235
AT: Schell.........................................................236
AT: Schell.........................................................237
AT: Schell.........................................................238
**IMPACT TAKEOUTS**.....................................239
AT: Giligan........................................................240
Extinction Impossible.......................................242
Nuclear War.....................................................243
Biological Attack Not Probable.........................244
Indo-Pak...........................................................245
Iran..................................................................246
**IMPACT CALCULUS**.....................................247
Impacts Exaggerated (1/2)..............................248
Impacts Exaggerated (2/2)..............................249
Prob. Evaluated First (1/2)................................250
Prob. Evaluated First (2/2)................................251
Prob Before Mag Ext........................................252
Systemic Impacts First.....................................253
Probability Evaluation Key...............................254
AT: Rescher......................................................255
Predictions Bad - Policymaking........................256
Predictions Bad Background Beliefs..............258
Predictions Bad Irresponsibility.....................259
Predictions Bad - Monkeys...............................261
Predictions Bad Decisionmaking Spillover.....262
AT: Monkeys.....................................................263
Predictions Good (1/3).....................................264
Mag. Evaluated First (1/3)................................267
Role of Ballot = Magnitude..............................270
Extinction Evaluated First................................272
**PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**.......................273
Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Avoidance. 274
Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Fails...........275
Precautionary Principle Good Risk Fails.........276
Precautionary Principle Good- AT Innovation
Stultification....................................................277
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Precautionary Principle Good- AT Zero Risk.....278

Precautionary Principle Good- AT Cost.............279
Precautionary Principle Good- AT Bad Science. 280
**AT PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**..................281
Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (1/3).....282
Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (1/3). .285
Precautionary Principle Bad- Pandemic............288
Precautionary Principle Bad- Militarism............289
**UTIL**...........................................................290
Util O/W Rights................................................291
Util Good K2 Policymaking............................292
Util Good - K2 Determine Rights......................293
Util Good Best Interest..................................294
Util Good Concrete Decisionmaking..............295
Util Good Prevents Nuke War.........................296
Util Inevitable..................................................297
Survival Instinct Good Extinction...................299
Consequentialism Good...................................300
Consequentialism Fails....................................301
Consequentialism Fails....................................302
**AT UTIL**......................................................303
Util Bad No Equality/Justice...........................304
Util Bad Mass Murder....................................305
Util Bad Annihilation......................................306
Util Bad VTL...................................................307
Util Excludes Rights.........................................308
Survival Instinct Bad Destroys Humanity......309
**RIGHTS/DEONTOLOGY**...............................310
Must Evaluate Human Rights (1/2)..................311
Must Evaluate Human Rights (2/2)..................312
Deontology O/W Util........................................313
Deontology Good K2 VTL...............................319
Callahan (1/2)..................................................320
Callahan (2/2)..................................................321
Callahan Ext....................................................322
Moral Justice First.............................................324
Moral Rationality First......................................325
Rights Absolute................................................326
Rights/Liberty K2 Rationality............................328
Moral Resolution O/W Util................................329
Morals Compatible With Util.............................330
No Rights = Violent Backlash...........................331
Right To Health O/W.........................................332
Poverty Moral Obligation..................................333
Action Key End Result Irrelevant....................334
**AT DEONTOLOGY/RIGHTS**..........................335
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Rights Violation Inev........................................336

AT: Rights First.................................................337
AT: Rights First.................................................338
AT Rawls..........................................................339
AT Rawls..........................................................340
AT Rawls..........................................................341
AT: Liberty/Rights First.....................................342
AT: Morals First.................................................343
AT: Gewirth......................................................344
AT: Gewirth......................................................346
AT: Gewirth......................................................347
AT: Gewirth......................................................348
AT: Gewirth......................................................349
Ethics Bad........................................................350
Ethics Bad........................................................352
Ethics Bad........................................................353
Deontology Bad No Assume Nuke War..........354
Deontology Bad - Policy...................................355
Deontology Bad - Policy...................................356
Deontology Bad - Democracy..........................357
Deontology Bad -- Conflicts.............................358
Deontology Bad Subjective Rights................359
Extinction O/W Deontology..............................360
Deontology Bad - Absolutist.............................361
Deontology Bad - Absolutist.............................362
Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive.......363
Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive.......364
**AT EGAL**.....................................................366
Egalitarianism Frontline (1/2)...........................367
Egalitarianism Frontline (2/2)...........................368
Public Sphere Ext Arg Plurality......................369
Hierarchies Inevitable......................................370
Egal = Envy.....................................................371
Egal = Infinite Redistribution...........................372
Egal Biased......................................................373
Rejection of Egal K2 Check Abuse....................374
AT: Moral Egal..................................................375
AT: Democratic Egal.........................................377
AT: Radical Egal................................................378
AT: Egal = Util..................................................379
Inegal Solves...................................................380
Econ Turns Egal................................................381
Sufficientarianism Good...................................382
Sufficientarianism Good...................................383
Sufficientarian Perm.........................................384
**AGENCIES**..................................................385
Generic Agencies Fail.......................................386
NGOs Key Federal Sucess...............................387
Administration for Children and Families..........388
Agriculture Department...................................389
Department of Health and Human Services.....390
Department of Education.................................391
States Solve Education....................................392
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Department of Interior.....................................393
Department of Interior (Natives Link)..............394
Department of Interior (U.S. Territories DA).....395
Housing and Urban Development....................396
Department of labor........................................397
Department of Justice......................................398
Environmental Protection Agency....................399
Office of National Aids Policy...........................400
Social Security Administration.........................401
ICE...................................................................402
Veterans Health Administration.......................403
Ineffective Agency Political Capital Link........404
**INTERNATIONAL LAW**.................................405
Intl Law Good..................................................406
Intl Law Good..................................................407
Intl Law Impact...............................................408
Intl Law K2 Rights...........................................409
Intl Law K2 Democracy...................................411
Intl Law Bad....................................................412
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**TERMINAL IMPACTS**
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AIDS
The spread of AIDS causes mutations that risk extinction
Ehrlich and Erlich 90
Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich, Professors of Population studies at Stanford
University, THE POPULATION EXPLOSION, 1990, p. 147-8
Whether or not AIDS can be contained will depend primarily on how rapidly the spread of HIV can
be slowed through public education and other measures, on when and if the medical community
can find satisfactory preventatives or treatments, and to a large extent on luck. The virus has
already shown itself to be highly mutable, and laboratory strains resistant to the one
drug, AZT, that seems to slow its lethal course have already been reported." A virus that infects
many millions of novel hosts, in this case people, might evolve new transmission
characteristics. To do so, however, would almost certainly involve changes in its lethality. If, for
instance, the virus became more common in the blood (permitting insects to transmit it readily),
the very process would almost certainly make it more lethal. Unlike the current version of
AIDS, which can take ten years or more to kill its victims , the new strain might cause death
in days or weeks. Infected individuals then would have less time to spread the virus to others,
and there would be strong selection in favor of less lethal strains (as happened in the case of
myxopatomis). What this would mean epidemiologically is not clear, but it could temporarily
increase the transmission rate and reduce life expectancy of infected persons until
the system once again equilibrated. If the ability of the AIDS virus to grow in the
cells of the skin or the membranes of the mouth, the lungs, or the intestines were
increased, the virus might be spread by casual contact or through eating
contaminated food. But it is likely, as Temin points out, that acquiring those abilities would so
change the virus that it no longer efficiently infected the kinds of cells it now does and so would no
longer cause AIDS. In effect it would produce an entirely different disease . We hope Temin
is correct but another Nobel laureate, Joshua Lederberg, is worried that a relatively minor mutation
could lead to the virus infecting a type of white blood cell commonly present in the lungs. If so, it
might be transmissible through coughs.

AIDS spread and mutations will cause extinction
Lederberg 91
(Joshua Lederberg, Molecular biologist and Nobel Prize winner in 1958, 1991
In Time of Plague: The History and Social Consequences of Lethal Epidemic
Disease, p 35-6)
Will Aids mutate further ? Already known, a vexing feature of AIDS is its antigenic variability, further
complicating the task of developing a vaccine. So we know that HIV is still evolving. Its
global spread has meant there is far more HIV on earth today than ever before in
history. What are the odds of its learning the tricks of airborne transmission? The short is, No one
can be sure. But we could make the same attribution about any virus; alternatively
the next influenza or chicken pox may mutate to an unprecedented lethality . As time
passes, and HIV seems settled in a certain groove, that is momentary reassurance in itself.
However, given its other ugly attributes, it is hard to imagine a worse threat to humanity
than an airborne variant of AIDS. No rule of nature contradicts such a possibility; the
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proliferation of AIDS cases with secondary pneumonia multiplies the odds of such a
mutant, as an analogue to the emergence of pneumonic plague.
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Aids turns military readiness

AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes govt control
Peterson, 3 (Susan- associate professor of Government at the College of William
& Mary, Security Studies 12, no. 2 (winter 2002/3), Epidemic Disease and National
Security http://people.wm.edu/~smpete/files/epidemic.pdf)
Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike other
diseases, AIDS has an incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it will produce
significant casualties on the front lines of a war. It will still, however, deplete force strength in many
states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed forces in sub-Saharan countries are HIV-positive, and in
a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe, it may be as high as 80 percent. 147 In
high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes military readiness, directly threatening national
security. Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related
illnesses are now the leading cause of death in the army and police forces of these countries,
accounting for more than 50% of inservice and post-service mortalities. In badly infected countries,
AIDS patients occupy 75% of military hospital beds and the disease is responsible for more
admissions than battlefield injuries. The high rate of HIV infection has meant that some African
armies have been unable to deploy a full contingent, or even half of their troops, at short notice..
[In South Africa, because] participation in peace-support operations outside the country is
voluntary, the S[outh] A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling with the problem of how to
ensure the availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even the
use of members for internal crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse
conditions or stationing in areas where local infrastructure is limited, presents certain problems.
Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea and the common cold, can be serious enough to require the
hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in some cases, can prove fatal if they are
not treated immediately.148 Armed forces in severely affected states will be unable to recruit and
train soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying colleagues, the potential recruitment
pool itself will dwindle, and officers corps will be decimated. Military budgets will be sapped,
military blood supplies tainted, and organizational structures strained to accommodate
unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also threaten civilians at home and abroad.
Increased levels of sexual activity among military forces in wartime means that the military risk of
becoming infected with HIV is as much as 100 times that of the civilian risk. It also means that
members of the armed forces comprise a key means of transmitting the virus to the general
population; with sex and transport workers, the military is considered one of the three core
transmission groups in Africa.149 For this reason, conflict-ridden states may become reluctant to
accept peacekeepers from countries with high HIV rates. Rather than contributing directly to military
defeat in many countries, however, AIDS in the military is more likely to have longer term
implications for national security. First, IDs theoretically could deter military action and impede
access to strategic resources or areas. Tropical diseases erected a formidable, although obviously
not insurmountable, obstacle to colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French and later
American efforts to open the Panama Canal, similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control
efforts effectively checked yellow fever and malaria. Second, in many countries AIDS already strains
military medical systems and their budgets, and it only promises to divert further spending away
from defense toward both military and civilian health. Third, AIDS in the military promises to have its
greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further destabilizing
the state. Terminally ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their government, and their
government may be in more need of defending as AIDS siphons funds from housing, education,
police, and administration. Finally, high military HIV/AIDS rates could alter regional balances of power.
Perhaps 40.50 percent of South Africa.s soldiers are HIV-infected. Despite the disease.s negative
impact on South Africa.s absolute power, Price-Smith notes, AIDS may increase that nation.s power
relative to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and Botswana, with potentially important regional
consequences.150 AIDS poses obvious threats to the military forces of many countries, particularly in
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sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not present the same immediate security problems for the United
States. The authors of a Reagan-era report on the effects of economic and demographic trends on
security worried about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education, and funding on the
defense budget,151 but a decade of relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These
surpluses have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS spending have not reappeared and are unlikely
to do so for the foreseeable future, given the relatively low levels of HIV-infection in the United
States. AIDS presents other challenges, including prevention education and measures to limit
infection of U.S. soldiers and peacekeepers stationed abroad, particularly in high risk settings, and
HIV transmission by these forces to the general population. These concerns could limit U.S. actions
where American interests are at stake.152
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Air Pollution
Air pollution will lead to extinction
Driesen 03
(David, Associate Professor, Syracuse University College of Law. J.D. Yale Law
School, 1989, Fall/Spring, 10 Buff. Envt'l. L.J. 25, p. 26-8)
Air pollution can make life unsustainable by harming the ecosystem upon which all
life depends and harming the health of both future and present generations. The Rio
Declaration articulates six key principles that are relevant to air pollution. These principles can also
be understood as goals, because they describe a state of affairs that is worth achieving. Agenda
21, in turn, states a program of action for realizing those goals. Between them, they aid
understanding of sustainable development's meaning for air quality. The first principle is that
"human beings. . . are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature", because
they are "at the center of concerns for sustainable development." While the Rio Declaration refers
to human health, its reference to life "in harmony with nature" also reflects a concern about the
natural environment. Since air pollution damages both human health and the
environment, air quality implicates both of these concerns. Lead, carbon monoxide, particulate,
tropospheric ozone, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides have historically threatened urban air
quality in the United States. This review will focus upon tropospheric ozone, particulate, and carbon
monoxide, because these pollutants present the most widespread of the remaining urban air
problems, and did so at the time of the earth summit. 6 Tropospheric ozone refers to ozone fairly
near to the ground, as opposed to stratospheric ozone high in the atmosphere. The stratospheric
ozone layer protects human health and the environment from ultraviolet radiation, and its depletion
causes problems. By contrast, tropospheric ozone damages human health and the environment. 8
In the United States, the pollutants causing "urban" air quality problems also affect human health
and the environment well beyond urban boundaries. Yet, the health problems these pollutants
present remain most acute in urban and suburban areas. Ozone, carbon monoxide, and
particulate cause very serious public health problems that have been well recognized for
a long time. Ozone forms in the atmosphere from a reaction between volatile organic compounds,
nitrogen oxides, and sunlight. Volatile organic compounds include a large number of hazardous air
pollutants. Nitrogen oxides, as discussed below, also play a role in acidifying ecosystems. Ozone
damages lung tissue. It plays a role in triggering asthma attacks, sending thousands to the hospital
every summer. It effects young children and people engaged in heavy exercise especially severely.
Particulate pollution, or soot, consists of combinations of a wide variety of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide
and sulfur dioxide contribute to formation of fine particulate, which is associated with the most
serious health problems. 13 Studies link particulate to tens of thousands of annual premature
deaths in the United States. Like ozone it contributes to respiratory illness, but it also seems to play
a [*29] role in triggering heart attacks among the elderly. The data suggest that fine particulate,
which EPA did not regulate explicitly until recently, plays a major role in these problems. 16 Health
researchers have associated carbon monoxide with various types of neurological symptoms, such
as visual impairment, reduced work capacity, reduced manual dexterity, poor learning ability, and
difficulty in performing complex tasks. The same pollution problems causing current urban
health problems also contribute to long lasting ecological problems . Ozone harms crops
and trees. These harms affect ecosystems and future generations. Similarly, particulate precursors,
including nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, contribute to acid rain, which is not easily reversible. To
address these problems, Agenda 21 recommends the adoption of national programs to reduce
health risks from air pollution, including urban air pollution. These programs are to include
development of "appropriate pollution control technology . . . for the introduction of
environmentally sound production processes." It calls for this development "on the basis of risk
assessment and epidemiological research." It also recommends development of "air pollution
10
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control capacities in large cities emphasizing enforcement programs using monitoring networks as
appropriate." A second principle, the precautionary principle, provides support for the first. As
stated in the Rio Declaration, the precautionary principle means that "lack of full scientific certainty
shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental
degradation" when "there are threats of serious or irreversible damage." Thus, lack of complete
certainty about the adverse environmental and human health effects of air pollutants does not, by
itself, provide a reason for tolerating them. Put differently, governments need to address air
pollution on a precautionary basis to ensure that humans can life a healthy and
productive life.
11
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Anthrax
A small amount of anthrax could be effective in killing millions of people
Wake, 01
Ben Wake The Ottawa Citizen October 13, 2001 Saturday Final EDITION
http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?
docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T7030650745&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=26&result
sUrlKey=29_T7030641352&cisb=22_T7030650748&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8363&docNo
=4
.The potential impact on a city can be estimated by looking at the effectiveness of an aerosol in
producing downwind casualties. The World Health Organization in 1970 modeled the results of a
hypothetical dissemination of 50 kg of agent along a 2-km line upwind of a large population center.
Anthrax and tularemia are predicted to cause the highest number of dead and
incapacitated, as well as the greatest downwind spread. A government study estimated
that about 200 pounds of anthrax released upwind of Washington, D.C., could kill up to
3 million people. Here is a list of all of the recognized Biological Weapons.
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<tournament>
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is key to preventing extinction
Madgoluis 96
(Richard
Margoluis,
Biodiversity
Support
Program,
1996,
http://www.bsponline.org/publications/showhtml.php3?10)
Biodiversity not only provides direct benefits like food, medicine, and energy; it
also affords us a "life support system." Biodiversity is required for the recycling of
essential elements, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen . It is also responsible for
mitigating pollution, protecting watersheds, and combating soil erosion . Because
biodiversity acts as a buffer against excessive variations in weather and climate, it protects us from
catastrophic events beyond human control. The importance of biodiversity to a healthy
environment has become increasingly clear. We have learned that the future wellbeing of all humanity depends on our stewardship of the Earth. When we overexploit
living resources, we threaten our own survival.
Biodiversity loss outweighs all impacts
Tobin 90
(Richard Tobin, THE EXPENDABLE FUTURE, 1990, p. 22 )
Norman Meyers observes, no other form of environmental degradation is anywhere
so significant as the fallout of species. Harvard biologist Edward O. Wilson is less
modest in assessing the relative consequences of human-caused extinctions. To Wilson,
the worst thing that will happen to earth is not economic collapse, the depletion of
energy supplies, or even nuclear war. As frightful as these events might be, Wilson
reasons that they can be repaired within a few generations. The one process
ongoingthat will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and
species diversity by destruction of natural habitats.
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Bioterror
Bioterror will cause extinction
Steinbrenner 97, Brookings Senior Fellow, 1997 [John D. , Foreign Policy, "Biological weapons: a plague upon all
houses," Winter, InfoTrac]
Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal
chemicals as potential weapons of mass destruction, there is a n obvious, fundamentally
important difference: Pathogens are alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical
weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in
adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things . That deceptively simple observation has
immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The
aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a
nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely
level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning .
The use of a
pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely
controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly or
decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect and
therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the other direction .
A
lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be
capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately
threaten the entire world population . The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global
contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit. Nobody really knows how serious a possibility this might be, since
there is no way to measure it reliably.
Bioterror is the only impact that risks extinction

Ochs 02 (Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002
Biological Weapons must be Abolished
Immediately, June 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)
genetically engineered biological weapons, many

without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued
survival of life on earth . Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the
these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of
nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future
generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons , on the other hand, can get out of
control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated . There is no way to
guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released
and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison
to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they
can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological
agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people
and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear
and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will
forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents

by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the
human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a
small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or vaccine. Can
we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.
keep causing cancers virtually
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<tournament>
Bioterror
Biological terrorism caused extinction
Richard Ochs, Chemical Weapons Working Group Member, 2002
[Biological
Weapons
must
be
Abolished
http://www.freefromterror.net/other_.../abolish.html]
Immediately,
June
9,
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons,
many without a known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival
of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk
these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from
a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and
severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control.
Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax
attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday
weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then
grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be
small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical
weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their
persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized.
Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and
the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is
over. With nuclear and biological weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements
last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse
than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even
greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola
viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known cure or
vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW
POSSIBLE.
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Bird Flu
Bird Flu goes global, killing billions
[Ethne Barnes, Research Assistant in Paleopathology, Wichita State, 2005, Diseases and human
evolution, p. 427-8]
Human history is riddled with accounts of epidemics wreaking similar havoc among human
populations around the world, though not as severe as the rabbit myxomatosis introduced into
Australia. Even the great influenza pandemic in the early twentieth century did not come close to
killing off a significant portion of the global population. However, a more deadly influenza
pandemic is all too likely. Influenza virus exemplifies the ideal predator for reducing
human populations. It is airborne and travels the globe easily and quickly , capable of
infecting all age groups in repeated waves within a short time span. Influenza type A viruses are
unstable and continuously evolving . Global movements of people and viruses at a
rapid pace make gene swapping possible among previously isolated strains. Hybrid
virus produced by such gene swapping could result in a deadly strain that targets the lower
branches of the bronchial tubes and the lungs. Severe viral pneumonia and death within twentyfour hours would follow. The new influenza virus could easily move around the globe
within days and kill over half the human population (Ryan, 1997). Crowded cities,
especially megacities, could suffer up to 90 percent fatalities within days or weeks.
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<tournament>
Constitution
The Constitution is the most important thing to preserve
Eidmoe 92 (John A. Eidsmoe is a Constitutional Attorney, Professor of Law at Thomas Goode Jones School of Law and
Colonel with the USAF, 1992 3 USAFA J. Leg. Stud. 35, p. 57-9)
Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous

war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew
it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields,
still under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even
if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble , if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous
decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt . But who shall
reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the
wellproportioned columns of constitutional liberty ? Who shall frame together the skilful architecture
which united national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns
fall, they will be raised not again . Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful,
a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them, than were ever shed over the remnants of a more
It is possible that
a constitutional convention could take place and none of these drastic
consequences would come to pass. It is possible to play Russian roulette
and emerge without a scratch; in fact, with only one bullet in the chamber, the odds of being shot are
only one in six. But when the stakes are as high as one's life, or the constitutional
system that has shaped this nation into what it is today, these odds are too great
to take the risk.
glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of constitutional American liberty.
We have a moral obligation to prevent violations of the constitution

whenever possible
Levinson 2k
Daryl Levinson, professor of law at University of Virginia, Spring 2000 UC Law Review
Extending a majority rule analysis of optimal deterrence to constitutional torts requires some explanation, for we do not
usually think of violations of constitutional rights in terms of cost-benefit analysis and efficiency. Quite the opposite,
constitutional rights are most commonly conceived as deontological sideconstraints that trump even utility-maximizing government action . Alternatively,
constitutional rights might be understood as serving rule-utilitarian purposes. If the
disutility to victims of constitutional violations often exceeds the social benefits derived from the rights-violating activity, or
if rights violations create long-term costs that outweigh short-term social benefits,
then constitutional rights can be justified as tending to maximize global
utility, even though this requires local utility-decreasing steps. Both the deontological and ruleutilitarian descriptions imply that the optimal level of constitutional violations is
zero; that is, society would be better off, by whatever measure, if constitutional
rights were never violated.
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<tournament>
Democracy
Democracy preserves human life
Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict 95

(October,
"Promoting
Democracy
http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)
in
the
1990's,"
Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate. The very source
of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of
these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or
aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for
legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons.
Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war
with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize
themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically
"cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic
insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do
not build weapons of mass destruction to use on or to threaten one another.
Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships.
In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are
more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens,
who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are better bets
to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their
openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely
because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties,
property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation
on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.
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<tournament>
Democracy Good- Democide

Democratization solves Democide
Rummel, professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, 2001 (R.J.,
International Journal on World Peace, September, proquest)
There is a feeling among many that since democide (genocide and mass murder) and war
have always been with us, they always will be; that such violence is in our bones, part of the
human condition. After all, year after year, as far back as one looks in history, some part of
the world has suffered war or genocide. And, even today, this is going on in many countries
and regions, such as in the Sudan, Burma, China, North Korea, and the Middle East. By
democide alone, during the last century about 174 million people were murdered by
government, over four times the some 38 million combat dead in all the century's domestic
and foreign wars.
Nonetheless, there is much hope to eradicate war and democide. Consider that from the
perspective of the eighteenth century, slavery also looked to the humanist as democide and
war do to us today: an evil that has always been part of human society. Now slavery is
virtually ended, and eventually the same may be true of war and democide. Why this is true
and how to foster this end to democide and war is the subject of this essay.
There are many complex considerations and theoretical issues to the problem of war and
democide. There are the questions of general and immediate causation, and of aggravating
and inhibiting conditions. There are the practical questions of how to gather timely
intelligence about them and inform decision makers about what is known, how to influence
the political process through which intervention against democide is decided, and how to give
democide and war elsewhere the required prominence in the complex of perceived national
interests. With regard to intervening to stop democide, there are questions concerning the
national mix of the necessary troops, their weapons, and the rules of engagement.
Many of the answers to these questions will fall into place if we recognize three facts and one
practical necessity that cut through the jumble of questions and problems involved. The one
fact is that democracies by far have had the least domestic democide, and now with their
extensive liberalization, have virtually none. Therefore, democratization (not just electoral
democracies, but liberal democratization in terms of civil and political rights and liberties)
provides the long-run hope for the elimination of democide.
The second fact is that democracies do not make war on each other and that the more democratic
two governments, the less the likelihood of violence between them. Not only is democracy a
solution to democide, but globalizing democracy is also a solution to war. That the world is
progressively becoming more democratic, with 22 democracies in 1950 to something like 120
democracies today (about 88 of them liberal democracies), it is increasingly likely that in the long
run the twin horrors of democide and war will be eliminated from human society.
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<tournament>
Dehumanization
Dehumanization outweighs all other impacts
Berube, 1997
(Berube, David. Professor. English. University of South Carolina. Nanotechnological
Prolongevity:
The
Down
Side.
1997.
http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/faculty/berube/prolong.htm.)
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire
resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi racial science. This would involve
valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more
super than the current ones, humans would never be able to escape their
treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-ends dispute
is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of
humanity. They warn: "its destructive toll is already greater than that of any war,
plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -- and its potential danger to the
quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond calculation. For that
reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the
Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought;
beneath the menticide of deviants and dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of
America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii).
While it may never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may
have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of humanness offer
great opportunities which would be foregone. When we calculate the actual losses
and the virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any
tools which we can currently use to measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war,
environmental apocalypse, and international genocide. When people become
things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every
atrocity can be justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch
has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon.
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Disease
Disease causes extinction
South China Morning Post 96

(Avi Mensa, 1-4-1996, Leading the way to a cure for AIDS, P. Lexis)
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham
wants to talk about. There is a much more pressing medical crisis at hand - one he believes
the world must be alerted to: the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV . If this makes Dr
Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola
outbreak which killed more than 100 people in Africa last year, the flu epidemic that has now
affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip
of the iceberg". Two decades of intensive study and research in the field of virology have
convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear warfare,
humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus
is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he said. "It can come from a rare animal or from
anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then
there is a chain reaction and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen. "That
may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has
already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the impact of
AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20 years and the only
way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because
it was killed before it had a chance to spread . Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an
outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20
years - theoretically, it could happen tomorrow.The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus
experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening and that the threat of a deadly viral
outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a
recent conference. He added that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr BenAbraham said: "Nature isn't benign. The survival of the human species is not a
preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for
viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968 Hong Kong flu
outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "megacities" are being developed in the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying
animals and insects are forced into areas of human habitation. "This raises the very real
possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for the first time, infect humanity
at a large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.
Drug resistant diseases threaten human extinction.

Discover 2000 (Twenty Ways the World Could End by Corey Powell in Discover
Magazine, October 2000, http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld)
If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and
people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack . The
Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20 million
lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going
strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from
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infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent
Nelson
<tournament>
Old diseases such as cholera and measles
have developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development
is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can
spread faster than ever Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently
left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim
against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the
emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists
all chemical means of control perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About
.
12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross
MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent
disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the New World.
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Disease turns military readiness

Pandemics kill military readiness
Major Hesko, 6 (Gerald, Air Command And Staff College Pandemic Influenza:
Military Operational Readiness Implications April 2006)
There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of
the past century with the potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past
pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult to accurately predict, scientists theorize
that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is imminent.
If a pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community,
the number of Americans affected could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in
untold suffering and deaths. Although an influenza pandemic, if it occurs, has the potential to
devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming consequence is the effects it could
have on the operational readiness of the United States military establishment. With our
current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with other smaller engagements worldwide, if an influenza pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational readiness,
preparedness and ability to defend our vital national interests could be decreased or threaten.
As a result of the pending threat of an influenza pandemic, the United States military, must
take decisive actions to mitigate the potential devastation an influenza pandemic might have
on operational readiness.

Suburban Emergency Management Project, 7 (Disease Outbreak Readiness
Update, U.S. Department of Defense
Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?
BiotID=449)
An infectious disease pandemic could impair the militarys readiness, jeopardize ongoing
military operations abroad, and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of
Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel reporting sick or being absent during a
pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007).
Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation. (1) The 40%
number (above) comes from the Homeland Security Councils estimate that 40% of the U.S.
workforce might not be at work due to illness, the need to care for family members who are
sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military and civilian personnel and contractors
would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.
Aids kills military readiness

Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of
the 21st Century Trust, World Policy Journal, Global Public Health Trumps the
Nation-State
Volume
XXI,
No
3,
Fall
2004,
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)
The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS
pandemic has the potential to derail the economic prospects of billions of peopleparticularly
in Russia, China, and Indiaand to thereby alter the global military balance. 5 Eurasia (defined
as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the worlds population, and its combined GNP
is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more importantly, the region
includes four of the worlds five militaries with over one million members and four declared
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nuclear states. Since HIV has a relatively long incubation period, its effects on military
readiness are unusually harsh. Officers who contract the disease early in their military careers
do not typically die until they have amassed significant training and expertise, so armed
forces are faced with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace officers.
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<tournament>

Diseases kill military readiness- empirically proven
Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and
outcome of military conflict by eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond notes, .All
those military histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating truth: the winners of
past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and weapons, but were often merely
those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their enemies..142 During the European conquest of
the Americas, the conquistadors shared numerous lethal microbes with their native American foes,
who had few or no deadly diseases to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez and his
men first attacked the Aztecs in Mexico in 1520, they left behind smallpox that wiped out half the
Aztec population. Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their vulnerability to a disease that
appeared harmless to the Europeans, and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in
conquering the Aztec nation.143 Spanish conquest of the Incan empire in South America followed a
similar pattern: In 1532 Francisco Pizarro and his army of 168 Spaniards defeated the Incan
army of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had killed the Incan emperor and his heir,
producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to defeat a
large, but divided enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the ability
of military forces to prosecute and win a war. The German Army chief of staff in the First World
War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed Germany.s loss of that war at least partly on the
negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German troops. 145 In the
Second World War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in certain areas than did
military action.146 Throughout history, then, IDs have had a significant potential to decimate
armies and alter military history.
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Economy
Economic collapse causes a global nuclear exchange
Mead 92
(Walter Russell, Mead, Senior Fellow Council on Foreign Relations, NEW PERSPECTIVES
QUARTERLY, Summer, 1992, p. 30)
The failure to develop an international system to hedge against the possibility of worldwide
depression- will open their eyes to their folly. Hundreds of millions-billions-of people around
the world have pinned their hopes on the international market economy. They and
their leaders have embraced market principles-and drawn closer to the West-because they believe
that our system can work for them. But what if it can't? What if the global economy
stagnates, or even shrinks? In that case, we will face a new period of international
conflict: South against North, rich against poor. Russia. China. India-these
countries with their billions of people and their nuclear weapons will pose a much
greater danger to world order than Germany and Japan did in the 1930's.
Economic slowdown will cause WWIII
Bearden 2k
(Liutenant Colonel Bearden, The Unnecessary Energy Crisis: How We Can
Solve It, 2000, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Big-Medicine/message/642
Bluntly, we foresee these factors - and others { } not covered - converging to a catastrophic
collapse of the world economy in about eight years. As the collapse of the Western
economies nears, one may expect catastrophic stress on the 160 developing nations as
the developed nations are forced to dramatically curtail orders. International Strategic Threat
Aspects History bears out that desperate nations take desperate actions . Prior to the final
economic collapse, the stress on nations will have increased the intensity and number
of their conflicts, to the point where the arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) now
possessed by some 25 nations, are almost certain to be released. As an example, suppose a
starving North Korea launches nuclear weapons upon Japan and South Korea,
including U.S. forces there, in a spasmodic suicidal response. Or suppose a desperate China whose long range nuclear missiles can reach the United States - attacks Taiwan. In addition to
immediate responses, the mutual treaties involved in such scenarios will quickly draw other nations
into the conflict, escalating it significantly. Strategic nuclear studies have shown for decades that,
under such extreme stress conditions, once a few nukes are launched, adversaries and potential
adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's

adversary. The real legacy of the MAD concept is his side of the MAD coin that is almost never
discussed. Without effective defense, the only chance a nation has to survive at all,
is to launch immediate full-bore pre-emptive strikes and try to take out its perceived foes
as rapidly and massively as possible. As the studies showed, rapid escalation to full WMD
exchange occurs, with a great percent of the WMD arsenals being unleashed . The
resulting great Armageddon will destroy civilization as we know it, and perhaps
most of the biosphere, at least for many decades.
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Econ- US Key
U.S. economic collapse leads to an economic depression globally.
(Walter Mead, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, 04 04,
Americas Sticky Power, Foreign Policy, Proquest,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/users/login.php?story_
id=2504&URL=http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/ cms.php?
story_id=2504&page=2)
Similarly, in the last 60 years, as foreigners have acquired a greater value in the United
States-government and private bonds, direct and portfolio private investments-more and
more of them have acquired an interest in maintaining the strength of the U.S.-led system. A
collapse of the U.S. economy and the ruin of the dollar would do more than dent the
prosperity of the United States. Without their best customer, countries including China and
Japan would fall into depressions. The financial strength of every country would be severely
shaken should the United States collapse. Under those circumstances, debt becomes a
strength, not a weakness, and other countries fear to break with the United States because
they need its market and own its securities. Of course, pressed too far, a large national debt
can turn from a source of strength to a crippling liability, and the United States must continue
to justify other countries' faith by maintaining its long-term record of meeting its financial
obligations. But, like Samson in the temple of the Philistines, a collapsing U.S. economy would
inflict enormous, unacceptable damage on the rest of the world.
A drop in the U.S. economy causes a global recession.

(Anthony Faiola, staff writer of Washington Post, 01 30 08, U.S. Downturn
effects may ease worldwide,
http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/auth/checkbrowser.do?
ipcounter=1&co okieState=0&rand=0.2947196325707201&bhcp=1)
Analysts caution that a sharper drop in the U.S. economy something widely feared, as
evidenced by the global route on stock markets from Paris to Tokyo last week could yet
plunge the world economy below the 2.5 to 3 percent growth range that constitutes a global
recession. And around the world, billions of dollars in losses from Americas subprime mortage
morass are still being accounted for, with experts predicting it will take a deeper financial toll.
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Econ- developing countries

A global economic crisis has a hard effect on growing economies and
provides significantly reduced funds for families living in these countries.
(Luska Times, 12 24 08, Global Economic crisis shows effects on families,
http://www.lusakatimes.com/?p=6713)
Effects of the global economic crisis have already started showing a negative impact on
growing economies, such as Zambia, with only a few people managing to spend for
Christmas. According to a survey carried out this morning by ZANIS, people said it is hard to
do shopping because there are no funds to meet the needs of many families. Most people
expressed concern about lack of funds to do shopping because prices have been hiked so
much, making it difficult for many people to buy gifts for their beloved ones. Alfonsaias
Haamanjanti said people should not over-spend unnecessarily but consider critical things such
as school fees and uniforms for children when schools reopen. Mr Haamanjati said it is
important to budget for the things that one needs by writing a list and follow it. He pointed
out that the global financial crisis may not be felt now, saying there is need to save money
and shop only when it is necessary. He said the global financial crisis may be felt so much
next year, adding that most Zambians should consider saving their money and use it when
there is real need.
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Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution

U.S. economic collapse will cause a civil war and the breakup of the U.S.
into six pieces.
(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministrys academy for future
diplomats, expert on U.S.- Russia relations, 12 29 08, As if Things werent bad enough, Russian
Professor Predicts End of U.S., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)
MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall
apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic
and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very
seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media. In recent weeks, he's
been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof.
Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger." Prof. Panarin, 50 years old,
is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's
academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes
books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations. But it's his bleak
forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed
Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr.
Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its
rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the
country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories. A
polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But
he warns that the outlook for them is dire. "There's a 55-45% chance right now that
disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced.
"But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would
become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it
currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S. Mr. Panarin posits, in brief,
that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next
fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S.
will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.
Economic and financial problems in the U.S will cause a civil war and the
breakup of the U.S.
(Andrew Osborn, former KGB analyst, dean of Russian Foreign Ministrys academy for future
diplomats, expert on U.S.- Russia relations, 12 29 08, As if Things werent bad enough, Russian
Professor Predicts End of U.S., http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html)
He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. Mr.
Panarin predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and
social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold
funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to
and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign
powers will move in. California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian
Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The
Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence.
Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the
European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central
North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and
Alaska will be subsumed into Russia. "It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska;
it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait
that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no
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reason," he says with a sly grin. Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an
article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called
U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp
Washington's role as a global financial regulator.
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Econ Collapse Bad

Global economic collapse results in nuclear war causes North Korean
aggression, Afghanistan collapse, Russian adventurism, and American
isolationism
Friedberg and Schenfeld, 8 (Aaron Friedberg-professor of politics and
international relations at the Woodrow Wilson School, and Gabriel Schoenfeldvisiting scholar at the Witherspoon Institute, 10/21/2008, The Dangers of a
Diminished
America,
The
Wall
Street
Journal,
p.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)
Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential collapse of the world's financial
architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the advantages of being at the center
of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability of our economy, among
other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we counted on foreigners to
pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will this be possible in
the future?
Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and
Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on
their bellicose paths, while Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to
chaos. Russia's new militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for
concern.
If America now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power
vacuum. The stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe,
and our position as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines
could all be placed at risk.
In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground
nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by
the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their
divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more reckless
with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability.
The aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic
competitors even harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock
market has demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high
oil prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its
economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets.
Both will now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a
country where political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity.
None of this is good news if the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert
attention from internal travails with external adventures.
As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European nations are
struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an impending
demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is still in
the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power.
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Econ interdependence prevents war

Economic interdependence prevents war
Griswold, 7 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, 4/20/2007,
Trade, Democracy and Peace, http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)
A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, "War declining
worldwide, studies say." In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute found that the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for
the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 17,
with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest report found that
2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another.
What a remarkable and wonderful fact.
The death toll from war has also been falling. According to the Associated Press report, "The
number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest point in the post-World War II period, dipping
below 20,000 a year by one measure. Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in
number." Current estimates of people killed by war are down sharply from annual tolls ranging
from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean
War.
Many causes lie behind the good news--the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy,
among them--but expanding trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in
promoting world peace. Far from stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American author
argued in a forgettable book, growing commercial ties between nations have had a
dampening effect on armed conflict and war. I would argue that free trade and globalization
have promoted peace in three main ways.
First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward
democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. Thanks in part to
globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies--a record high.
Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight wars. While
it's true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare occurrence
for democracies to engage in wars with non-democracies. We can still hope that as more
countries turn to democracy, there will be fewer provocations for war by non-democracies.
A second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting more
economic integration. As national economies become more intertwined with each other, those
nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means
human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that
impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the
economic cost of war.
The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on "Economic
Freedom and Peace" by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia
University. Dr. Gartzke compares the propensity of countries to engage in wars and their level
of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including the freedom to trade,
significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with
another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, "Making economies freer
translates into making countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are
about 14 times as conflict prone as the most free."
By the way, Dr. Gartzke's analysis found that economic freedom was a far more important
variable in determining a countries propensity to go to war than democracy.
A third reason why free trade promotes peace is because it allows nations to acquire wealth
through production and exchange rather than conquest of territory and resources. As
economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in terms of intellectual property, financial
assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard
assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming relatively less important in a high-tech,
service economy. If people need resources outside their national borders, say oil or timber or
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farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by trading away what they can produce best
at home. In short, globalization and the development it has spurred have rendered the spoils
of war less valuable.
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Impacts Economic Decline Nuclear War

Prolonged Recession yields nuclear war- must avert it now- empirically
proven
Sean ODonnell Staff Writer, Baltimore Examiner, B.A. in History from the
University of Maryland 2/26, Will this recession lead to World War II,
http://www.examiner.com/x-3108-Baltimore-Republican-Examiner~y2009m2d26Will-this-recession-lead-to-World-War-III
Could the current economic crisis affecting this country and the world lead to another world
war? The answer may be found by looking back in history. One of the causes of World War I
was the economic rivalry that existed between the nations of Europe. In the 19th century
France and Great Britain became wealthy through colonialism and the control of foreign
resources. This forced other up-and-coming nations (such as Germany) to be more
competitive in world trade which led to rivalries and ultimately, to war. After the Great
Depression ruined the economies of Europe in the 1930s, fascist movements arose to seek
economic and social control. From there fanatics like Hitler and Mussolini took over Germany
and Italy and led them both into World War II. With most of North America and Western
Europe currently experiencing a recession, will competition for resources and economic
rivalries with the Middle East, Asia, or South American cause another world war? Add in
nuclear weapons and Islamic fundamentalism and things look even worse. Hopefully the
economy gets better before it gets worse and the terrifying possibility of World War III is
averted. However sometimes history repeats itself.
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Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

The US is key to global econ rest of the world failing
Kaczmarek, Editor-in-Chief of the SAIS Review of International Affairs and M.A. Candidate, 08
(Matthew D. Kaczmarek, Editor-in-Chief of the SAIS Review of International Affairs and M.A.
Candidate of 2000, Summer-Fall 2008, The SAIS Review of International Affairs, Volume 28, Number
2, pp. 207-209)
While the economic policy of the U.S. Government can no longer be printed on IMF letterhead and
declared global consensus ipso facto, it is wrong to assume that the U nited States has
somehow relinquished its mandate to lead. The world is awash in conflicting
bilateral trade agreements, varying degrees of capital mobility, and

wildly inconsistent access within nations to the fruits of global development. If
there is a time for the U nited States to demonstrate sober global leadership while
responsibly advancing its own interests and ideals, it is now. With the Doha round
stagnating and the Bank and Fund deep into an identity crisis, but with the
memories of the economic turbulence of the 1980s and 90s still fresh in the mind, an
uncertain world continues to look toward the U nited States to show a willingness to
step up to engage the recalcitrant global economy. The process of reengagement is difficult
and will undoubtedly prove frustrating for the next administration. The G-8 is no longer a
useful forum for building global economic consensus unless it moves more quickly
to include emerging economic powers. The IMF must continue in its reform mission
as well as embrace the need to become the explicit lender of last resort to
sovereign nations. The next administration should develop clear and thoughtful goals for
engagement with each global region, and build ties, embrace, and nurture mutually beneficial
relationships with emerging regional leaders. The days of proxy wars for spheres of influence are
long gone, while the flood of economic support in exchange for political-security cooperation is
showing no faster diminishing returns than in Pakistan and Iraq. The authors in the preceding pages
of this volume have debated the costs, effectiveness, and opportunities for multilateral
engagement across a wide range of specific issues. Where the United States continues to hold
absolute supremacy, such as military power, and where ideological objectives are concerned, such
as the continuing War on Terror, the U.S. enjoys the luxury to choose whether or not to
engage the rest of the world in a multilateral discussion and debate. On economic
development, there is no such choice. The future prosperity of billions of low
and middle income citizens around the world, and the continued success of todays
leading economies depends on a sound and stable global economic architecture, and the
deferential respect afforded the U.S. in the global economy begs for its reengagement.
American consumption key to global economic growth other nations
cant replace the US spot
Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners-Capital Management, 7-2
Ajbinder Sull, President and Chief Investment Officer at Pacific Partners Capital Management, 7-209, The Financial Post, The US Consumer: Engine of the Global Economy Gears Down
the world the world has looked to the US consumer to lead

the way out of economic downturns . Currently, the US consumer accounts for
Over the years,
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almost 70% of the American economy and about 15 - 17% of the global economy.
Economists had long derided the Spend! Spend! Spend! ways of Americans. Credit was a means
to an end. The rising real estate prices that had lasted for much of this decade allowed consumers
to cash out some of the equity from their homes to continue the odyssey of lifestyle improvement.
This gave way to the notion that US consumers were using their homes as ATM machines. But a
funny thing has happened during the current economic slowdown. US consumers have
retrenched from vigorous consumption in order to save more. As the chart below
shows, savings rates in the US have gone from a negative rate (consumers adding debt to
consume) to positive. Current statistics show that the savings rate in the US is on track to approach
a level of about 7% later this year. This change in behavior is both positive and negative. The
negative case for this change is that it means that other countries will have to bolster
their own consumption and investment as an offset. This will not be easy as Asian
nations have a higher rate of savings. Europes economy will likely take much longer
to get moving as is usually the case after economic slowdowns. For the financial
markets this means that any excessive optimism should be tempered with this realization that the
coming economic recovery will be different than any we have seen in quite some time. The positive
side to this change is that it will mean less reliance by the US on foreign capital to help fund the
budget deficit. These rising savings rates are ending up in the US banking system and will provide
more fuel for the US banking system to lend a helping hand to the US economy. Not to mention helpful to the US dollar. The irony is that just as the world would welcome the US
consumer going back to old habits of spending and consuming, Americans have realized
that a little savings can go a long way. The price of this change in behavior is
that global economic growth will not rebound as fast and as much as the
markets might be hoping for.
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US economic decline hits other nations unsettles global financial
markets
Lynch, Graduate of Wesleyan University and M.A. International Relations at Yale, 07
David J. Lynch, Graduate of Wesleyan University and M.A. International Relations at Yale, 12-10-07,
USA Today, Slowing US Economy Inflicts Pain around the World
The extent to which other economies have "decoupled" from their traditional dependence upon the
U.S. economic engine, however, remains a topic of debate. On one hand, three countries China,
India and Russia accounted for more than half of global economic growth over the past year,
according to the IMF. So emerging markets are expected to shoulder principal responsibility for
keeping the global economy moving forward in 2008. But the U.S. economy remains the
world's largest, and a sharp fall in demand here for others' goods will
reverberate. Canada and Mexico, sending 81% of their exports to the USA, are the
USA's top trading partners and the countries most exposed to a serious U.S.
downturn. Economic weakness in the USA can hit other countries both by
unsettling global financial markets, thus curbing access to capital, and by
depressing trade. "The U.S. and Asian economies are not decoupled, and a
slowdown here is likely to produce ripple effects lowering growth there ," says Janet
Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Whether the rest of the world can,
in fact, shrug off slower U.S. growth remains to be demonstrated. But the remedies central
banks are choosing to fight the credit crunch are putting strains on other parts of
the global financial system, which could ultimately damage growth in some
emerging markets. Central banks in the USA, United Kingdom and Canada have cut interest
rates in recent weeks, trying to counteract banks' reluctance to make new loans. On Tuesday, the
Federal Reserve, which already has trimmed the target for its benchmark rate by three-quarters of
a percentage point since September, is widely expected to cut rates again. The Fed's actions
ricochet from Beijing to Dubai. Countries such as China and the oil producers of the six-nation
Gulf Cooperation Council, which link their currencies to the level of the U.S. dollar to
varying degrees, face a choice between setting interest rates according to the needs of their
domestic economies or tailoring rates to maintain stable exchange rates. That means keeping
their exchange rates stable against the dollar and importing inflation or raising
their interest rates to head off inflation at the cost of seeing their currencies
appreciate. So far, the quasi-dollar-linked countries are swallowing higher prices and the potential
for overheating. In Qatar, for example, inflation runs at an annual rate of almost 13%. Current
monetary policies and exchange rates are "completely out of kilter with what these countries need
and might actually encourage the bubble in emerging markets to get bigger. It is really only a
question of time before we have this regime change in the global monetary system," says George
Magnus, senior economic adviser of UBS (UBS) in London. That said, most economists expect the
global economy to pull through unless another unexpected shock hits. "We're in this window of
vulnerability. If something else comes along, we don't have a lot of padding," says Harvard's Rogoff.
"We're very vulnerable."
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The US is essential to the global economy no other country is close to
US production.
Fisher, President of the federal reserve bank, 06 Richard W. Fisher, President of the
Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas. 2/6/06. The United States: Still the Growth Engine for the World
Economy?
My kind hosts, who had no idea that this event would follow so closely on the heels of the meager
growth estimate reported for last years fourth quarter, have asked me to address the question: Is
the United States still the growth engine for the world? The answer is yes. Let me explain why.
The American economy has been on an upswing for more than four years. Growth advanced briskly at 4.2 percent in 2004. It
slowed to a still solid 3.5 percent in 2005, although I would not be surprised if GDP were revised upward when we take a
more definitive look at the fourth quarter. In January, the U.S. economy employed 134.6 million people, up 2.2 million in a
year. Unemployment stood at a four-year low of 4.7 percent, which compares with the latest reading of 8.4 percent for
Europe and even higher rates for some of the continents major economies. We have weathered hurricanes
fury and record-high energy prices while continuing to grow and keep inflation under
control. The statement the Federal Open Market Committee released Tuesday quite summed up our current situation
succinctly: Although recent economic data have been uneven, the expansion in economic activity appears solid. This is
especially true in what I call the growth riman arc of population centers with favorable demographics that begins in
Virginia, runs down the southeastern seaboard through Georgia to Florida, then through the megastate of Texas and on to
the uberstate of California and up to Seattle. I use mega and uber to describe the two largest states for a reason: to
illustrate the depth and breadth of our economy. In dollar terms , Texas produces 20 percent more than
India, and California produces roughly the same output as China. To the extent there is weakness
in the U.S. economy, it is in the Northeast and North Central states. Netting all this out, the consensus of most economic
forecasters is that growth in the first quarter will rebound to a rate well above 4 percent. To understand what this kind of
growth means, we need only follow Margaret Thatchers wise hectoring to do the math. The United States produces $12.6
trillion a year in goods and services. Be conservativeonce again, Lady Thatcher would like itand assume that in 2006 we
grow at last years preliminary rate of 3.5 percent. The math tells us we would add $440 billion in incremental activityin a
single year. That is a big number. What we add in new economic activity in a given year exceeds
the entire output of all but 15 other countries. Every year, we create the economic equivalent
of a Swedenor two Irelands or three Argentinas. In dollar terms, a growth rate of 3.5 percent
in the U.S. is equivalent to surges of 16 percent in Germany, 20 percent in the U.K., 26
percent in China and 70 percent in India. Of course, our growth is driven by consumption, a
significant portion of which is fed by imports, which totaled $2 trillion last year. Again, do the math:
Our annual import volumewhat we buy in a single year from abroadexceeds the GDP
of all but four other countriesJapan, Germany, Britain and France. So, yes, the United
States is the growth engine for the world economy. And it is important that it remain so
because no other country appears poised to pick up the torch if the U.S. economy
stumbles or tires
The US is key to the global economy.

New Zealand Herald 07 The New Zealand Herald, 3-20-2007, Can world
weather slow down in US? p. Lexis
The ability of other countries to emerge from the US economy's long shadow may
reflect more wishful thinking than logic. No doubt, it will eventually happen, especially as
some of the bigger emerging countries mature. Right now, the world still needs the US
consumer. The global economy is too dependent on exports to the US , whose trade
deficit was $765.3 billion in 2006, while Asia and Europe lack sufficient domestic demand
to offset reduced US spending on overseas goods, says Stephen Roach, chief economist
at Morgan Stanley in New York.
China's Reverberations
The US accounts for 24% of Japan's total
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Just as
China is dependent on the US, other countries rely on Asia's second-largest
economy. So a US slowdown that hurts China will reverberate in Japan, Taiwan, South
exports, 84% of Canada's, 86% of Mexico's and about 40% of China's, Mr Roach says.
Korea and commodity producers such as Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Brazil. From
2001 through 2006, the US and China combined contributed an average of 43% to
global growth, measured on the basis of purchasing-power parity, according to Mr Roach. And
there may be more fallout from a US decline. ''Allowing for trade linkages, the total effects could
be larger than 60%,'' he says. ''Globalisation makes decoupling from such a
concentrated growth dynamic especially difficult.'' As the US economy faltered in

early 2001, many Wall Street gurus predicted that Europe would outpace the US.
European Vulnerability ''It didn't happen _ a lesson investors should bear in mind
today,'' says Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist at Bank of America Capital Management in
New York. Even though only about 8% of European exports go to the US, Europe is
vulnerable to a US slowdown through its businesses abroad . The earnings of European
companies' US units plunged 64% in 2001, according to Mr Quinlan. Those declines in the biggest
and most-profitable market for many German, UK, French and Dutch enterprises resulted in reduced
orders, lower profit, slower job growth and weak business confidence. After expanding 3.9% in
2000, euro-area growth shrank to 1.9% in 2001, 0.9% in 2002 and 0.8% in 2003. ''As the US
economy decelerates and as the dollar continues its slide, Europe will sink or swim
with the US in 2007,'' Mr Quinlan says
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US depression causes Global collapse
Niall Ferguson, Professor of Economic History at Harvard, How a local squall might
become
a
global
tempest,
2008,
http://www.niallferguson.com/site/FERG/Templates/ArticleItem.aspx?pageid=184
The question is whether or not this American hurricane is about to run into two other
macroeconomic weather systems. Up until now the global impact of the crisis has been limited.
Indeed, strong global growth has been the main reason the US recession did not start sooner. With
the dollar weakened as an indirect consequence of the Feds open-handed lending policy, US
exports have surged. According to Morgan Stanley, net exports accounted for all but 30 basis points
of the 1.8 per cent growth in US output over the past year. The downside of this, however, was a
rise in commodity prices as strong Asian demand coincided with a depreciating dollar. For a time,
this coincidence of a US slowdown and soaring oil prices revived unhappy memories of 1970s
stagflation. But now a new and colder front is crossing the macroeconomic weather map: the
prospect of a global slowdown. Admittedly the forecasts do not sound too alarming. A reduction in
global growth from 4.1 per cent this year to 3.6 per cent next year could positively help damp
inflationary pressures. Optimists such as Jim ONeill at Goldman Sachs celebrate the decoupling
of China from the US, pointing out that nearly all Chinas growth is accounted for by domestic
demand, not exports. Yet there are four reasons to be less cheerful. First, Europe has clearly not
decoupled from America. Indeed, partly because of the strength of the euro, the eurozone is now
growing more slowly than the US. And remember: the European Unions economy is still more than
five times larger than Chinas. It also matters a great deal more to US exporters. Second, the
commodity price rise has generated inflationary pressures in many emerging markets that will not
recede overnight. According to Joachim Fels of Morgan Stanley, 50 of the 190 countries in the world
currently have double-digit inflation. The World Bank has identified 33 countries where high food
prices have already generated civil unrest. Third, decoupling is not a cause for celebration if, on
closer inspection, it is a synonym for deglobalisation. The growth of the world economy since 1980
has owed much to lower trade barriers. Unfortunately, the recent breakdown of the Doha round of
global trade talks sent a worrying signal that commitment to free trade is weakening. It was
troubling, too, how many governments responded to the jump in rice prices by imposing export
restrictions. One year on, what began as a US crisis is fast becoming a world crisis. Small wonder
only a handful of global equity markets are in positive territory relative to August 2007, while more
than half have declined by between 10 and 40 per cent. The US slowdown will also affect many
emerging markets less reliant on exports than China. At the same time, the global slowdown is
about to kick away the last prop keeping the US recession at bay. No, this is not the Great
Depression 2.0; the Fed and the Treasury are seeing to that. But, as in the 1930s, the critical phase
is not the US phase. It is when the crisis goes global that the term credit crunch will no longer
suffice.
US key to global economy no other country comes close

Arora & Vamvakidis 05 (Vivek & Athanasios, IMF Senior Resident
Representatives, Economic Spillovers Finance and Development; Sept, Vol 42, No
3; http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/09/arora.htm)
Economists usually see the United States as an engine of the world economy: U.S. and world output
are closely correlated, and movements in U.S. economic growth appear to influence growth in other
countries to a significant degree. Certainly, given its size and close links with the rest of the world,
the United States could be expected to have a significant influence on growth in other countries . In
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2004, U.S. GDP accounted for over one-fifth of world GDP on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis
and for nearly 30 percent of world nominal GDP at market exchange rates. The United States
accounted for nearly a quarter of the expansion in world real GDP during the 1990s. World and U.S.
growth have moved closely together in recent decades, with a correlation coefficient of over 80
percent. Trade with the United States accounts for a substantial share of total trade in a large
number of countries. Estimates of the overall impact of U.S. growth on growth in other countries
during the past two decades, in the context of a standard growth model, suggest that U.S. growth is
a significant determinant of growth in a large panel of industrial and developing countries, with an
effect as large as one-for-one in some cases (Arora and Vamvakidis, 2004). The impact of U.S.
growth turns out to be higher than the impact of growth in the rest of the world. This could be
explained by the role of the United States as a major global trading partner. The results are robust
to changes in the sample, the period considered, and the inclusion of other growth determinants,
including common drivers of growth in both the United States and other countries. We also found
the impact of U.S. growth on growth in other countries to be larger than that of other
major trading partners. For example, the impact of EU growth on the rest of the world is
significant but smaller than the impact of U.S. growth.
Impacts Econ Turns Heg
Econ Collapse ends US Heg

Friedberg + Schoenfeld, Friedberg is an IR prof at Princeton and Schoenfeld is a scholar at
the Witherspoon Institute, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455074012352571.html
One immediate implication of the crisis that began on Wall Street and spread across the world
is that the primary instruments of U.S. foreign policy will be crimped. The next president
will face an entirely new and adverse fiscal position. Estimates of this year's federal budget deficit
already show that it has jumped $237 billion from last year, to $407 billion. With families and
businesses hurting, there will be calls for various and expensive domestic relief programs. In the
face of this onrushing river of red ink, both Barack Obama and John McCain have been reluctant to
lay out what portions of their programmatic wish list they might defer or delete. Only Joe Biden has
suggested a possible reduction -- foreign aid. This would be one of the few popular cuts, but in
budgetary terms it is a mere grain of sand. Still, Sen. Biden's comment hints at where we may be
headed: toward a major reduction in America's world role, and perhaps even a new era
of financially-induced isolationism. Pressures to cut defense spending, and to dodge the
cost of waging two wars, already intense before this crisis, are likely to mount. Despite
the success of the surge, the war in Iraq remains deeply unpopular. Precipitous withdrawal -attractive to a sizable swath of the electorate before the financial implosion -- might well become
even more popular with annual war bills running in the hundreds of billions. Protectionist
sentiments are sure to grow stronger as jobs disappear in the coming slowdown. Even
before our current woes, calls to save jobs by restricting imports had begun to gather support
among many Democrats and some Republicans. In a prolonged recession, gale-force winds of
protectionism will blow. Then there are the dolorous consequences of a potential
collapse of the world's financial architecture. For decades now, Americans have enjoyed the
advantages of being at the center of that system. The worldwide use of the dollar, and the stability
of our economy, among other things, made it easier for us to run huge budget deficits, as we
counted on foreigners to pick up the tab by buying dollar-denominated assets as a safe haven. Will
this be possible in the future? Meanwhile, traditional foreign-policy challenges are
multiplying. The threat from al Qaeda and Islamic terrorist affiliates has not been
extinguished. Iran and North Korea are continuing on their bellicose paths, while
Pakistan and Afghanistan are progressing smartly down the road to chaos. Russia's new
militancy and China's seemingly relentless rise also give cause for concern. If America
now tries to pull back from the world stage, it will leave a dangerous power vacuum. The
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stabilizing effects of our presence in Asia, our continuing commitment to Europe, and our position
as defender of last resort for Middle East energy sources and supply lines could all be placed at risk.
In such a scenario there are shades of the 1930s, when global trade and finance ground
nearly to a halt, the peaceful democracies failed to cooperate, and aggressive powers led by
the remorseless fanatics who rose up on the crest of economic disaster exploited their
divisions. Today we run the risk that rogue states may choose to become ever more
reckless with their nuclear toys, just at our moment of maximum vulnerability. The
aftershocks of the financial crisis will almost certainly rock our principal strategic competitors even
harder than they will rock us. The dramatic free fall of the Russian stock market has
demonstrated the fragility of a state whose economic performance hinges on high oil
prices, now driven down by the global slowdown. China is perhaps even more fragile, its
economic growth depending heavily on foreign investment and access to foreign markets. Both will
now be constricted, inflicting economic pain and perhaps even sparking unrest in a country where
political legitimacy rests on progress in the long march to prosperity. None of this is good news if
the authoritarian leaders of these countries seek to divert attention from internal travails with
external adventures. As for our democratic friends, the present crisis comes when many European
nations are struggling to deal with decades of anemic growth, sclerotic governance and an
impending demographic crisis. Despite its past dynamism, Japan faces similar challenges. India is
still in the early stages of its emergence as a world economic and geopolitical power. What does
this all mean? There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have
before us is between the potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff
price tag of continued American leadership.
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Impacts Econ Turns Heg
Economy key to leadership

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

Burrows & Windram 94 (William & Robert, Critical Mass, p. 491-2)
Economics is in many respects proliferations catalyst. As we have noted, economic
desperation drives Russia and some of the former Warsaw Pact nations to peddle
weapons and technology. The possibility of considerable profits or at least
balanced international payments also prompts Third World countries like China,
Brazil, and Israel to do the same. Economics, as well as such related issues as
overpopulation, drive proliferation just as surely as do purely political motives.
Unfortunately, that subject is beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that,
all things being equal, well-of, relatively secure societies like todays Japan are less
likely to buy or sell superweapon technology than those that are insecure, needy,
or desperate. Ultimately, solving economic problems, especially as they are
driven by population pressure, is the surest way to defuse proliferation and
enhance true national security.
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Impacts Econ Turns Disease

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

Economic growth key to solve warming
(Terry L. Anderson, leading resource economist, professor of economics at
Montana State University, Ph.D. in economics, visiting scholar at Oxford,
university of Basel, and Cornell University law School, 04, Why Economic
Growth is Good for the Environment,
http://www.perc.org/articles/article446.php)
Hansen's essay concludes on an optimistic note, saying "the main elements [new technologies]
required to halt climate change have come into being with remarkable rapidity." This
statement would not have surprised economist Julian Simon. He saw the "ultimate resource" to be
the human mind and believed it to be best motivated by market forces. Because of a
combination of market forces and technological innovations, we are not running out of
natural resources. As a resource becomes more scarce, prices increase, thus
encouraging development of cheaper alternatives and technological innovations. Just as
fossil fuel replaced scarce whale oil, its use will be reduced by new technology and
alternative fuel sources. Market forces also cause economic growth, which in turn leads
to environmental improvements. Put simply, poor people are willing to sacrifice clean
water and air, healthy forests, and wildlife habitat for economic growth. But as their
incomes rise above subsistence, "economic growth helps to undo the damage done in
earlier years," says economist Bruce Yandle. "If economic growth is good for the
environment, policies that stimulate growth ought to be good for the environment."
Strong economy is the best way to preserve a healthy

environment, avoiding command-and-control policies
Shiller 99 (Erin, Policy Fellow of Environmental Studies @ Pacific Research
Institute, Ventura County Star, April 20, ln)
As income levels rise, people begin to demand higher environmental standards. As a
society, this effect is cumulative -- thus, we expect even better environmental quality as our
economy grows. Until now, environmental policy has relied almost entirely on command-andcontrol regulation. While such regulation has had its successes, it also hinders the very
economic
growth
that
has
allowed
for
environmental
improvements.
Further, the marginal cost of pollution reduction is continually rising. Stated another way, a smaller
aggregate amount of pollution means that each further reduction is more costly than the last, and
the
health
benefits
produced
are
less
significant
and
felt
by
fewer
people.
For this reason, environmentalists should not regard economic concerns as a hindrance to effective
policy, but should embrace economic growth as the key to further environmental improvements.
Moreover, if Americans want the improvement that has occurred over the past generation to
continue, they will look to innovative new policies that incorporate and even promote economic
growth. Such policies not only best address today's environmental situation, but provide the most
promising future for tomorrow's environment as well.
Economic decline no protection of the environment
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Sanders 90 (Jerry, Univ of Cal Berkley, Academic Coordinator in Peace and

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

Economic collapse exacerbates global food crisis
Cha, Graduate of Columbia and John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies,
and McCrummen, Washington Post Writer, 08
Ariana Eunjung Cha and Stephanie McCrummen, 10-26-08, Washington Post, Financial Meltdown
Worsens
Food
Crisis;
As Global Prices Soar, More People Go Hungry, Lexis
As shock waves from the credit crisis began to spread around the world last month, China
scrambled to protect itself. Among the most extreme measures it took was to impose new export
taxes to keep critical supplies such as grains and fertilizer from leaving the country. About 5,700
miles away, in Nairobi, farmer Stephen Muchiri is suffering the consequences. It's planting season
now, but he can afford to sow amaranthus and haricot beans on only half of the 10 acres he owns
because the cost of the fertilizer he needs has shot up nearly $50 a bag in a matter of weeks.
Muchiri said nearly everyone he knows is cutting back on planting, which means even
less food for a continent where the supply has already been weakened by drought,
political unrest and rising prices. While the world's attention has been focused on rescuing
investment banks and stock markets from collapse, the global food crisis has worsened, a
casualty of the growing financial tumult. Oxfam, the Britain-based aid group, estimates that
economic chaos this year has pulled the incomes of an additional 119 million people below the
poverty line. Richer countries from the United States to the Persian Gulf are busy helping
themselves and have been slow to lend a hand. The contrast between the rapid-fire reaction by
Western authorities to the financial crisis and their comparatively modest response to soaring food
prices earlier this year has triggered anger among aid and farming groups. " The amount of
money used for the bailouts in the U.S. and Europe -- people here are saying that money is
enough to feed the poor in Africa for the next three years ," said Muchiri, head of the
Eastern Africa Farmers Federation. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 923
million people were seriously undernourished in 2007. Its director-general, Jacques Diouf, said in a
recent speech that he worries about cuts in aid to agriculture in developing countries. He said he is
also concerned by protectionist trade measures intended to counteract the financial turmoil.
Although the price of commodities has come down in the past few months, Diouf said, 36 countries
still need emergency assistance for food, and he warned of a looming disaster next year if countries
do not make food security a top priority. "The global financial crisis should not make us
forget the food crisis," Diouf said. Commodity prices have plummeted in recent weeks as
investors have shown increasing concern about a global recession and a drop in the demand for
goods. Wheat futures for December delivery closed at $5.1625 on Friday -- down 62 percent from a
record set in February. Corn futures are down 53 percent from their all-time high, and soybean
futures are 47 percent lower. Such declines, while initially welcomed by consumers, could
eventually increase deflationary pressures -- lower prices could mean less incentive for
farmers to cultivate crops. That, in turn, could exacerbate the global food shortage .
In June, governments, donors and agencies gathered in Rome to pledge $12.3 billion to address the
world's worst food crisis in a generation. But only $1 billion has been disbursed. An additional $1.3
billion, which had been earmarked by the European Commission for helping African farmers, is tied
up in bureaucracy, with some governments now arguing that they can no longer afford to give up
that money. "The financial crisis is providing an excuse for people across the
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spectrum -- governments, multilateral organizations, companies -- to not do the

right thing," said Oxfam spokeswoman Amy Barry. The precarious aid situation is compounded by
export taxes and bans imposed this year by a number of grain- and fertilizer-producing nations,
including China, India, Pakistan, Ukraine and Argentina. E.U. Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson
has criticized export restrictions because they "drive up world prices and cut off supplies of raw
materials." Such restrictions, he said, "invite a cycle of retaliation that is as economically
counterproductive as it is politically hard to resist," Mandelson said last month. China -- the world's
biggest grain and rice producer and the biggest exporter of certain types of fertilizer -- could see its
moves having ripple effects on vulnerable countries. "
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Impacts Econ Turns Racism
Growth solves racism

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

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

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

Economic collapse causes Russian war that leads to nuclear extinction
Steven David, Jan/Feb 1999. Prof. of political science at Johns Hopkins. Foreign Affairs,
lexis.
If internal war does strike Russia, economic deterioration will be a prime cause .
From 1989 to the present, the GDP has fallen by 50 percent. In a society where, ten years ago,
unemployment scarcely existed, it reached 9.5 percent in 1997 with many economists declaring the
true figure to be much higher. Twenty-two percent of Russians live below the official poverty line
(earning less than $ 70 a month). Modern Russia can neither collect taxes (it gathers only half the
revenue it is due) nor significantly cut spending. Reformers tout privatization as the country's cureall, but in a land without well-defined property rights or contract law and where subsidies remain a
way of life, the prospects for transition to an American-style capitalist economy look remote at best.
As the massive devaluation of the ruble and the current political crisis show, Russia's condition is
even worse than most analysts feared. If conditions get worse, even the stoic Russian people will
soon run out of patience. A future conflict would quickly draw in Russia's military. In the Soviet days
civilian rule kept the powerful armed forces in check. But with the Communist Party out of office,
what little civilian control remains relies on an exceedingly fragile foundation -- personal friendships
between government leaders and military commanders. Meanwhile, the morale of Russian soldiers
has fallen to a dangerous low. Drastic cuts in spending mean inadequate pay, housing, and medical
care. A new emphasis on domestic missions has created an ideological split between the old and
new guard in the military leadership, increasing the risk that disgruntled generals may enter the
political fray and feeding the resentment of soldiers who dislike being used as a national police
force. Newly enhanced ties between military units and local authorities pose another danger.
Soldiers grow ever more dependent on local governments for housing, food, and wages. Draftees
serve closer to home, and new laws have increased local control over the armed forces. Were a
conflict to emerge between a regional power and Moscow, it is not at all clear which side the
military would support. Divining the military's allegiance is crucial, however, since the structure of
the Russian Federation makes it virtually certain that regional conflicts will continue to erupt.
Russia's 89 republics, krais, and oblasts grow ever more independent in a system that does little to
keep them together. As the central government finds itself unable to force its will beyond Moscow
(if even that far), power devolves to the periphery. With the economy collapsing, republics
feel less and less incentive to pay taxes to Moscow when they receive so little in
return. Three-quarters of them already have their own constitutions, nearly all of which make
some claim to sovereignty. Strong ethnic bonds promoted by shortsighted Soviet policies may
motivate non-Russians to secede from the Federation. Chechnya's successful revolt against Russian
control inspired similar movements for autonomy and independence throughout the country. If
these rebellions spread and Moscow responds with force, civil war is likely . Should Russia
succumb to internal war, the consequences for the United States and Europe will
be severe. A major power like Russia -- even though in decline -- does not suffer civil war quietly
or alone. An embattled Russian Federation might provoke opportunistic attacks from
enemies such as China. Massive flows of refugees would pour into central and western
Europe. Armed struggles in Russia could easily spill into its neighbors . Damage from the
fighting, particularly attacks on nuclear plants, would poison the environment of much
of Europe and Asia. Within Russia, the consequences would be even worse. Just as the sheer
brutality of the last Russian civil war laid the basis for the privations of Soviet communism, a
second civil war might produce another horrific regime. Most alarming is the real possibility that
the violent disintegration of Russia could lead to loss of control over its nuclear
arsenal. No nuclear state has ever fallen victim to civil war, but even without a clear precedent the
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grim consequences can be foreseen. Russia retains some 20,000 nuclear weapons and the
raw material for tens of thousands more, in scores of sites scattered throughout the country.
So far, the government has managed to prevent the loss of any weapons or much material. If war
erupts, however, Moscow's already weak grip on nuclear sites will slacken, making
weapons and supplies available to a wide range of anti-American groups and states.
Such dispersal of nuclear weapons represents the greatest physical threat America now
faces. And it is hard to think of anything that would increase this threat more than
the chaos that would follow a Russian civil war
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Impacts Econ Solves War

Economic interdependence prevents war
Griswold, 7 (Daniel, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies, 4/20/2007,
Trade, Democracy and Peace, http://www.freetrade.org/node/681)
A little-noticed headline on an Associated Press story a while back reported, "War declining
worldwide, studies say." In 2006, a survey by the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute found that the number of armed conflicts around the world has been in decline for
the past half-century. Since the early 1990s, ongoing conflicts have dropped from 33 to 17,
with all of them now civil conflicts within countries. The Institute's latest report found that
2005 marked the second year in a row that no two nations were at war with one another.
What a remarkable and wonderful fact. The death toll from war has also been falling.
According to the Associated Press report, "The number killed in battle has fallen to its lowest
point in the post-World War II period, dipping below 20,000 a year by one measure.
Peacemaking missions, meanwhile, are growing in number." Current estimates of people killed
by war are down sharply from annual tolls ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 in the 1990s, and
from a peak of 700,000 in 1951 during the Korean War. Many causes lie behind the good
news--the end of the Cold War and the spread of democracy, among them--but expanding
trade and globalization appear to be playing a major role in promoting world peace. Far from
stoking a "World on Fire," as one misguided American author argued in a forgettable book,
growing commercial ties between nations have had a dampening effect on armed conflict and
war. I would argue that free trade and globalization have promoted peace in three main ways.
First, as I argued a moment ago, trade and globalization have reinforced the trend toward
democracy, and democracies tend not to pick fights with each other. Thanks in part to
globalization, almost two thirds of the world's countries today are democracies--a record high.
Some studies have cast doubt on the idea that democracies are less likely to fight wars. While
it's true that democracies rarely if ever war with each other, it is not such a rare occurrence
for democracies to engage in wars with non-democracies. We can still hope that as more
countries turn to democracy, there will be fewer provocations for war by non-democracies. A
second and even more potent way that trade has promoted peace is by promoting more
economic integration. As national economies become more intertwined with each other, those
nations have more to lose should war break out. War in a globalized world not only means
human casualties and bigger government, but also ruptured trade and investment ties that
impose lasting damage on the economy. In short, globalization has dramatically raised the
economic cost of war.
The 2005 Economic Freedom of the World Report contains an insightful chapter on "Economic
Freedom and Peace" by Dr. Erik Gartzke, a professor of political science at Columbia
University. Dr. Gartzke compares the propensity of countries to engage in wars and their level
of economic freedom and concludes that economic freedom, including the freedom to trade,
significantly decreases the probability that a country will experience a military dispute with
another country. Through econometric analysis, he found that, "Making economies freer
translates into making countries more peaceful. At the extremes, the least free states are
about 14 times as conflict prone as the most free." By the way, Dr. Gartzke's analysis found
that economic freedom was a far more important variable in determining a countries
propensity to go to war than democracy. A third reason why free trade promotes peace is
because it allows nations to acquire wealth through production and exchange rather than
conquest of territory and resources. As economies develop, wealth is increasingly measured in
terms of intellectual property, financial assets, and human capital. Such assets cannot be
easily seized by armies. In contrast, hard assets such as minerals and farmland are becoming
relatively less important in a high-tech, service economy. If people need resources outside
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their national borders, say oil or timber or farm products, they can acquire them peacefully by
trading away what they can produce best at home. In short, globalization and the
development it has spurred have rendered the spoils of war less valuable.
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Impacts Econ Solves Poverty

Economic growth solves worldwide poverty.
Richard H. Adams, Jr. World Bank Policy Researcher. February 2003.
Economic Growth, Inequality, and Poverty
Why is economic growth so important in reducing poverty? The answer to this question has been
broached at several points in this analysis. Economic growth reduces poverty because first
and foremost growth has little impact on. income inequality. Income distributions do not
generally change much over time. Analysis of the 50 countries and the 101 intervals included in
the data set shows that income inequality rises on average less than 1.0 percent per year.
Moreover, econometric analysis shows that economic growth has no statistical effect on
income distribution: inequality may rise, fall or remain steady with growth. Since income
distributions are relatively stable over time, economic growth - in the sense of rising incomes has the general effect of raising incomes for all members of society, including the poor.
As noted above, in many developing countries poverty, as measured by the $1 per person per day
standard, tends to be "shallow" in the sense that many people are clustered right below (and
above) the poverty line. Thus, even a modest rate of economic growth has the effect of
"lifting" people out of poverty. Poor people are capable of using economic growth especially labor-intensive economic growth which provides more jobs -- to "work"
themselves out of poverty. Table 8 underscores these relationships by summarizing the results
of recent empirical studies regarding the growth elasticity of poverty. When growth is measured by
survey mean income (consumption), the point estimates of the elasticity of poverty with respect to
growth are remarkably uniform: from a low of -2.12 in Bruno, Ravallion 21 and Squire (1998), to a
mid-range of -2.59 in this study (excluding Eastern Europe and Central Asia), to a high of -3.12 in
Ravallion and Chen (1997). In other words, on average, a 10 -percentage point increase in
economic growth (measured by the survey mean) can be expected to produce between a
21.2 and 31.2 percent decrease in the proportion of people living in poverty ($1 per
person per day). Economic growth reduces poverty in the developing countries of the
world because average incomes of the poor tend to rise proportionately with those of
the rest of the population. The fact that economic growth is so critical in reducing
poverty highlights the need to accelerate economic growth throughout the developing
world. Present rates of economic growth in the developing world are simply too low to make a
meaningful dent in poverty. As measured by per capita GDP, the average rate of growth for the 50
low income and lower middle income countries in this paper was 2.66 percent per year. As
measured by mean survey income (consumption), the average rate of growth in these 50 countries
was even lower: a slightly negative -0.90 percent per year (Table 3). In the future, these rates of
economic growth need to be significantly increased. In particular, more work needs to be done on
identifying the elements used for achieving successful high rates of economic growth and poverty
reduction in certain regions of the developing world (e.g., East Asia and South Asia), and applying
the lessons of this work to the continuing growth and poverty needs in other areas, such as Eastern
Europe and Central Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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Impacts War Turns Gender Violence
War more violence against women

Richards 04 (Cindy, A new vision for V movement Chicago Sun-Times, June 9,
ln)
"I think the war, the jobs and the economy are all very connected to violence against
women," Ensler said.
"Let's begin with war. I have been outspoken about the war from the very beginning. I see not
only consequences of war toward human beings, but toward women. Let's begin
with rape. The rate of violence toward women escalates in war," said the
playwright and activist who has traveled to war-torn regions in Bosnia, Pakistan, Afghanistan,
Kosovo and the Middle East. "War is really about taking what you want when you want it
without consent. It really perpetuates a rape mentality. Take Iraq as an example.
Saddam Hussein was as evil as they come. Under his regime, 1 million died, women were raped,
people were tortured. That existed for 30 years and we never intervened on behalf of the people
being tortured and raped. If this were a war about stopping human rights violations, that was a war
that should have been called 20 years ago."
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Impacts Econ Turns Terrorism
Economic growth solves terrorism

Wanandi 02 (Jusuf, member of the board of trustees @ Center for Strategic and
International Studies, A Global Coalition against International Terrorism p. 184-9)
A robust global economy is a condition sine qua non in the battle against terrorism.
By destroying a root cause of frustration namely, grinding poverty a healthy
economy denies terrorists a fresh source of recruits.
Economic decline terrorism

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

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

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

Hegemony depends on economic strength
Pape, 9 (Robert- professor of political science at the University of Chicago, The
National Interest, Empire Falls
01.22.2009, http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20484)
Over time, Americas power is fundamentally a result of its economic
strength. Productive capacitydefined by indicators such as wealth,
technology and population sizeis a prerequisite for building and modernizing
military forces. The United States, like any state, may choose to vary the degree
to which its productive capacities are used to create military assets. But it is the
economy as a whole that constrains the choice. And the size of the economy
relative to potential rivals ultimately determines the limits of power in
international politics. Major assessments of this relative position have long
turned heavily on a single statistic: Americas share of world economic product.
Advocates of extending Americas unipolar dominance are well aware of the
central importance of the economic foundations of American power and
routinely present detailed statistics on the U.S. share of world product. The basic
notion is simple: take U.S. domestic product in any year and divide it by the
aggregate total of the gross domestic product of all states in the world. To
measure gross domestic product, the unipolar-dominance school prefers to
compare every countrys output in current-year U.S. dollars, a method that tends
to show America is much further ahead of other countries than alternative
measures. Indeed, the most recent call for America to exploit its hegemonic
position (published in 2008) rests on the presumption of U.S. dominance based
on the current-year dollar figures.2 By this metric, in 2006 the United States had
28 percent of world product while its nearest most likely competitor, China, had
6 percent. Looks pretty good for America, right?
Alas, single-year snapshots of Americas relative power are of limited value for
assessing the sustainability of its grand strategy over many years. For grandstrategic concernsespecially how well the United States can balance its
resources and foreign-policy commitmentsthe trajectory of American power
compared to other states is of seminal importance.
For the sake of argument, let us start with the unipolar-dominance schools
preferred measure of American hegemony, but look at the trajectory of the data
over time. According to GDP figures in current U.S. dollars from the International
Monetary Fund (IMF), the United States increased its share of world production
during the 1990s, reached its apogee in 2000, and then began to steadily lose
ground during the eight years of the Bush administration, with its relative power
ultimately falling by nearly a quarter in the first decade of the twenty-first
century. At the same time, the relative power of China, the state many consider
Americas most likely future rival, has grown consistently. If we look out as far as
the IMF can see (2013), things get even worsewith the United States expected
to continue declining and China to continue rising. The United States has been
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going through the first decade of the twenty-first century not stronger than
before, but substantially weaker.
How good are the numbers? Economists commonly use two other methods to
calculate GDP, constant-dollar calculations and purchasing power parity.3
Although each offers advantages and disadvantages, for our purposes what
matters is that they form a lower bound of Americas relative decline. And
regardless of the metric, the trend is the same. Again using IMF figures, Table 2
shows the trajectory of the share of world product for the United States and
China using both alternative measures.
Simply put, the United States is now a declining power. This new reality has
tremendous implications for the future of American grand strategy.
The erosion of the underpinnings of U.S. power is the result of uneven rates of
economic growth between America, China and other states in the world. Despite
all the pro-economy talk from the Bush administration, the fact is that since
2000, U.S. growth rates are down almost 50 percent from the Clinton years. This
trajectory is almost sure to be revised further downward as the consequences of
the financial crisis in fall 2008 become manifest.
As Table 3 shows, over the past two decades, the average rate of U.S. growth
has fallen considerably, from nearly 4 percent annually during the Clinton years
to just over 2 percent per year under Bush. At the same time, China has
sustained a consistently high rate of growth of 10 percent per yeara truly
stunning performance. Russia has also turned its economic trajectory around,
from year after year of losses in the 1990s to significant annual gains since
2000.
Worse, Americas decline was well under way before the economic downturn,
which is likely to only further weaken U.S. power. As the most recent growth
estimates (November 2008) by the IMF make clear, although all major countries
are suffering economically, China and Russia are expected to continue growing
at a substantially greater rate than the United States.
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Econ turns heg

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

Ferguson, 3 (Niall, Foreign Affairs, Hegemony or Empire?
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59200/niall-ferguson/hegemony-or-empire?
page=4, September/October 2003
The authors' argument about the uniqueness of American hegemony rests on four main
pillars. The most obvious is economic: as they point out, the U.S. economy has outstripped
almost all of its competitors for much of the past century. This point is developed by another
of the book's contributors, Angus Maddison, and explored in almost encyclopedic depth in the
chapter by Moses Abramovitz and Paul David. According to these authors, nothing achieved
by the United Kingdom -- not even in the first flush of the Industrial Revolution -- ever
compared with the United States' recent economic predominance.
Second, the authors point to the way the United States has very deliberately used its power to
advance multilateral, mutually balanced tariff reductions under the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade (later the World Trade Organization). As Robert Gilpin argues in his chapter,
the tariff reductions achieved in the 1967 Kennedy Round negotiations (and subsequently)
owed much to "American pressures." Such pressure was classically exerted through
"conditionality" -- that is, the terms under which the Washington-based International Monetary
Fund granted its loans. This deliberate process contrasts markedly with the willy-nilly way free
trade spread in the nineteenth century, as described by O'Brien and Hobson.
The third pillar of American dominance can be found in the way successive U.S. governments
sought to take advantage of the dollar's role as a key currency before and after the
breakdown of the Bretton Woods institutions, which, according to O'Brien, enabled the United
States to be "far less restrained ... than all other states by normal fiscal and foreign exchange
constraints when it came to funding whatever foreign or strategic policies Washington
decided to implement." As Robert Gilpin notes, quoting Charles de Gaulle, such policies led to
a "hegemony of the dollar" that gave the U.S. "extravagant privileges." In David Calleo's
words, the U.S. government had access to a "gold mine of paper" and could therefore collect
a subsidy from foreigners in the form of seigniorage (the profits that flow to those who mint or
print a depreciating currency).
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US Econ Collapse global

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

Economic growth is more important and valued by Democrats and
Republicans over the environment.
(Frank Newport, Ph. D., Editor in Chief, The Gallup Poll, and author of
Polling Matters, 03 19 09, Americans: Economy takes precedence over
environment, http://www.gallup.com/poll/116962/americans-economytakes-precedence-environment.aspx
Only 50% of Democrats, who typically have been the most environmentally
oriented in their policy positions, opt for the environmental protection position -just six points higher than the percentage of Democrats choosing economic
growth. (Republicans and independents are more likely to choose economic
growth.) This finding suggests that the economic crisis may present a real
philosophical dilemma to those who ordinarily are strongly supportive of
environmental protection, but who may back off in the face of the perceived need
to restore economic growth.
The partisan spread is somewhat larger for the trade-off question dealing with energy and the
environment. Republicans and Democrats are almost perfect mirror images of each other in
response to this question, with two-thirds of Republicans opting for energy over the
protection of the environment, while two-thirds of Democrats hold the opposite view.
There is little question that the current economic crisis poses a significant challenge for the
environmental movement in this country. Previous Gallup research has shown that
concern about global warming has diminished this year, and the research reviewed
here shows clearly that Americans are more willing than ever to forgo protection of
the environment if needed in order to ensure economic growth or the production of
energy. With the economy as bad as it has been in recent memory, Americans'
preferences have swung even more strongly in the direction of the economy over
the environment
Growth in the economic is beneficial to the environment.

(Terry L. Anderson, leading resource economist, professor of economics at
Montana State University, Ph.D. in economics, visiting scholar at Oxford,
university of Basel, and Cornell University law School, 04, Why Economic
Growth is Good for the Environment,
Hansen's essay concludes on an optimistic note, saying "the main elements [new
technologies] required to halt climate change have come into being with
remarkable rapidity." This statement would not have surprised economist Julian Simon. He
saw the "ultimate resource" to be the human mind and believed it to be best motivated by
market forces. Because of a combination of market forces and technological
innovations, we are not running out of natural resources. As a resource becomes
more scarce, prices increase, thus encouraging development of cheaper
alternatives and technological innovations. Just as fossil fuel replaced scarce whale
oil, its use will be reduced by new technology and alternative fuel sources. Market
forces also cause economic growth, which in turn leads to environmental
improvements. Put simply, poor people are willing to sacrifice clean water and air,
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healthy forests, and wildlife habitat for economic growth. But as their incomes rise
above subsistence, "economic growth helps to undo the damage done in earlier
years," says economist Bruce Yandle. "If economic growth is good for the
environment, policies that stimulate growth ought to be good for the
environment."
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Econ Growth good- environment

A sustainable development is better achieved through economic growth,
because it will lead to a better environmental quality.
(Mathew Brown, an economist at the Political Economy Research Center in
Bozeman, Montana, 12 13 99, Apple Daily, Hong Kong
As increasing pressure from visiting business leaders and local citizens attests,
Hong Kong, like all wealthy countries, is encountering fears over air quality, clean
water, and waste disposal. To meet these challenges Hong Kong Chief Executive CH
Tung has embraced the idea of "sustainable development." In his words this requires"a
fundamental change of mindset," in the way Hong Kong businesses and government operate.
Around the world policies of "sustainable development" rest on the assumption
that current economic systems are bad for the environment and that only through
more government control will environmental quality be improved. Enacting this policy
could prove costly not only for Hong Kong's environment but also for its celebrated economic
success.
The good news for Mr. Tung and all of Hong Kong is that the twin goals of
environmental protection and increased prosperity are not as contradictory as
many environmentalists would have the public believe.
A recent study by Princeton University economists Gene Grossman and Alan
Krueger found that "economic growth brings an initial phase of deterioration
followed by a subsequent phase of improvement." They found, for instance, that
light particulates, a pervasive form of air pollution, tend to increase until a country
reaches per capita income levels of around $9,000. After that air pollution declines
as countries become wealthier.
According to Grossman and Krueger "contrary to the alarmist cries of some
environmental groups, we find no evidence that economic growth does unavoidable
harm to the natural habitat." This relationship between economic growth and
environmental quality, which resembles an inverted-U, has been found for many
other environmental indices such as water quality and waste disposal-- both
important concerns for a city such as Hong Kong.
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Econ growth good- environment

Countries that practiced Sustainable development actually created a
negative impact on economic growth and environmental quality.
Perhaps more relevant to Hong Kong's future is a recent finding that government
efforts to regulate environmental quality, a cornerstone of many "sustainable
development" proposals, can have a substantial negative impact on economic
growth. Another team of economists found that American air and water regulations
had a total cost of about $320 billion and decreased American gross domestic
product (GDP) by 5.8%. Even well intentioned regulations can have a negative
impact on economic growth and thus unintentionally on desired improvements in
environmental quality.
A policy of sustainable development can also be harmful in its prescription to forgo
economic growth in the name of preserving resources for the future. Forcing the
current generation to conserve resources for the future is like taxing the poor to give money
to the rich. Imagine how different Hong Kong would look today if fifty years ago its imperial
rulers had decreed that Hong Kong must not use natural resources so that they would be
available for future generations. In that case Hong Kong, then with per capita incomes lower
than many Third World countries today, would never have been able to achieve the
remarkable economic growth that has made it one of the richest places on Earth, with
individual incomes as high as those in the United States and higher than in most parts of
Europe.
Hong Kong is a good example of how economic growth will lead to a

higher quality of the environment.
In addition to asking Hong Kong to give up growth for the sake of future
generations, a policy of "sustainable development" involves reducing the
environmental burden Hong Kong's economy places on its neighbors. Here Hong
Kong's great success is truly in evidence. Hong Kong is much wealthier than mainland China
and indeed most of the rest of Asia. As such it is in a position to worry more about the impact
its neighbors have on Hong Kong's environment than vice versa. By continuing the liberal
trade and economic policies that have made Hong Kong the envy and model for
much of Asia, and indeed the rest of the world, it will help promote economic
growth in the region and thus improved environmental quality for its neighbors
and itself.
As Hong Kong moves into the new millennium it has many advantages over most of
its neighbors. Its economic freedom and consequent wealth will not only allow it to
enjoy increased prosperity in the future but also increasing environmental quality.
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Avoiding the temptation to impose new layers of government regulation on a system that has
worked so well will be the main challenge standing in its way.
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Econ growth good- Poverty

Countries with higher economic growth rates will face poverty alleviation.
(Pradeep Agrawal, professor of economics and head, RBI chair unit at the
institute of economic growth, university enclave, Delhi, 08, Economic
growth and poverty reduction: evidence from Kazakhstan,
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2Agrawal.pdf)
Countries with higher growth rates are likely to experience more rapid reduction in
poverty. Using province-level panel data, this was demonstrated to hold for Kazakhstan.
Growth is considered pro-poor if the income share of the poor rises with growth or at least
their incomes grow in absolute terms. Inequality has declined slightly over the recent highgrowth period (19982003), accompanied by reduction in poverty gap and severity. This
evidence supports the view that the 19982003 high-growth period in Kazakhstan has been
pro-poor.
Growth reduced poverty by leading to increased employment and higher real
wages. Both government revenue and expenditure increased with growth and
increased oil and gas exports, both in real terms and as percent of GDP. Government
revenue, which sharply increased in 2003, was used partly to reform and expand the pension
system. This provided assistance to many unemployed workers who could not adjust to
the major and rapid changes from the Soviet era industrial structure. However, it did not
translate into a corresponding improvement in expenditure on the education and health as a
share of government revenue or GDP. Nevertheless, because of the high growth of
government revenue and GDP, real expenditure per person on social sectors still
rose slightly in some periods over 19982003. The paper shows that provinces (regions)
of Kazakhstan that received higher expenditure on social sectors experienced a larger decline
in poverty. This underlines the need for sustained, increasing expenditure for the social
sectors in Kazakhstan, more so in the poorer provinces, possibly through additional support
from the national government.
Economic growth and poverty alleviation are directly connected;

economic growth helps reduce poverty.
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2Agrawal.pdf)
This paper empirically examines the relation between economic
growth and poverty alleviation in the case of Kazakhstan using province-level data.
It shows that provinces with higher growth rates achieved faster
decline in poverty. This happened largely through growth, which led
to increased employment and higher real wages and contributed
significantly to poverty reduction. Rapidly increasing oil revenues
since 1998 have helped significantly raise both gross domestic
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product growth and government revenue in Kazakhstan. Part of the

oil fund was used to fund a pension and social protection program
that has helped reduce poverty. However, expenditure on other social sectors like
education and health has not increased much and needs more support. It is also shown
empirically that increased government expenditure on social sectors did contribute
significantly to poverty alleviation. This suggests that both rapid economic
growth and enhanced government support for the social sectors are
helpful in reducing poverty.
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Econ growth good- poverty/environment

Economic growth is key to reducing poverty and helping the environment.
(World Resources institute, 97, Economic growth and human development,
http://www.wri.org/publication/content/8372)
Economic growth is an important factor in reducing poverty and

generating the resources necessary for human development and
environmental protection. There is a strong correlation between
gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and indicators of
development such as life expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy,
political and civil rights, and some indicators of environmental
quality. However, economic growth alone does not guarantee human development. Wellfunctioning civil institutions, secure individual and property rights, and broad-based health
and educational services are also vital to raising overall living standards. Despite its
shortcomings, though, GDP remains a useful proxy measure of human well-being.
The world economy has grown approximately fivefold since 1950, an

unprecedented rate of increase. The industrialized economies still
dominate economic activity, accounting for US$22.5 trillion of the
US$27.7 trillion global GDP in 1993 [1]. Yet a remarkable trend over
the past 25 years has been the burgeoning role played by developing
countries, in particular the populous economies of east and south
Asia.
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Econ growth good- social services

Economic growth helps increase government revenue, which in turn
decreases poverty through social programs.
http://www.adb.org/documents/periodicals/ADR/pdf/ADR-Vol24-2Agrawal.pdf
The growing literature on policies for poverty reduction has
emphasized the importance of economic growth, as well as targeted
provision of government aid in poverty alleviation and development.
Since government aid to the poor is dependent on government
revenue, which in turn grows with economic growth, the key role of
economic growth has been emphasized in the literature. This paper
examined these issues empirically for Kazakhstan and showed that
the rapid increase in oil and gas extraction and related activities very
significantly contributed to economic growth as well as to increased
government revenue. A portion of these funds was used to improve
the social security/pension system, and maintain government
demand for goods that helped industrial recovery. This played a key role in
poverty reduction in Kazakhstan.
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Econ growth good- poverty

Economic growth is key to reduce poverty.
(Ebba Dohlman and Mikael Soderback, OECD development Cooperation, 03 07,
"Economic
growth
versus
poverty
reduction:
A
"hollow
debate"?,"
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/2173/Economic_growth_versus
_poverty_
reduction:_A__93hollow_debate_94_.html)
A close look at what can be patchy data suggests that growth, poverty and
inequality are linked. One study shows that a 1% increase in per capita incomes
may reduce income poverty by as much as 4% or by less than 1%, depending on the
initial conditions in the country, such as the distribution of assets, ownership, and
so on. Overall, most of the evidence confirms that poverty reduction depends on
the pace and pattern of economic growth. But how to achieve the optimal pattern?
The answer is a hybrid: pro-poor and pro-growth approaches are mutually reinforcing and
should go hand in hand. What this means for policy is spelt out in a new book by the
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD, whose member countries handle
some 90% of world bilateral ODA (see references). Its forum, the Network on Poverty
Reduction (POVNET), has helped to steer previously divided opinion into a new consensus that
rapid and sustained poverty reduction requires pro-poor growth. This means a pace and
pattern of growth that enhances the ability of poor women and men to participate
in, contribute to and benefit from growth.
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AT: Dedev-No mindshift

People will always want an increase in economic growth, because it
prevents everyone from becoming poor.
(Richland college, 08, Economic Growth, http://www.google.com/search?
q=people+will+always+want+economic+growth&hl=en&start=10&sa=N)
We now know what Economic Growth is. It is the level of Real GDP increasing over
time. The trick about Economic Growth is that we always want it increasing, but not
too fast or too slow. Without increased Economic Growth we would never improve our
standard of living. We would never have innovation. Ex: Would you rather live during the time
of the Biltmore Mansion, or today at minimum wage?
We are much better off today than we were 120 years ago (roughly the time when the
Biltmore Estate was built). Even people making near the Minimum Wage have access
to products and information that wasnt yet invented or available to that time
period. That explains why we want a continuous increase in GDP, but why do we want
to control its speed; why is too fast or too slow equally as bad as no growth? Think about
everyone running out and borrowing money to start businesses or invent new products. What
would happen to GDP? It would increase drastically for a short period of time, but that cant
last. Everyone is in debt through borrowing; there would be no consumers to buy all of these
new products. Everyone would become poor, and that would lead to a recession which we
know ends in job losses.
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Econ growth good-violence

Economic growth leads to less violence and disorder, and helps establish
stability and the quality of health.
(The Futurist. 04 30 06, "The Psychology of Economic Progress,"
http://futurist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/04/the_psychology_.html)
In centuries past, killing another person in order to take his belongings was
common. Today, the downside risk to one's career of even petty theft or minor
fraud is enough that most people in the US today don't consider it. As the world
economy accelerated from centuries of slow growth to a period of rapid growth
starting from the middle of the 20th century, we have seen a general decline in
violence and disorder in developed societies, and also a decline in large-scale
warfare in general. Simply put, when more people have a stake in the stability and
health of the system, they are more interested in maintaining and strengthening it,
rather than disrupting it or trying to bypass it.
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Econ growth good- social services

Economic growth helps increase social services, leading to a decrease in
poverty.
(JBIC, Japanese bank of international cooperation, 11 06, "Infrastructure development to
alleviate poverty,"
http://www.jbic.go.jp/en/report/jbic-today/2006/11/index_02.html)
It is estimated that 1.1 billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day.
About three-quarters of these 1.1 billion live in rural areas in developing countries,
and there is a growing awareness throughout the international community that
agricultural development is extremely important in reducing poverty, and must be
accelerated to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
For rural areas where many of the poor live, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation
(JBIC) has provided Official Development Assistance (ODA) loans to support the development
of infrastructure that will serve as a foundation for growth in the agricultural sector. JBIC offers
a range of support tools, including the combination of various frameworks for the effective
use of agricultural infrastructure and ensuring sustainable results from it.
As the development experience in Asia has shown, economic growth boosts
incomes and creates employment opportunities, leading to higher standards of
living. Reducing poverty in developing countries requires sustainable economic
growth and the development of infrastructure to support that growth.
Economic growth helps increase social welfare, which is the objective of

governments.
(Mathew Clarke, 09 03, "Chairman of MIND (Munasinge Institute for
development)," http://books.google.com/books?
id=TK1YDJKJoC8C&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=economic+growth+leads+welfare&source=bl&ots=Z
88sFL27JS&sig=saQ7KNsHERU_k4x98hR3XxAKre4&hl=en&ei=JpYSpG1NaCytwftgfHdCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3)
An explanation of the relationships between economic growth and social welfare is
an enduring question in contemporary development studies. Economic growth is
desirable if it improves social welfare. Within the literature and public policy, the
orthodox view is that achieving economic growth is the appropriate means to
increase social welfare and enhancing social welfare is a rational objective of
society and governments. Economic growth leads to higher incomes and improved
access to basic needs. However, the costs of achieving economic growth are often not fully
considered, as welfare analysis of economic growth is limited within the literature. Whist some
work has been undertaken for transitional economies, welfare analysis has been generally
limited to the suggestion of general frameworks.
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AT: Trainer
Ted Trainers ideas are flawed overconsumption is unavoidable and
necessary
(Margo Condoleon, Document of the DSP, national executive, 09,
"Environment, Capitalism and Socialism,"
http://books.google.com/books?
id=kP4xrhGDoywC&pg=PA97&dq=ted+trainer&lr=&ei=L-BYSsujHpbyzQTLzJw1)
Ted Trainer's main ideas have been expressed in two books Abandon Affluence
and Developed to Death. They contain very detailed presentation of trends in
resource depletion and energy supply, population growth, the wastefulness of
consumer societies, and the exploitation of the Third World by wealthier nations.
Trainer argues strongly against those who believe that these problems can be addressed
adequately through existing political and social institutions.
However, as the title indicates, Abandon Affluence argues that all have to accept a
lower level of consumption -- the root cause of the ecological crisis is
"overconsumption" by individual consumers in the industrially developed countries.
This argument undervalues the great disparities in income that exist within the
developed countries. It also fails to grasp that wasteful consumption is
overwhelmingly created by the needs of capital for ever expanding markets: if
profits need to be maintained planned obsolescence, the permanent stimulation of
new "needs" through advertising, multiple versions of the same product and
unnecessary packaging are all unavoidable. Thus Trainer's tendency to blame individual
consumption levels for the ecological crisis stems from his equating affluence (a plentiful
supply of products meeting rational needs) with consumerism and wasteful consumption
created by capitalism
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Econ defense
Economic problems dont increase the likelihood of war
Bennet and Nordstrom, 2k (D. Scott and Timothy Nordstrom, dept of political
science @ the University of Penn, 2000,Foreign Policy)
Substitutability and Internal Economic Problems in Enduring Rivalries, Journal of Conflict
resolution, vol.44 no.1 p. 33-61, jstor
Conflict settlement is also a distinct route to dealing with internal problems that leaders in
rivalries may pursue when faced with internal problems . Military competition between states
requires large amounts of resources, and rivals require even more attention. Leaders may
choose to negotiate a settlement that ends a rivalry to free up important resources that may
be reallocated to the domestic economy. In a "guns versus butter" world of economic tradeoffs, when a state can no longer afford to pay the expenses associated with competition in a
rivalry, it is quite rational for leaders to reduce costs by ending a rivalry . This gain (a peace
dividend) could be achieved at any time by ending a rivalry. However, such a gain is likely to
bemost important and attractive to leaders when internal conditions are bad and the leader is
seeking ways to alleviate active problems. Support for policy change away from continued
rivalry is more likely to develop when the economic situation sours and elites and masses are
looking for ways to improve a worsening situation. It is at these times that the pressure to cut
military investment will be greatest and that state leaders will be forced to recognize the
difficulty of continuing to pay for a rivalry. Among other things, this argument also
encompasses the view that the cold war ended because the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics could no longer compete economically with the United States. Hypothesis 2: Poor
economic conditions increase the probability of rivalry termination. Hypotheses 1 and 2 posit
opposite behaviors in response to a single cause (internal economic problems). As such, they
demand are search design that can account for substitutability between them.
Us not key to world economy- emerging economies are more independent

from the US
The
Economist,
5-21
(Decoupling
2.0
May
21,
2009,
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm ?story_id=13697292)
REMEMBER the debate about decoupling? A year ago, many commentatorsincluding this
newspaperargued that emerging economies had become more resilient to an American
recession, thanks to their strong domestic markets and prudent macroeconomic policies.
Naysayers claimed Americas weakness would fell the emerging world. Over the past six
months the global slump seemed to prove the sceptics right. Emerging economies reeled and
decoupling was ridiculed.
Yet perhaps the idea was dismissed too soon. Even if Americas output remains weak, there
are signs that some of the larger emerging economies could see a decent rebound. China is
exhibit A of this new decoupling: its economy began to accelerate again in the first four
months of this year. Fixed investment is growing at its fastest pace since 2006 and
consumption is holding up well. Despite debate over the accuracy of Chinas GDP figures (see
article), most economists agree that output will grow faster than seemed plausible only a few
months ago. Growth this year could be close to 8%. Such optimism has fuelled commodity
prices which have, in turn, brightened the outlook for Brazil and other commodity exporters.
That said, even the best performing countries will grow more slowly than they did between
2004 and 2007. Nor will the resilience be universal: eastern Europes indebted economies will
suffer as global banks cut back, and emerging economies intertwined with America, such as
Mexico, will continue to be hit hard. So will smaller, more trade-dependent countries.
Decoupling 2.0 is a narrower phenomenon, confined to a few of the biggest, and least
indebted, emerging economies.
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It is based on two under-appreciated facts: the biggest emerging economies are less
dependent on American spending than commonly believed; and they have proven more able
and willing to respond to economic weakness than many feared. Economies such as China or
Brazil were walloped late last year not only, or even mainly, because American demand
plunged. (Over half of Chinas exports go to other emerging economies, and China recently
overtook the United States as Brazils biggest export market.) They were hit hard by the nearcollapse of global credit markets and the dramatic destocking by shell-shocked firms. In
addition, many emerging countries had been aggressively tightening monetary policy to fight
inflation just before these shocks hit. The result was that domestic demand slumped even as
exports fell.
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Econ Defense
The economy is resilient
Sehgal, 4-17 (Rohit- chief investment strategist for Dynamic Funds, The Globe and
Mail, Optimism reigns, even after the humble pie Lexis-Nexis Academic, April 17,
2009, http://www.lexisnexis.com/us/lnacademic/search/homesubmitForm.do)
We follow two economies very closely, China and the U.S. In China, the numbers look very
encouraging. They also have a fairly aggressive stimulus plan that seems to be sticking. Car
sales in China, for instance, in March were more than 12 million [at an annual pace] so they
are already exceeding U.S. car sales.
In the U.S., we are still in a crisis mode. You have to look very closely at housing because
that's where the whole trouble started. If you're looking at affordability, it's improving pretty
dramatically. You're seeing mortgage applications, the numbers are beginning to improve. The
retail data in the U.S. are not as bad, durables numbers are not as bad. Not as bad to me is a
good sign.
And if you look at inventories, they're scraping the bottom right now so you could have a
pretty fast recovery there, because industrial production came to a screeching halt. When you
look at all this anecdotal evidence, you can make a case that maybe things are improving a
bit.
The bears say that things may get better, but not for long and then they will get worse. What
do you say to that?
But maybe it will not get worse again. Look at the amount of stimulus, and look at the
valuations in equity markets. They're at historically low levels. If you look at the last 10 years,
equity returns are zero. That's a very rare occurrence. It doesn't mean we won't have
setbacks. I think we will have setbacks. I don't believe we are in a great depression. I think we
have a problem that started in the housing sector with subprime, and it's going to take a long
time to clean it up.
The U.S. economy is very resilient. This is one area where the bears don't want to give too
much credit. Unlike Japan and Europe, it's adaptive. They go and blow their brains out once
every five or six years because of excesses, but they learn their lessons and they do adapt
very well and it's still a very productive economy. It will take time, certainly.
Multiple competitive advantages ensure the US economy will remain

strong
Francis, 8 (Dianne, Fingold = portfolio manager of Dynamic Funds, The Huffington
Post,
U.S.
Economy
Huge
Winner
in
Future
May
30,
2008,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-francis/us-economy-huge-winnerin_b_104205.html)
The current slowdown is temporary because the U.S. has competitive advantages compared
to virtually all other countries. Said Fingold:
"The United States still has huge competitive advantages to the rest of the world. It has tax
advantages, good laws, its government goes to bat for its corporations around the world, its
government protects intellectual property."
Fingold's global funds are under-weighted in Europe because the Euro has risen by 40% and
has decimated corporate profits and exporters. He's also cautious about Asia. "Asian
currencies will be the next to rise against the U.S. dollar which is why we are reluctant to
invest in Asian exporters and multinationals," he said.
The U.S. has huge underlying strength:
"America is one of the only free markets in the world, where intellectual property
and people can be developed. Its industrial and technology companies are the hot
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houses of the world for producing innovation. The low dollar means that there is a
huge wind at the back for companies who can serve the world with exports,
services and goods that help build their economies and enable infrastructure
development."
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Environmental Destruction/opop turns disease

Worldwatch Institute, 96 (Infectious Diseases Surge: Environmental
Destruction, Poverty To Blame http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1593)
Rates of infectious disease have risen rapidly in many countries during the past decade,
according to a new study released by the Worldwatch Institute. Illness and death from
tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and AIDS are up sharply; infectious diseases killed 16.5
million people in 1993, one-third of all deaths worldwide, and slightly more than cancer and
heart disease combined.
The resurgence of diseases once thought to have been conquered stems from a deadly mix of
exploding populations, rampant poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and
severe environmental degradation, says the new report, Infecting Ourselves: How
Environmental and Social Disruptions Trigger Disease. Infectious diseases take their greatest
toll in developing countries, where cases of malaria and tuberculosis are soaring, but even in
the United States, infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992.
Research Associate Anne Platt, author of the report, says, "Infectious diseases are a basic
barometer of the environmental sustainability of human activity. Recent outbreaks result from
a sharp imbalance between a human population growing by 88 million each year and a
natural resource base that is under increasing stress."
"Water pollution, shrinking forests, and rising temperatures are driving the upward surge in
infections in many countries," the report says. "Only by adopting a more sustainable path to
economic development can we control them."
"Beyond the number of people who die, the social and economic cost of infectious diseases is
hard to overestimate," Platt says. "It can be a crushing burden for families, communities, and
governments. Some 400 million people suffer from debilitating malaria, about 200 million
have schistosomiasis, and nine million have tuberculosis."
By the year 2000, AIDS will cost Asian countries over $50 billion a year just in lost
productivity. "Such suffering and economic loss is doubly tragic," says Platt, "because the cost
of these diseases is astronomical, yet preventing them is not only simple, but inexpensive."
The author notes, "The dramatic resurgence of infectious diseases is telling us that we are
approaching disease and medicine, as well as economic development, in the wrong way.
Governments focus narrowly on individual cures and not on mass prevention; and we fail to
understand that lifestyle can promote infectious disease just as it can contribute to heart
disease. It is imperative that we bring health considerations into the equation when we plan
for international development, global trade, and population increases, to prevent disease from
spreading and further undermining economic development."
The report notes that this global resurgence of infectious disease involves old, familiar
diseases like tuberculosis and the plague as well as new ones like Ebola and Lyme disease. Yet
all show the often tragic consequences of human actions:
Population increases, leading to human crowding, poverty, and the growth of mega-cities, are
prompting dramatic increases in dengue fever, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.
Lack of clean water is spreading diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty percent
of all disease in developing countries is related to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation.
Poorly planned development disrupts ecosystems and provides breeding grounds for
mosquitoes, rodents, and snails that spread debilitating diseases.
Inadequate vaccinations have led to resurgences in measles and diphtheria.
Misuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant strains of pneumonia and malaria.
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Environment Impact/ turns disease

Environmental collapse threatens health and civilization collapse
WHO, 5 (Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Health Synthesis
http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosys tems/ecosysq1.pdf)
In a fundamental sense, ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems - for the human
species and all other forms of life (see Figure 1.1). The needs of the human organism for food,
water, clean air, shelter and relative climatic constancy are basic and unalterable. That is,
ecosystems are essential to human well-being and especially to human health defined by
the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Those who live in materially comfortable, urban environments commonly take for granted
ecosystem services to health. They assume that good health derives from prudent consumer
choices and behaviours, with access to good health care services. But this ignores the role of
the natural environment: of the array of ecosystems that allow people to enjoy good health,
social organization, economic activity, a built environment and life itself. Historically,
overexploitation of ecosystem services has led to the collapse of some societies
(SG3). There is an observable tendency for powerful and wealthy societies eventually to
overexploit, damage and even destroy their natural environmental support base. The
agricultural-based civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mayans, and (on a microscale) Easter Island all provide well documented examples. Industrial societies, although in
many cases more distant from the source of the ecosystem services on which they depend,
may reach similar limits. Resource consumption in one location can lead to degradation of
ecosystem services and associated health effects in other parts of the world (SG3). At its most
fundamental level of analysis, the pressure on ecosystems can be conceptualized as a
function of population, technology and lifestyle. In turn, these factors depend on many social
and cultural elements. For example, fertilizer use in agricultural production increasingly is
dependent on resources extracted from other regions and has led to eutrophication of rivers,
lakes and coastal ecosystems. Notwithstanding ecosystems' fundamental role as
determinants of human health, sociocultural factors play a similarly important role. These
include infrastructural assets; income and wealth distribution; technologies used; and level of
knowledge. In many industrialized countries, changes in these social factors over the last few
centuries have both enhanced some ecosystem services (through more productive
agriculture, for instance) and improved health services and education, contributing to
increases in life expectancy. The complex multifactorial causation of states of health and
disease complicates the attribution of human health impacts to ecosystem changes. A
precautionary approach to ecosystem management is appropriate.
Environmental destruction causes new diseases

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

Environmental degradation increases war, instability, and hurts the
economy
UN, 4 (United Nations News Center, Environmental destruction during war
exacerbates
instability
November
5,
2004,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?
NewsID=12460&Cr=conflict&Cr1=environment,
"These scars, threatening water supplies, the fertility of the land and the
cleanliness of the air are recipes for instability between communities and
neighbouring countries," he added. Citing a new UNEP report produced in
collaboration with the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the Organisation
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Toepfer stressed that
environmental degradation could undermine local and international security by
"reinforcing and increasing grievances within and between societies." The study
finds that a decrepit and declining environment can depress economic activity and
diminish the authority of the state in the eyes of its citizens. It also points out that
the addressing environmental problems can foster trust among communities and
neighbouring countries. "Joint projects to clean up sites, agreements and treaties
to better share resources such as rivers and forests, and strengthening cooperation
between the different countries' ministries and institutions may hold the key to
building trust, understanding and more stable relations," said the UNEP chief.
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Environmental destruction turns agriculture

Environmental degradation destroys cropland
Homer-Dixon, 91 (Thomas- Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict
Studies Program at the University of Toronto, International Security On The Threshold:
Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict 199,
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh/thresh2.htm)
Decreased agricultural production is often mentioned as potentially the most worrisome
consequence of environmental change,47 and Figure 2 presents some of the causal scenarios
frequently proposed by researchers. This illustration is not intended to be exhaustive: the
systemic interaction of environmental and agricultural variables is far more complex than the
figure suggests.48 Moreover, no one region or country will exhibit all the indicated processes:
while some are already clearly evident in certain areas, others are not yet visible anywhere.
The Philippines provides a good illustration of deforestation's impact, which can be traced out
in the figure. Since the Second World War, logging and the encroachment of farms have
reduced the virgin and second-growth forest from about sixteen million hectares to 6.8-7.6
million hectares.49 Across the archipelago, logging and land-clearing have accelerated erosion,
changed regional hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns, and decreased the land's
ability to retain water during rainy periods. The resulting flash floods have damaged irrigation
works while plugging reservoirs and irrigation channels with silt. These factors may seriously
affect crop production. For example, when the government of the Philippines and the
European Economic Community commissioned an Integrated Environmental Plan for the still
relatively unspoiled island of Palawan, the authors of the study found that only about half of
the 36,000 hectares of irrigated farmland projected within the Plan for 2007 will actually be
irrigable because of the hydrological effects of decreases in forest cover. 50
Figure 2 also highlights the importance of the degradation and decreasing availability of good
agricultural land, problems that deserve much closer attention than they usually receive.
Currently, total global cropland amounts to about 1.5 billion hectares. Optimistic estimates of
total arable land on the planet, which includes both current and potential cropland, range
from 3.2 to 3.4 billion hectares, but nearly all the best land has already been exploited. What
is left is either less fertile, not sufficiently rainfed or easily irrigable, infested with pests, or
harder to clear and work.51
For developing countries during the 1980s, cropland grew at just 0.26 percent a
year, less than half the rate of the 1970s. More importantly, in these countries
arable land per capita dropped by 1.9 percent a year. 52 In the absence of a major
increase in arable land in developing countries, experts expect that the world
average of 0.28 hectares of cropland per capita will decline to 0.17 hectares by the
year 2025, given the current rate of world population growth. 53 Large tracts are
being lost each year to urban encroachment, erosion, nutrient depletion,
salinization, waterlogging, acidification, and compacting. The geographer Vaclav
Smil, who is generally very conservative in his assessments of environmental
damage, estimates that two to three million hectares of cropland are lost annually
to erosion; perhaps twice as much land goes to urbanization, and at least one
million hectares are abandoned because of excessive salinity. In addition, about
one-fifth of the world's cropland is suffering from some degree of desertification. 54
Taken together, he concludes, the planet will lose about 100 million hectares of
arable land between 1985 and 2000.55
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Freedom
Violation of freedom negates the value of human existence and
represents the greatest threat to human survival
Rand 89
(Ayn Rand, Philosopher, July 1989, The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of
Egoism, p. 145)
A society that robs and individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit
the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment, a society that
sets up a conflict between its ethics and the requirements of mans nature is not, strictly
speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society
destroys all values of human coexistence, has no possible justification, and

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

Rice 05
(Susan Rice, Brookings Institute, WHY DARFUR CANT BE LEFT TO AFRICA, August
7, 2005, http://www.brookings.org/views/articles/rice/20050807.htm)
Never is the international responsibility to protect more compelling than in cases of
genocide. Genocide is not a regional issue . A government that commits or condones it is
not on a par with one that, say, jails dissidents, squanders economic resources or suppresses free
speech, as dreadful as such policies may be. Genocide makes a claim on the entire world
and it should be a call to action whatever diplomatic feathers it ruffles.
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Heg
Heg prevents global nuclear wars
Khalilzad 95
(Zalmay
Khalilzad,
Rand
Corporation,
The Washington Quarterly 1995)
What might happen to the world if the United States turned inward ?
Without the United

States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), rather than cooperating with each other, the West European
nations might compete with each other for domination of East-Central Europe and the Middle East. In Western and Central
Europe, Germany -- especially since unification -- would be the natural leading power. Either in cooperation or
competition with Russia, Germany might seek influence over the territories located between them. German
efforts are likely to be aimed at filling the vacuum, stabilizing the region, and precluding its domination by rival powers.
Britain and France fear such a development. Given the strength of democracy in Germany and its preoccupation with
absorbing the former East Germany, European concerns about Germany appear exaggerated. But it would be a mistake to
assume that U.S. withdrawal could not, in the long run, result in the renationalization of Germany's security
policy. The same is also true of Japan. Given a U.S. withdrawal from the world, Japan would have to look after
its own security and build up its military capabilities. China, Korea, and the nations of Southeast Asia already
fear Japanese hegemony. Without U.S. protection, Japan is likely to increase its military capability dramatically
-- to balance the growing Chinese forces and still-significant Russian forces. This could result in arms races,
including the possible acquisition by Japan of nuclear weapons. Given Japanese technological prowess, to say
nothing of the plutonium stockpile Japan has acquired in the development of its nuclear power industry, it could obviously
become a nuclear weapon state relatively quickly, if it should so decide. It could also build long-range missiles and carrier
task forces.
With the shifting balance of power
among Japan, China, Russia, and potential new
regional powers such as India, Indonesia, and a united Korea
could come significant risks of
preventive or proeruptive war. Similarly, European competition for regional dominance could lead to major
wars in Europe or East Asia. If the United States stayed out of such a war -- an unlikely prospect -- Europe
or East Asia could become dominated by a hostile powe r. Such a development would
threaten U.S. interests. A power that achieved such dominance would seek to exclude the United States from
the area and threaten its interests-economic and political -- in the region. Besides, with the domination of
Europe or East Asia, such a power might seek global hegemony and the United States
would face another global Cold War and the risk of a world war even more
catastrophic
than
the
last.
In the Persian Gulf, U.S. withdrawal is likely to lead to an intensified struggle for regional domination. Iran and
Iraq have, in the past, both sought regional hegemony. Without U.S. protection, the weak oil-rich states of the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) would be unlikely to retain their independence. To preclude this development, the Saudis might
seek to acquire, perhaps by purchase, their own nuclear weapons. If either Iraq or Iran controlled the region that dominates
the world supply of oil, it could gain a significant capability to damage the U.S. and world economies. Any country that
gained hegemony would have vast economic resources at its disposal that could be used to build military capability as well
as gain leverage over the United States and other oil-importing nations. Hegemony over the Persian Gulf by either Iran
or Iraq would bring the rest of the Arab Middle East under its influence and domination because of the shift in
the balance of power. Israeli security problems would multiply and the peace process would be fundamentally
undermined, increasing the risk of war between the Arabs and the Israelis.
<continued> The extension of instability, conflict, and hostile hegemony in East Asia, Europe, and the Persian Gulf would
harm the economy of the United States even in the unlikely event that it was able to avoid involvement in major wars and
conflicts. Higher oil prices would reduce the U.S. standard of living. Turmoil in Asia and Europe would force major economic
readjustment in the United States, perhaps reducing U.S. exports and imports and jeopardizing U.S. investments in these
regions. Given that total imports and exports are equal to a quarter of U.S. gross domestic product, the cost of necessary
The higher level of turmoil in the world would also increase the
likelihood of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and means for their
adjustments might be high.
delivery. Already several rogue states such as North Korea and Iran are seeking nuclear weapons and longrange missiles. That danger would only increase if the United States withdrew from the
world. The result would be a much more dangerous world in which many states
possessed WMD capabilities; the likelihood of their actual use would increase
accordingly. If this happened, the security of every nation in the world, including the United States, would
be harmed.<continued> Under the third option, the United States would seek to retain global leadership and
to preclude the rise of a global rival or a return to multipolarity for the indefinite future. On balance, this is the
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best long-term guiding principle and vision. Such a vision is desirable not as an end in itself, but because a
world in which the United States exercises leadership would have tremendous advantages. First, the global
environment would be more open and more receptive to American values -- democracy, free markets, and the
rule of law. Second, such a world would have a better chance of dealing cooperatively with the world's major
problems, such as nuclear proliferation, threats of regional hegemony by renegade states, and low-level
conflicts. Finally, U.S. leadership would help preclude the rise of another hostile global
rival, enabling
the United States and
the world to avoid
another global cold or hot war and all the
attendant dangers, including a global nuclear exchange. U.S. leadership would therefore be more
conducive to global stability than a bipolar or a multipolar balance of power system.
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Homophobia War
Heterosexual dominance justifies genocide homophobia isolates
homosexuals as citizens undeserving of equal protection of law
Cohen, 2K [More censorship or less discrimination? Sexual orientation hate
propaganda in multiple perspectives, McGill law review]
The above phenomena--closetry, deviance, sexism, and supremacy--form the context of
homophobia against which hate propaganda works its harms. These harms are not just those of
individual libel writ large; they are, seen contextually, the implements of heterosexual
domination. (24) First among them is a range of physiological and psychological traumas
experienced by members of the targeted group, all of which exacerbate existing
feelings of vulnerability and isolation. (25) Second, these effects extend beyond the targeted
group, causing particular detriment to freedom of expression, freedom of association, and
democracy. (26) Third, sexual orientation hate propaganda reinforces (and is reinforced by)
the other tools of homophobia, which include harassment, gay bashing, overt and covert
discrimination, extortion, stigmatization, murder, and genocide. (27) Finally, the absence of
protection from hate propaganda--particularly in jurisdictions such as Canada, where other
target groups receive protection--signals to members of sexual minorities that they are
second class citizens not entitled to equal protection of the law. (28) It is the individual and
combined effect of these interconnected tools of homophobia, and not the mere pluralization of
individual defamation or libel, that ultimately justifies state sanction of anti-gay hate propaganda.
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Human Rights: Credibility

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

Human Rights credibility gives us the influence to start modern
movements and ensure necessary cooperation to stop terrorist attacks
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, 7-7, 2004, Promoting Human
Rights
and
Democracy,
Human
Rights
Watch,
p.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/07/usint9009_txt.htm
Having an effective and principled American strategy to promote democratic freedoms around
the world has never been more important to Americas national security. Indeed, I strongly
believe that promoting human rights is central to Americas central national security
imperative of defeating terror, for three reasons.
First, the aims of Al Qaeda and its allies
are advanced by the actions of repressive regimes in the Muslim world, which stretches from
Africa to the Middle East to Central, South and Southeast Asia. The terrorists primary aim, we
should remember, is to turn the hearts and minds of the people of this region against their
governments and against the West, and to seize upon that anger to transform the region
politically. When governments in countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan
shut down political dissent, lock up non-violent dissidents, torture opponents, abuse the rule
of law, and deny their people fair justice, they are contributing to the radicalization of their
people, thus playing right into the hands of terrorist movements. And when ordinary people in
the region associate the United States with their repressive governments, Al Qaedas aim of
painting the United States as the enemy is also advanced.
Second, in the long run, the only
viable alternative to the rise of violent, extremist movements in this region is the
development of moderate, non-violent political movements that represent their peoples
aspirations, speaking out for economic progress and better schools and against corruption
and arbitrary rule. But such movements can only exist under democratic conditions, when
people are free to think, speak, write and worship without fear, when they can form political
organizations, and when their rights are protected by independent courts.
Without a doubt,
more radical organizations can also exploit democratic freedoms to express their views, and
they will be part of the political landscape as societies in the Middle East become more open.
But as for terrorists, they do not need human rights to do what they do. They have thrived in
the most repressive societies in the world. It is the people who dont use violence who need
democratic freedoms to survive.
Third, promoting human rights and democracy is
important because Americas moral authority partly depends on it. American power
in the world is more likely to be respected when it is harnessed to goals that are
universally shared. People around the world are more likely to aid the United
States in the fight against terrorism and other important goals if they believe the
United States is also interested in defending their rights and aspirations. When
America is seen to be compromising the values it has long preached, its credibility
and influence are diminished.
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Human Rights Promo Good- Iran Prolif

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

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

A. Human rights promotion is critical to democracy
Tom Malinowski, Washington Advocacy Director, 3-10, 2004, Federal Document
Clearing House Congressional Testimony, Lexis
Whether we agree with the President's policies or not, Mr. Chairman, we have to take that
warning seriously when it is coming from those on the front lines of the struggle for human
rights and democracy in the Middle East. As we make decisions on these complex matters, we
have to take into account the impact those decisions will have on America's ability to
champion democratic values around the world.
The fundamental point is that we need the moral clarity that is provided by these State
Department human rights reports and by the efforts of the President and the State
Department to condemn human rights abuses throughout the year. But the United States
needs to project more than moral clarityit must maintain moral authority to promote a more
humane and democratic world. That requires consistent leadership abroad and a sterling
example at home.
B. Extinction
Diamond 95. (Larry, Snr. research fellow @ Hoover Institute, Promoting Democracy
in the 1990's, p 6-7)

This hardly exhausts the list of threats to our security and well-being in the coming
years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the
stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies
through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made
common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the
institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical. and biological
weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global
ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and
unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the
weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability,
popular sovereignty, and openness.
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Human Rights Promo Good- Central Asia

Human rights cred is critical to prevent war in Central Asia
Fiona Hill, fellow Brookings Institution, 2001, The Caucus and Central Asia: How
the United States and Its Allies Can Stave Off a Crisis, Policy Brief #80, p. online
In the next two years, the Caucasus and Central Asian states could become zones of
interstate competition similar to the Middle East and Northeast Asia. Economic and political
crises, or the intensification of war in Chechnya or Afghanistan, might lead to the
"Balkanization" of the regions. This, in turn, could result in military intervention by any of the
major powers. Given the fact that both Turkey and Iran threatened intervention in the Caucasus at the peak of the
Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1992-1993, this risk should be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, the Caucasus and Central Asian states lack the capacity to tackle crises without outside help.
Economic collapse has produced social dislocation and extreme poverty. Widespread corruption and the
entrenchment of aging leaders and their families have eroded support for central governments and constrained the
development of a new generation of leaders. The internal weakness of the Caucasus and Central Asian states,
combined with brutal regional wars, makes them extremely vulnerable to outside pressureespecially from Russia.
Although Russia itself is weak, it is far stronger than all the states combined, and while its direct influence over their
affairs has declined since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it remains the dominant economic, political, and military
force.
The West will have to assist the states in bolstering their institutional capacity and in promoting cooperation among
them. American engagement remains crucial given its weight on the international stage, the potential threats to its
own security, and the fact that it has leverage in the regions. In spite of a few glitches, the Caucasus and
Central Asian states have been receptive to the United States and are among its few potential
allies in a zone where other states are not so amenable to U.S. activity. Regional countries
need American moral and material support to maintain independence in the face of increasing
pressures, and its guidance in dealing with presidential transition crises and addressing
human rights abuses. Even with limited political and financial resources, U.S. leadership can
do a great deal to defuse regional tensions and mitigate problems. However, this will only be
possible if a policy is defined early and communicated clearly, if there is a particular focus on
partnership with European allies in addressing regional challenges, and if Russia is
encouraged to become a force for stability rather than a factor for instability in the regions.
The Caucasus and Central Asia at a Crossroads
This is a critical time for the Caucasus and Central Asian states because a number of negative
trends could converge to bring about a crisis. Responding to that crisis requires the United
States to build a long-term strategy based on a frank assessment of regional needs and of U.S. capabilities
and resources. The Clinton administration's approach to the regions was ad hoc. It tackled a laundry list of initiatives in
response to crises and shifting policy priorities. Issues such as oil and gas pipelines, conflict resolution, and human rights
were targeted at different junctures, but an overall strategywhich was essential given limited government resources for the
regionswas never fully articulated. As a result, American priorities were not communicated clearly to local leaders, resulting
in frequent misinterpretations of intentions. Domestic constituencies in the United States undermined leverage in regional
conflicts. Incompatible government structures and conflicting legislation fostered competition among agencies and
encouraged a proliferation of parallel initiatives, while congressional mandates limited areas in which scarce funds could be
applied and thus reduced flexibility. The new administration must get ahead of this negative trend in setting policy and
priorities, while tackling U.S. government deficiencies directly. In crafting policy, several developments need to be
considered: The civil war in Afghanistan will likely regain momentum this summer. Already, the incursion of refugees and
fighters from Afghanistan into Central Asia and the activities of Central Asian militant groups have strained fragile political
situations in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. Governments in Central Asia are violating human rights as they
clamp down on Islamic groups in response to acts of terrorism and militant activities. In Uzbekistan, the closing of mosques, a
ban on political opposition movements, and arrests of practicing Muslims have forced groups underground and increased
support for insurgencies and extremists. In Chechnya, the war shows little sign of resolution through political negotiation.
Refugees and fighters have been pushed across borders into the South Caucasus by Russian troops, as well as into
neighboring Russian regions. As in Afghanistan, an intensification of the war in Chechnya is likely this summer. Other
Caucasus civil wars are in a state of "no peace, no war." Recent international efforts to resolve the conflict over NagornoKarabakh, led by the United States, France, and Russia, have raised expectations for a peace settlement. But, in both
Armenia and Azerbaijan, opposition figures openly discuss the resumption of war if leaders are perceived to have sold out.
Georgia is teetering on the verge of collapse, overwhelmed by internal difficulties and burdened by the inability to combat
corruption and tackle economic reform. The dual secessions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia have split the country and
spillover from Chechnya has soured relations with Russia. In winter 2000, Russia imposed new, stringent visa requirements
on Georgia and temporarily suspended energy supplies over payments and a contract dispute, increasing pressure on the
beleaguered country. In both Georgia and Azerbaijan, political succession has become a critical issue. Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan will soon face the same crisis. No provisions have been made for a presidential transition, and
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emerging leaders have often been suppressed or forced into exile. All of these issues are exacerbated by the continued
downturn of regional economies. The Asian and Russian financial crises of 1998 were a major setback, leading to the
devaluation of currencies, untenable debt burdens, and the withdrawal of foreign investment. Deep-rooted corruption feeds
into the economic crisis and hinders the emergence of small and medium-sized businesses that could spur market
development and economic growth. For both regions, Russia is the only source of reliable employment, a significant market
for local products, and, in the short-term, the principal energy supplier. In Georgia alone, approximately 10 percent of the
population currently works in Russia and sends home an amount equivalent to nearly a quarter of Georgia's Gross Domestic
Product (GDP). This influx of economic migrants has exacerbated ethnic tensions within Russia. Because regional
governments cannot pay their energy bills, clashes over energy with Russia will continue, increasing tensions and instability.
In Central Asia, high unemployment fosters the smuggling of raw materials and consumer goods, and trafficking in arms and
drugs. Eighty percent of heroin sold in Europe originates in Afghanistan and Pakistan and about half of this production flows
through Central Asia. The heroin trade in Central Asia has created a burgeoning intravenous drug problem and an HIV/AIDS
outbreak that mimics the early epidemic in Africa. Health workers fear an escalation in a matter of months that will
overwhelm local medical systems and the region's miniscule international programs. A major HIV/AIDS crisis would be the
final straw for states like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. U.S.-Russian Tensions in the Caspian Basin Converging with this regional
crisis is a sharp difference of opinion between the United States and Russia over U.S. involvement in Caspian energy
development and engagement in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In Moscow, the United States is portrayed as purposefully
weakening Russia's strategic position and bent on establishing Central Asia and the Caucasus as U.S. outposts. Where
American policymakers speak of intervention in a positive sense to promote regional cooperation and stability, Russian
political commentators speak of American "vmeshatel'stvo"literally, negative interventionto constrain Russia. The United
States and Russia are at odds politically and semantically in the Caspian. Because approximately 50 percent of Russia's
foreign currency revenues are generated by oil and gas sales, the Putin administration has made increasing Russian energy
exports to Europe a priority. Caspian energy resources play a major role in Russian calculations. Gas from Kazakhstan and
Turkmenistan flows into the Russian pipeline system, where it supplies the Russian domestic market and supplements
Russia's European exports. Russia is the largest supplier of gas to Turkey, and has begun constructing a new Black Sea
pipeline ("Blue Stream") to increase supplies. But gas flowing to Turkey from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijanand
bypassing Russiacould pose direct competition. Over the last five years, U.S. policy in the Caspian Basin has promoted
multiple gas and oil pipelines to world markets to increase export options for regional states, persuading Moscow that the
United States seeks to squeeze Russia out of regional energy development. Beyond energy issues, Russia sees itself caught
between NATO to the west and chaos to the south. In the Caucasus, Russia has lost its strategic defensive structures against
NATO's southern flank in Turkey. Moscow perceives this loss as significant, given NATO expansion east and the alliance's
willingness to use force in the extended European arena. Explicit statements of intent to join NATO by Georgia and Azerbaijan
have angered Russian policymakers, along with the active involvement of regional states in NATO's Partnership for Peace
Program, and the formation of a regional alliance among states that have opted out of the Russian-led Commonwealth of
Independent States security structures (the so-called GUUAM group of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and
Moldova). Although Central Asia is less a zone of competition because of shared concern about Afghanistan, which resulted in
unprecedented U.S.-Russian collaboration on UN sanctions against the Taliban in December 2000, U.S. bilateral military
relations with regional states still alarm Moscow. The fact that an energetic Pentagon moved faster than the State
Department to engage Central Asian counterparts has led Moscow to view U.S. actions in both regions with deepening
suspicion. Crafting U.S. Policy. To address these issues, the Bush administration will first have to recognize that the
Caucasus and Central Asia are a major factor in U.S.-Russian bilateral relations. Russia does not only view its dealings with
the U.S. through the prism of NATO, missile defense, and non-proliferation issues, although these are currently the United
States' top security priorities in the relationship. Russia's southern tier is now its most sensitive frontier and the Caucasus and
Central Asia are its number one security priority. Having recognized this fact, the Bush administration must present a unified
front when dealing with Moscow and the region, and prevent the various agencies from acting in conflict with each other. The
administration needs to articulate a message that is positive and inclusive for Russia as well as regional states and stick to it.
It should emphasize regional stability, cooperative relations, political solutions to conflicts, border security, human rights,
institutional development, orderly successions of political power, anti-corruption efforts, and opportunities for citizen
participation in political and economic decisionmaking. Although this framework would not be considerably different from the
general themes of the Clinton administration, the notion of explicitly recognizing the importance of the Caucasus and Central
Asian regions in the bilateral U.S.-Russian relationshipand staying focusedwould be a departure. The primary goal should
be to encourage Russia to adopt a positive approach to relations with its neighbors that eschews commercial and political
bullying. To this end, the administration will have to maintain a direct dialogue with its Russian counterparts in working out a
practical approach for the Caucasus and Central Asia. With its message clear, the administration needs to bring its
bureaucratic mechanisms in line to focus on key issues and countries. Even if responsibility for the Caucasus and Central
Asian states is divided within government departments, effective structures will have to be created to preserve links between
the regions, and conflicting legislation will have to be streamlined to resolve interagency conflicts over responsibilities. This
will require the executive branch to work closely with Congress to reconcile appropriations with a comprehensive program for
the regions and to articulate U.S. interests through public hearings and testimony. If the administration has appropriate
mechanisms in place, some policy innovations should be considered to address regional problems:
Rethink the U.S. Approach to Central Asia

The Central Asian states require the most serious reassessment in U.S. policy. Central Asia is
rapidly becoming a base for extremism and terrorism, and the U.S. needs to look ahead to
avert its "Afghanicization." The pivotal states for regional security are Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan, which both border Afghanistan. The United States has bilateral military relations
with Uzbekistan, but is barely present in Tajikistan, where permanent U.S. representation has
been withdrawn because of fears for the safety of Embassy personnel. The Bush
administration must change the American approach to both countries by emphasizing human
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rights and cooperative regional relations in Uzbekistan (rather than simply security), and by
increasing its focus on Tajikistan.
Productive relations between Uzbekistan and its neighbors are key to regional stability.
Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have significant Uzbek diasporas and are dependent on Uzbekistan
for cross-border communications and energy supplies. Uzbekistan has frequently used this
leverage to negative effect with these vulnerable neighbors. The United States should
encourage high-level discussions between Uzbekistan and its neighbors that would address
border access and gas deliveries as well as militant incursions across the Tajik and Kyrgyz
borders into Uzbekistan.
Of all the regional states, Tajikistan is the most receptive to outside assistance, serving as a
potential model for dealing with Islamic and political opposition. The Tajik government
engaged its opposition in a dialogue that resulted in power-sharing arrangements and an end
to a five-year civil war. Given the precipitous decline of the Tajik economy, even the
reestablishment of a permanent U.S. embassywith appropriate security precautionsand a
modest increase in aid programs related to job creation and health would be a major boost.
Link Human Rights and Security
As a general rule, the administration should engage Central Asia without reinforcing authoritarian
regimes. In Uzbekistan, while militant groups are real threats to the state, human rights abuses are
an equal threat and increase sympathy for the militants. The United States has considerable
leverage with Uzbekistan through its military engagement activities. In 2000, Uzbekistan came
close to losing congressional certification for these programs, and the Pentagon placed greater
emphasis on human rights in its special forces training curriculum. Taking this as a cue, the Bush
administration should emphasize mutually-reinforcing security and human rights objectives
throughout Central Asia and should encourage cooperation among the Pentagon, State
Department, and international human rights groups on security-human rights linkages. The
administration should also emphasize U.S. support for regional non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) that seek to increase both citizen participation in government and access to objective
sources of information.
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Oceans
Oceans key to survival
Craig '03
(Robin Kundis Craig -- Associate Professor of Law, Indiana University School of Law McGeorge Law
Rev Winter elipses in original)
The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that
humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy percent] of the earth's surface
and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," 17 oceans provide food; marketable goods
such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon
sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of life , both
aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide . 18 Indeed, it is difficult to
overstate the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the
cradle of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of
planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles that
create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." 19 Ocean and coastal ecosystem
services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. 20 In
addition, many people assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing
the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future generations.
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Ozone
Ozone depletion causes extinction
Greenpeace, 1995
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer,
http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html.)
When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between
chlorofluorocarbons and ozone layer depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but
taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible scientists have since confirmed this
hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful ultraviolet
radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not exist.
Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin
cancer, and immune system suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects
on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and Molina's theory was taken so seriously, so
quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.
Ozone destruction causes mass extinction
Palenotological Research Insitute, No Date
(Paleontological
Research
Institute,
PERMIAN
http://www.priweb.org/ed/ICTHOL/ICTHOLrp/82rp.htm)
EXTINCTION,
no
date,
Lastly, a new theory has been proposed- the Supernova explosion. A supernova
occurring 30 light years away from earth would release enough gamma radiation
to destroy the ozone layer for several years. Subsequent exposure to direct ultraviolet radiation would weaken or kill nearly all existing species. Only those living
deep in the ocean will be secured. Sediments contain records or short-term ozone
destruction- large amounts of NOx gasses and C14 plus global and atmospheric
cooling. With sufficient destruction of the ozone layer, these problems could
cause widespread destruction of life.This was the biggest extinction event in the
last 500 million years, and researchers want a theory that is scientifically rigorous.
Therefore, all these theories are possible but also have many faults and create
much controversy in determining if it is the one exact theory which will explain this
historic mass extinction.
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Patriarchy
Patriarchy is the root cause of wars
Reardon 93
(Betty A. Reardon, Director of the Peace Education Program at Teachers College Columbia
University, 1993, Women and Peace: Feminist Visions of Global Security, p. 30-2 (PDNSS6401))
In an article entitled Naming the Cultural Forces That Push Us toward War (1983), Charlene
Spretnak focused on some of the fundamental cultural factors that deeply influence ways of
thinking about security. She argues that patriarchy encourages militarist tendencies. Since
a major war now could easily bring on massive annihilation of almost unthinkable proportions, why
are discussions in our national forums addressing the madness of the nuclear arms race limited to
matters of hardware and statistics? A more comprehensive analysis is badly needed . . . A clearly
visible element in the escalating tensions among militarized nations is the macho
posturing and the patriarchal ideal of dominance, not parity, which motivates
defense ministers and government leaders to strut their stuff as we watch with
increasing horror. Most men in our patriarchal culture are still acting out old patterns that are
radically inappropriate for the nuclear age. To prove dominance and control, to distance
ones character from that of women, to survive the toughest violent initiation , to
shed the sacred blood of the hero, to collaborate with death in order to hold it at bay all of these
patriarchal pressures on men have traditionally reached resolution in ritual fashion
on the battlefield. But there is no longer any battlefield. Does anyone seriously believe that if a
nuclear power were losing a crucial, large-scale conventional war it would refrain from using its
multiple-warhead nuclear missiles because of some diplomatic agreement? The military theater
of a nuclear exchange today would extend, instantly or eventually, to all living

things, all the air, all the soil, all the water . If we believe that war is a necessary evil, that
patriarchal assumptions are simply human nature, then we are locked into a lie, paralyzed. The
ultimate result of unchecked terminal patriarchy will be nuclear holocaust. The causes of recurrent
warfare are not biological. Neither are they solely economic. They are also a result of
patriarchal ways of thinking, which historically have generated considerable

pressure for standing armies to be used. (Spretnak 1983)
Patriarchy is the root of all violence and war
Hooks 04
(hooks, professor of English at City College, 2004 (bell, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and
Love. P 26-27))
Citizens in this nation fear challenging patriarchy even as they lack overt
awareness that they are fearful, so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious
are the rules of patriarchy . I often tell audiences that if we were to go door-todoor asking if we
should end male violence against women, most people would give their unequivocal support. Then
if you told them we can only stop male violence against women by ending male domination, by
eradicating patriarchy, they would begin to hesitate, to change their position. Despite the many
gains of contemporary feminist movement-greater equality for women in the

workforce, more tolerance for the relinquishing of rigid gender roles- patriarchy as
a system remains intact, and many people continue to believe that it is needed if
humans are to survive as a species. This belief seems ironic, given that patriarchal
methods of organizing nations , especially the insistence on violence as a means of social
control, has actually led to the slaughter of millions of people on the planet.
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Patriarchy War
Patriarchy is the root cause of war The unequal value of women and
threat of violence mirror the coercive order of the war system
Runyan 92 (Anne, Department of PoliSci at Potsdam College of State U of NY,
Criticizing the Gender of International Relations, International Relations: Critical
concepts in Political Science, pg. 1693-1724)
Betty Reardon takes this thesis even further by equating war with patriarchy, military with
sexism, and peace and world order with feminism. According to Reardon, the war system is
a pervasive, competitive social order, which is based in authoritarian principles,
assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held in place by
coercion. In addition, it is controlled by a few elites in industrialized countries, implemented
by subelites throughout the world, and directed against nonelites to ensure their submission.
Similarly, patriarchy is a set of beliefs and values supported by institutions and
backed up by the threat of violence. It lays down the supposedly proper relations
between men and women, between women and women and between men and
men. Thus, patriarchal relations constitute the paradigm on which the war system is based,
and the war system, in turn, consolidates patriarchal relations.
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Patriarchy War
Manifestation of Evil - Discourse of male dominance for survival affirms
the same type of coercion and violence it defends against
Johnson 97 The Gender Knot
To support male aggression and therefore male dominance as society's only defense
against evil, we have to believe that evil forces exist out there, in villains,
governments, and armies. In this, we have to assume that the bad guys actually see
themselves as evil and not as heroes defending loved ones and principles against bad guys
like us. The alternative to this kind of thinking is to realize that the same patriarchal ethos
that creates our masculine heroes also creates the violent villains they battle and
prove themselves against, and that both sides often see themselves as heroic and
self-sacrificing for a worthy cause. For all the wartime propaganda, good and bad guys
play similar games and salute a core of common values, not to mention one another on
occasion. At a deep level, war and many other forms of male aggression are
manifestations of the same evil they supposedly defend against. The evil is the
patriarchal religion of control and domination that encourages men to use coercion
and violence to settle disputes, manage human relations, and affirm masculine identity.
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Patriarchy War
Patriarchy is the root cause of war The unequal value of women and
threat of violence mirror the coercive order of the war system
Runyan 92 (Anne, Department of PoliSci at Potsdam College of State U of NY,
Criticizing the Gender of International Relations, International Relations: Critical
concepts in Political Science, pg. 1693-1724)
Betty Reardon takes this thesis even further by equating war with patriarchy, military with
sexism, and peace and world order with feminism. According to Reardon, the war system is
a pervasive, competitive social order, which is based in authoritarian principles,
assumes unequal value among and between human beings, and is held in place by
coercion. In addition, it is controlled by a few elites in industrialized countries, implemented
by subelites throughout the world, and directed against nonelites to ensure their submission.
Similarly, patriarchy is a set of beliefs and values supported by institutions and
backed up by the threat of violence. It lays down the supposedly proper relations
between men and women, between women and women and between men and
men. Thus, patriarchal relations constitute the paradigm on which the war system is based,
and the war system, in turn, consolidates patriarchal relations.
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Patriarchy War
Manifestation of Evil - Discourse of male dominance for survival affirms
the same type of coercion and violence it defends against
Johnson 97 The Gender Knot
To support male aggression and therefore male dominance as society's only defense against
evil, we have to believe that evil forces exist out there, in villains, governments, and
armies. In this, we have to assume that the bad guys actually see themselves as evil and not as
heroes defending loved ones and principles against bad guys like us. The alternative to this kind of
thinking is to realize that the same patriarchal ethos that creates our masculine heroes also
creates the violent villains they battle and prove themselves against, and that both sides
often see themselves as heroic and self-sacrificing for a worthy cause. For all the wartime
propaganda, good and bad guys play similar games and salute a core of common values, not to
mention one another on occasion. At a deep level, war and many other forms of male
aggression are manifestations of the same evil they supposedly defend against. The evil is
the patriarchal religion of control and domination that encourages men to use coercion and
violence to settle disputes, manage human relations, and affirm masculine identity.
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Poverty
Ongoing global poverty outweighs nuclear war- only our ev is
comparative
Spina 2k
(Stephanie Urso, Ph.D. candidate in social/personality psychology at the Graduate
School of the City University of New York, Smoke and Mirrors: The Hidden Context
of Violence in Schools and Society, p. 201)
This sad fact is not limited to the United States. Globally, 18 million deaths a year are
caused by structural violence, compared to 100,000 deaths per year from armed conflict.
That is, approximately every five years, as many people die because of relative
poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths, and every
single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the
world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in
effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear
war or genocide, perpetuated on the weak and the poor every year of every
decade, throughout the world.
Poverty poses the greatest threat to the worldwe have a moral
obligation to eradicate it
Vear 04
(Jesse Leah, Co-coordinates POWER--Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights,
"Abolishing
Poverty:
A
Declaration
of
Economic
Human
Rights,"
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0407/040704.htm)
Locked in the cross-hairs of domestic and foreign policies which intentionally put
our bodies in harm's way, our terror is the terror of poverty - a terror boldly and
callously proliferated by our own government. Surely one doesn't need the surveillance powers of
high-definition weapons-grade satellites to see the faces of the some 80 million poor people
struggling just to survive in America; to see the worried faces of homeless mothers waiting to be
added to the waiting list for non-existent public housing; to find the unemployment lines filled with
parents who aren't eligible to see a doctor and who can't afford to get sick; to see the children
stricken with preventable diseases in the midst of the world's best-equipped hospitals; to hear the
rumble in the bellies of millions of hungry Americans whose only security is a bread line once a
week; or to detect the crumbling of our nation's under-funded, under-staffed schools. Meanwhile,
billions are spent waging wars and occupying countries that our school children can't even find on a
map. Surely it doesn't take a rocket scientist to detect the moral bankruptcy of a
nation - by far the world's richest and most powerful - which disregards the basic
human needs of its own despairing people in favor of misguided military
adventures that protect no one , whether in nations half-way across the globe, or in the outer
reaches of our atmosphere. To see these things one needs neither a high-powered satellite nor a
specialized degree. One needs only to open one's eyes and dare to see the reality before them. Yet
even as you look you still might not see the millions of poor people in America. My
face is only one of 80 million Americans who never get asked for in-depth television interviews or
for our expert commentary regarding the state of the economy or the impact of our nation's
policies. In addition to all the indignities suffered by poor people in America, we must suffer the
further indignation of being disappeared - kept discretely hidden away from the eyes, ears, and
conscience of the rest of society and the world. The existence of poverty in the richest country on
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earth cannot remain a secret for long. Americans, like the majority of the world's peoples, are
compassionate, fair-minded people. When exposed, the moral hypocrisy of poverty in
America cannot withstand the light of day any more than the moral hypocrisy of
slavery or race or sex discrimination could . That's where the Poor People's Economic
Human Rights Campaign comes in. With this campaign, we are reaching out to the international
community as well as the rest of US society to help us secure what are our most basic human
rights, as outlined in International Law. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an
International Treaty signed in 1948 by all UN member nations, including the United States, all
nations have a moral and legal obligation to ensure the basic needs and well-being
of all their citizens. Among the rights outlined in the Declaration are the rights to food, housing,
health care, jobs at living wages, and education. Over half a century after signing this document,
despite huge economic gains and a vast productive capacity, the United States has sorely
neglected its promise. In a land whose founding documents proclaim life, liberty, and justice for
all, we must hold this nation to its promises.
Racism
Racism is the root cause of violence
Foucault '76
[Michel, Society Must be Defended: Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976, p. 254-257 Trans.
David Macey]
What in fact is racism? It is primarily a way of introducing a break into the domain of
life that is under power's control: the break between what must live and what must
die. The appearance within the biological continuum of the human race of races, the distinction among races, the
hierarchy of races, the fact that certain races are described as good and that others, in contrast, are described as inferior: all
this is a way of fragmenting the field of the biological that power controls. It is a way of separating out the groups that exist
within a population. It is, in short, a way of establishing a biological type caesura within a population that appears to be a
biological domain. This will allow power to treat that population as a mixture of races, or to be more accurate, to treat the
species, to subdivide the species it controls, into the subspecies known, precisely, as races. That is the first function of
racism: to fragment, to create caesuras within the biological continuum addressed by biopower. Racism also has a second
function. Its role is, if you like, to allow the establishment of a positive relation of this type: "The more you kill, the more
deaths you will cause" or "The very fact that you let more die will allow you to live more." I would say that this relation ("If
you want to live, you must take lives, you must be able to kill") was not invented by either racism or the modern State. It is
the relationship of war: "In order to live, you must destroy your enemies." But racism does make the relationship of war-"If
you want to live, the other must die" - function in a way that is completely new and that is quite compatible with the exercise
of biopower. On the one hand,
racism makes it possible to establish a relationship between

my life and the death of the other that is not a military or warlike relationship of
confrontation, but a biological-type relationship: "The more inferior species die out,
the more abnormal individuals are eliminated , the fewer degenerates there will be in the species as a
whole, and the more Ias species rather than individual-can live, the stronger I will be, the more vigorous I will be. I will be
able to proliferate." The fact that the other dies does not mean simply that I live in the sense that his death guarantees my
safety; the death of the other, the death of the bad race, of the inferior race (or the degenerate, or the abnormal) is
something that will make life in general healthier: healthier and purer. This is not, then, a military, warlike, or political
relationship, but a biological relationship. And the reason this mechanism can come into play is that the enemies who have
to be done away with are not adversaries in the political sense of the term; they are threats, either external or internal, to
the population and for the population. In the biopower system, in other words, killing or the imperative to kill is acceptable
only if it results not in a victory over political adversaries, but in the elimination of the biological threat to and the
improvement of the species or race. There is a direct connection between the two. In a normalizing society ,
race or
racism is the precondition that makes killing acceptable.
When you have a normalizing society,

you have a power which is, at least superficially, in the first instance, or in the first line a biopower, and racism is the
indispensable precondition that allows someone to be killed, that allows others to be killed. Once the State functions in the
biopower mode, racism alone can justify the murderous function of the State. So you can understand the importance-I
almost said the vital importance-of racism to the exercise of such a power: it is the precondition for exercising the right to
kill. If the power of normalization wished to exercise the old sovereign right to kill, it must become racist. And if, conversely,
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a power of sovereignty, or in other words, a power that has the right of life and death, wishes to work with the instruments,
mechanisms, and technology of normalization, it too must become racist. When I say "killing," I obviously do not mean
simply murder as such, but also every form of indirect murder: the fact of exposing someone to death, increasing the risk of
death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, rejection, and so on. I think that we are now in a position
to understand a number of things. We can understand, first of all, the link that was quickly-I almost said immediatelyestablished between nineteenth-century biological theory and the discourse of power. Basically, evolutionism, understood in
the broad sense-or in other words, not so much Darwin's theory itself as a set, a bundle, of notions (such as: the hierarchy of
species that grow from a common evolutionary tree, the struggle for existence among species, the selection that eliminates
the less fit) naturally became within a few years during the nineteenth century not simply a way of transcribing a political
discourse into biological terms, and not simply a way of dressing up a political discourse in scientific clothing, but a real way
of thinking about the relations between colonization, the necessity for wars, criminality, the phenomena of madness and
mental illness, the history of societies with their different classes, and so on. Whenever, in other words, there was a
confrontation, a killing or the risk of death, the nineteenth century was quite literally obliged to think about them in the form
of evolutionism. And we can also understand why racism should have developed in modern societies that function in the
biopower mode; we can understand why racism broke out at a number of .privileged moments, and why they were precisely
Racism first develops with colonization, or in

other words, with colonizing genocide. If you are functioning in the biopower mode,
how can you justify the need to kill people, to kill populations, and to kill
civilizations? By using the themes of evolutionism, by appealing to a racism. War.
How can one not only wage war on one's adversaries but also expose one's own
citizens to war, and let them be killed by the million (and this is precisely what has
been going on since the nineteenth century, or since the second half of the
nineteenth century), except by activating the theme of racism
the moments when the right to take life was imperative.
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SARS
A SARS bioweapon would kill at least 50 million people
Conant, 06
Paul, House Subcommittee on Prevention of Nuclear and Biological Attack,July 2006
http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html
Concerned about this point, subcommittee Chairman John Linder, R-Ga., asked whether someone
with a "modicum of talent in this business" might genetically alter the SARS virus and "make it
more virulent, spread faster and make it more difficult to treat? The "short answer is yes," replied
Brent, though the recombinant virus might actually be weaker than the original Still,
resynthesized SARS spread by suicidal coughers is a real concern, said Brent.Anthrax,
though not contagious in humans, is the more serious threat, said witnesses, Callahan noting that
"you don't have to store it, it lives forever, and you don't have to feed it." The pathogen
is also easy to obtain because the disease afflicts animals in many places, he
said.However, Callahan put avian influenza -- bird flu -- as a top concern because of its extreme
mortality in humans. If a mutated bird flu pathogen becomes contagious among humans
and remains extremely deadly, it could kill some 50 million people worldwide, experts
have said. http://www.angelfire.com/ult/znewz1/bioterror.html
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Space Exploration bad

1. Space exploration will cause environmental exploitation, nuclear
annihilation, arms races, and epidemics
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in
Space,
1999
(Bruce
K.,
Space
Exploration
and
Exploitation,
http://www.space4peace.org/articles/scandm.htm)
We are now poised to take the bad seed of greed, environmental exploitation and
war into space. Having shown such enormous disregard for our own planet Earth,
the so-called "visionaries" and "explorers" are now ready to rape and pillage the
heavens. Countless launches of nuclear materials, using rockets that regularly
blow up on the launch pad, will seriously jeopardize life on Earth. Returning
potentially bacteria-laden space materials back to Earth, without any real plans
for containment and monitoring, could create new epidemics for us. The
possibility of an expanding nuclear-powered arms race in space will certainly
have serious ecological and political ramifications as well. The effort to deny
years of consensus around international space law will create new global conflicts
and confrontations
A. Space exploration will lead to the spread of pathogenic viruses
through biohazardous land samples
Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in
Space,
1999
(Bruce
K.,
Space
Exploration
and
Exploitation,
http://www.space4peace.org/articles/scandm.htm)
Potential dangers do exist though. Barry DiGregorio, author and founder of the
International Committee Against Mars Sample Return, has written that "any
Martian samples returned to Earth must be treated as biohazardous material until
proven otherwise." At the present time NASA has taken no action to create a
special facility to handle space sample returns. On March 6, 1997 a report issued
by the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council recommended that
such a facility should be operational at least two years prior to launch of a Mars
Sample Return mission. Reminding us of the Spanish exploration of the Americas,
and the smallpox virus they carried that killed thousands of indigenous people,
DiGregorio warns that the Mars samples could "contain pathogenic viruses or
bacteria." There are vast deposits of mineral resources like magnesium and
cobalt believed to be on Mars. In June of 1997, NASA announced plans for
manned mining colonies on Mars, expected around 2007-2009. The mining
colonies, NASA says, would be powered by nuclear reactors launched from Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
B. Extinction
Daswani, 96 (Kavita, South China Morning Post, 1/4, lexis)
. There is a much more pressing
the possibility of a virus deadlier than HIV.
Despite the importance of the discovery of the "facilitating" cell, it is not what Dr Ben-Abraham wants to talk about
medical crisis at hand - one he believes the world must be alerted to:
If this makes
Dr Ben-Abraham sound like a prophet of doom, then he makes no apology for it. AIDS, the Ebola outbreak which killed more than 100 people in Africa last
year, the flu epidemic that has now affected 200,000 in the former Soviet Union - they are all, according to Dr Ben-Abraham, the "tip of the iceberg". Two
decades of intensive study and research in the field of virology have convinced him of one thing: in place of natural and man-made disasters or nuclear
warfare, humanity could face extinction because of a single virus, deadlier than HIV. "An airborne virus is a lively, complex and dangerous organism," he
said. "It can come from a rare animal or from anywhere and can mutate constantly. If there is no cure, it affects one person and then there is a chain reaction
and it is unstoppable. It is a tragedy waiting to happen." That may sound like a far-fetched plot for a Hollywood film, but Dr Ben -Abraham said history has
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already proven his theory. Fifteen years ago, few could have predicted the impact of AIDS on the world. Ebola has had sporadic outbreaks over the past 20
years and the only way the deadly virus - which turns internal organs into liquid - could be contained was because it was killed before it had a chance to
spread. Imagine, he says, if it was closer to home: an outbreak of that scale in London, New York or Hong Kong. It could happen anytime in the next 20 years
- theoretically, it could happen tomorrow. The shock of the AIDS epidemic has prompted virus experts to admit "that something new is indeed happening
and that the threat of a deadly viral outbreak is imminent", said Joshua Lederberg of the Rockefeller University in New York, at a recent conference. He added
"Nature isn't benign. The survival of the

human species is not a preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic
variation exist for viruses to learn how to mutate and evade the immune system." He cites the 1968
Hong Kong flu outbreak as an example of how viruses have outsmarted human intelligence. And as new "mega-cities" are being
developed in the Third World and rainforests are destroyed, disease-carrying animals and insects are forced into
areas of human habitation. "This raises the very real possibility that lethal, mysterious viruses would, for
the first time, infect humanity at a large scale and imperil the survival of the human race," he said.
that the problem was "very serious and is getting worse". Dr Ben-Abraham said:
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Space Weaponization: NASA Key

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

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

SPACE WEAPONIZATION WILL CAUSE A WAR WITH CHINA
William C. Martel and Toshi Yoshihara. 2003. Averting a Sino-U.S. Arms Race The Washington
Quarterly http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/washington_quarterly/v026/26.4martel.html 7/7/09 RFF
[End Page 20] Government agencies often pay private firms to collect and process vital satellite
imagery. For the first five months of the Afghan campaign, the Department of Defense paid the
Space Imaging Corporation $1.9 million per month for images of Afghanistan collected by its Ikonos
imaging satellite. This new commercial satellite market also creates vulnerabilities because of the
ability of hostile governments or terrorist organizations to gain access to readily available satellite
imagery. Such information could be used to harm U.S. interests in various ways, including attacking
military bases and disrupting military operations. In sum, because U.S. military effectiveness and
commercial competitiveness depend so overwhelmingly on space, the country is increasingly
vulnerable to an adversary's malicious use of space or attacks against space systems. As the
Rumsfeld Commission report warned ominously, "If the [United States] is to avoid a 'space Pearl
Harbor,' it needs to take seriously the possibility of an attack on U.S. space systems. The nation's
leaders must assure that the vulnerability of the United States is reduced and that the
consequences of a surprise attack on U.S. space assets are limited in their effects." 7 At present,
most nations cannot challenge the United States directly, but there are fears that
states might someday attack U.S. satellites to cripple its military capabilities.
Policymakers in the United States are increasingly concerned that this is precisely
China's strategy. Chinese Interests in Space As with the United States, China's objectives in
space reflect broad commercial and military interests. From an economic
perspective, the PRC views the exploitation of space as an integral part of its
modernization drive, a top priority on Beijing's national agenda . 8 The rapid growth of
China's economy in the past two decades has fueled investments in civilian space capabilities for
several reasons. First, the explosive growth of the Chinese telecommunications market has spurred
China to put both indigenous and foreign-made networks of communications satellites into orbit to
keep pace with demand. Second, China's relatively inexpensive and increasingly reliable launchers
have enabled Beijing to provide satellite-launching services to major international customers. Third,
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China recognizes that space research at the frontier of scientific knowledge

promises innovative breakthroughs that are likely to strengthen its economic
power and technological capabilities in the long term. [End Page 21] As a result of
these economic imperatives, the Chinese government has invested substantial
resources in a robust space program. The PRC has developed a comprehensive scientific and
industrial base capable of producing commercial space launchers and satellites. Chinese launch
vehicles, which have become increasingly reliable and competitive in the international market, can
place a variety of satellitesincluding those used for communications, remote sensing, photo
reconnaissance, meteorology, and scientific researchinto earth orbit. Furthermore, since 1999,
China's involvement in preparations for manned space flight has attracted substantial international
attention. In the case of national security, China's space program is shrouded in extreme secrecy,
effectively shielding Chinese intentions and capabilities from outside observers. The PRC's
official policy is to support the exploitation of space for economic, scientific, and
cultural benefits while firmly opposing any militarization of space. 9 China has
consistently warned that any testing, deployment, and use of space-based
weapons will undermine global security and lead to a destabilizing arms race in
space. 10 These public pronouncements have been primarily directed at the United
States, especially after President George W. Bush declared in December 2001 that the United
States was officially withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treatyand accelerating U.S. efforts to
develop a missile defense system. Some Chinese observers point to U.S. efforts to
militarize space as evidence of the U.S. ambition to establish unilateral hegemony.

For example, in 2001, Ye Zhenzhen, a correspondent for a major daily newspaper of the Chinese
Communist Party, stated that, "[a]fter the Cold War, even though the United States
already possessed the sole strategic advantage over the entire planet, and held most advanced
space technology and the most satellites, they still want to bring outer space totally under
their own armed control to facilitate their smooth ascension as the world hegemon
of the 21st century." 11 Diplomatically, China has urged the use of multilateral and bilateral
legal instruments to regulate space activities, and Beijing and Moscow jointly oppose the
development of space weapons or the militarization of space. 12 The Chinese leadership's
opposition to weaponizing space provides evidence of China's growing concern

that the United States will dominate space. The United States' avowed intention to ensure
unrivaled superiority in space, as exemplified by the Rumsfeld Commission report, increasingly
defines China's interests in space. Chinese anxieties about U.S. space power began with the 1991
Gulf War, when the PRC leadership watched with awe [End Page 22] and dismay as the United
States defeated Iraq with astonishing speed. Beijing recognized that the lopsided U.S. victory was
based on superior command and control, intelligence, and communications systems, which relied
heavily on satellite networks. Demonstrations of the United States' undisputed conventional
military power in Bosnia; Kosovo; Afghanistan; and, most recently, Iraq further highlighted for
Chinese officials the value of information superiority and space dominance in modern warfare.
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SPACE WEAPONIZATION BAD: CHINA

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

William C. Martel and Toshi Yoshihara. 2003. Averting a Sino-U.S. Arms Race The Washington
Quarterly http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/washington_quarterly/v026/26.4martel.html 7/7/09 RFF
Sources of Competition At the same time that the United States views space dominance as a
fundamental tenet of its national security, China evidently views U.S. space dominance as a major
threat to its geostrategic interests. These views inevitably breed a zero-sum competition, in which
one side perceives any loss as a gain for the other, and could ultimately prove destabilizing for
Sino-U.S. relations. First, Beijing perceives the proposed U.S. missile defense system, which will be
supported by an array of space systems and sensors, as a strategic menace to China and to
international security. 15 Many China watchers contend that this perception stems from
anxietiesthat any conceivable system of missile defenses being developed by the Bush
administration will undermine China's small nuclear deterrent. 16 Beijing remains wary of the joint
research program on missile defense by the U.S.-Japanese alliance, which the PRC sees as a
potential partnership for blocking Chinese regional aspirations or, in broader terms, for containing
China. Of particular concern for Beijing is the possibility that Tokyo's decision formally to join U.S.
plans for deploying missile defense in Northeast Asia will significantly increase Japan's military
capabilities by providing an opportunity for Japanese forces to enjoy unprecedented military
integration with U.S. forces in the areas of space-based intelligence and communications.
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WEAPONIZTION BAD: A2: PEACEFUL NUKES

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

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

KEY TO EXPLORATION
National Space Society, 2005. Nuclear Power: Now
http://www.nss.org/adastra/volume17/david.html 7/7/09 RFF
More
Than
Ever,
Or
Never?
Having a far different outlook is Bruce Behrhorst, president of Nuclear Space Technology Institute, Inc. He runs the
NuclearSpace.com website. Its short and sweet mission: " To promote the use of nuclear power in space
to further enhance the manned exploration of our Solar System ." "There is no other
technology in the near term that can be manipulated to service human beings in outer
space other than nuclear energy, if at least to insure the survival of our species in the
heavens," Behrhorst believes. "Our technological prowess and space exploration requires the
use of dynamic, high density energy systems to realistically transport humans and
robotica in a safe and efficient mode ." Behrhost sees space nuclear power as opening the window to other
realistic methods to affect the space and time frame metric, thus "providing insight into the micro universe for the
practicality of bridging much of the ultimate macro universe." Similar in view is James Dewar, a former nuclear affairs expert
in the Department of Energy. In his book, To the End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket [University Press of
Kentucky, 2003], he stresses that chemically propelled rockets can lift less than five percent of
their takeoff weight into orbit. That fact is a prescription for a stay-at-home, highly
limited space program. Dewar sees nuclear-powered rockets, however, as offering far superior thrusting power and
speed. To date, the nuclear rocket story has been scarred by political battles over the space program's future, involving U.S.
presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. He maintains that only by reestablishing
a nuclear rocket project can the nation have a space program worthy of the 21st century, one that makes reality of the
hopes and dreams of science fiction. Just like those projects of the past, NASA's newest nuclear
initiative offers the promise of an untethered exploration of the Solar System. Risk
management, as well as public and political support tied to the building of safe, reliable and affordable nuclear power space
systems are essential if humanity is to break the stranglehold of Earth's gravity and travel deep into the Solar System and
well beyond into the surrounding cosmos. If past is prologue, NASA's latest nuclear power play will be as challenging as the
technology it hopes to harness.
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SPACE WEAPONIZATION ALREADY HAPPENED

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

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

DOMINANCE
OTHER
STATES
WONT
Leonard David, 2005. Weapons in Space: The Dawn of

http://www.space.com/news/050617_space_warfare.html 7/7/09 RFF
CHALLENGE
New
Era
U.S.
Space.com.
For those that think space weaponization is impossible, Dolman said such belief falls into the same camp that "man will
never fly". The fact that space weaponization is technically feasible is indisputable , he said,
and nowhere challenged by a credible authority. "Space weaponization can work," Dolman said. "It will
be very expensive. But the rewards for the state that weaponizes first--and establishes itself at the top of the Earth's gravity
well, garnering all the many advantages that the high ground has always provided in war--will find the benefits worth the
costs." What if America weaponizes space? One would think such an action would kickstart a procession of other nations to follow suit . Dolman said he takes issues with that notion. "This
argument comes from the mirror-image analogy that if another state were to weaponize
space, well then, the U.S. would have to react. Of course it would! But this is an entirely
different situation," Dolman responded. "The U.S. is the world's most powerful state. The
international system looks to it for order. If the U.S. were to weaponize space, it would
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be perceived as an attempt to maintain or extend its position, in effect, the status quo ,"
Dolman suggested. It is likely that most states--recognizing the vast expense and effort needed to
hone their space skills to where America is today--would opt not to bother competing , he
said.
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TB (1/4)
TB collapses the economy
Fonkwo, International Consultant on Public Health, 2008 (Peter Ndeboc,
International Consultant on Public Health, EMBO reports 9, S1, S13S17 (2008),
http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v9/n1s/full/embor2008110.html)
During the past couple of decades, however, microbes have shown a tenacious ability to adapt, readapt, survive and challenge human ingenuity (Table 1). The impact of these diseases is immense
and is felt across the world. In addition to affecting the health of individuals directly, infectious
diseases are also having an impact on whole societies, economies and political systems. In the
developing world in particular, crucial sectors for sustained development such as health and
education, have seen a marked loss of qualified personnel, most notably to human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), tuberculosis (TB) and
malaria. These and other infectious agents not only take an enormous physical toll on
humanity, but also cause significant economic losses both directly in the developing
world and less directly in the developed world. It is therefore a matter not only of public
health, but also of economic interest, to invest in and organize an internationally

coordinated strategy to fight the major infectious diseases, or at least to bring
them under control Of course, one could simply think the solution would be to try to eliminate
.
the pathogens and/or their vectors from their natural reservoirs or hosts. After all, this was
successfully done with smallpox, for example. Cholera and malaria were similarly brought under
control in the USA and southern Europe. Unfortunately, it is not easy to predict where and when
most infectious agents will strike or which new diseases will emerge. The reasons for their
persistence are manifold and include biological, social and political causes. Pathogens constantly
change their genetic make-up, which challenges the development of vaccines against infectious
diseases. This genetic flexibility allows many infectious agents to mutate or evolve into more
deadly strains against which humans have little or no resistance: the HIV and influenza viruses, for
example, constantly mutate and recombine to find their way through the host defence
mechanisms. "From the evolutionary perspective, they [viruses and bacteria] are 'the fittest' and
the chances are slim that human ingenuity will ever get the better of them" (Stefansson, 2003).
Mass migrations, trade and travel are notoriously effective at spreading infectious diseases to even
the most remote parts of the globe (Table 2). Mass migrations are often the result of emergency
situations such as floods, wars, famines or earthquakes, and can create precarious conditionssuch
as poor hygiene and nutrition or risky sexual behaviourswhich hasten the spread of infectious
diseases. Global trade and travel introduce new pathogens into previously virgin regions , where
the diseases find a more vulnerable population and can develop into epidemics;
this was the case
when West Nile virus arrived in New York City, from
where it quickly spread throughout North America. In the present-day global village, the
, for example, in the late 1990s,
next rabies or Ebola epidemic could occur anywhere in the world. Increasing urbanization and the
growth of urban slums that lack sanitation and clean water, provide fertile ground for infections.
Many cities and townships in the developing world expands at the expense of pristine land, thereby
disturbing natural habitats and bringing humans into more intimate contact with unknown and
possibly dangerous microorganisms. Human forays into virgin areas of the African equatorial forests
have brought us into contact with the Ebola virus, although its real origin has not yet been
identified. When humans live in close contact with animals, pathogens are sometimes able to
change hosts and infect humans (Parish et al, 2005). The new hostin this case, a humanis often
not as adapted to these zoonotic diseases as the original host. The past outbreaks of avian
influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), hantavirus, Nipah virus and the HIV epidemic
were all due to pathogens that were normally found in animals, but which subsequently found a
new, susceptible host in humans. Moreover, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics is eroding our
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ability to control even common infections. Many bacteria have become resistant to even the most
powerful antibiotics or combinations of antibiotics; similarly, the once first-line drugs against
malaria are now almost useless. Promiscuous sexual behaviour and substance abuse remain the
main means of transmission of blood-borne infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis. In areas
of extreme poverty, given the increased resort to the sex trade for survival, sexual transmission of
these diseases is accelerated. In many developing countries, commercial sex workers and longdistance truck drivers have contributed greatly to the spread of such infectious diseases from one
community to another. In addition, institutional settingssuch as child-care centres, hospitals and
homes for the elderlyprovide an ideal environment for the transmission of infectious diseases
because they bring susceptible individuals into close contact with one another. Wars, natural
disasters, economic collapse and other catastrophes, either individually or in combination, often
cause a breakdown in healthcare systems, which contributes further to the emergence, reemergence and persistence of otherwise easily controllable diseases. Yet these diseases do not
necessarily require an emergency situation to be able to thrive.
TB (2/4)
Complacency within the population or health-service providers could be equally

dangerous under otherwise normal conditions. Cutbacks in prevention
programmes
and a lack of early-detection systems allow infectious diseases
to gain a foothold in otherwise healthy populations. It is often not the lack of tools,
but the lack of an appropriate healthcare infrastructure and personnel that handicaps
the response to infectious diseases. More generally, there is not yet enough commitment to
, a lack of trained staff
control infectious diseases at the political level. The absence of a direct and obvious link between
disease control and the benefits for public health makes it difficult to sustain public-health policies.
Programmes to prevent and treat infectious diseases in developing countries depend largely on
indigenous health workers, most of whom are unfortunately not motivated enough to deliver the
goods. Given the multiplicity and complexity of the reasons behind this general demotivation, only
a strong political will can improve the situation. Finally, public-health experts also worry that global
climate change could contribute further to the spread of both pathogens and their vectors such as
mosquitoes or birds, as their migratory patterns and normal habitats are likely to change. The
burden of infectious disease is therefore likely to aggravate, and in some cases even
provoke
economic decay,
and political destabilization, especially in the
developing world and former communist countries. As of the year 2001, one billion people lived on
less than US$1 per day. Countries with a per capita income of less than US$500 per year spend, on
average, US$12 per person per year on health. According to the World Health Organization (WHO),
infectious diseases caused 32% of deaths worldwide, 68% of deaths in Africa and 37% of deaths in
Southeast Asia (WHO, 1999). These diseases account for 90% of the health problems worldwide and
kill about 14 million people annually, 90% of whom are from the developing world. They have killed
more people than famine, war, accidents and crimes together. AIDS, TB and malaria are
increasingly being acknowledged as important factors in the political and economic destabilization
of the developing world. However, the developed world is not spared either. As of the year 2000,
the number of annual deaths owing to infectious diseases was estimated at roughly 170,000 in the
USA (Gordon, 2000). HIV and pneumonia/influenza are among the 10 leading causes of death in the
USA. At present, approximately one million Americans are infected with HIV. The WHO estimates
that 33.4 million people have contracted HIV worldwide since the beginning of the epidemic in 1983
and about 2.3 million of these died in the year 1998 alone. In the USA and many other countries,
AIDS is now the leading cause of death among young adults (Fauci et al, 1996). The United Nations
Joint Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS; Geneva Switzerland) estimates that another 115 million
people will die by 2015 in the 60 countries most affected by AIDS (UNAIDS, 2006). The economic
costs of infectious diseases especially HIV/AIDS and malaria are significant. Their
,
further
social
fragmentation
increasing toll on productivity owing to deaths and chronic debilitating illnesses,
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reduced profitability and decreased foreign investment has had a serious effect on the
,
economic growth of some poor countries. According to the WHO, the economic value of the loss-oflife owing to HIV/AIDS in 1999 was estimated at about 12% of the gross national product (GNP) in
sub-Saharan African countries, and the virus could reduce the gross domestic product of some by
20% or more by 2010. Some of the hardest hit countries in sub-Saharan Africaand possibly in
South and Southeast Asiawill face severe demographic changes as HIV/AIDS and associated
diseases reduce human life-expectancy by as much as 30 years and kill as many as 23% of their
populations, thereby creating a huge orphan cohort. Nearly 42 million children in 27 countries will
lose one or both parents to AIDS by 2010, and 19 of the hardest-hit countries will be in sub-Saharan
Africa (WHO, 2003). These demographic changes also affect economic growth, as endemic diseases
deplete a country of its work force. A 10% increase in life expectancy at birth (LEB) is associated
with a rise in economic growth of 0.30.4% per year. The difference in annual growth owing to LEB
between a typical high-income country with a LEB of 77 years and a typical less-developed country
with a LEB of 49 years is roughly 1.6% per year, and is cumulative over time The relationship
between disease and political instability is indirect but real. A wide-ranging study on
the causes of instability indicates that TB prevalencea good indicator of overall quality
of lifecorrelates strongly with political instability, even in countries that have
already achieved a measure of democracy (Van Helden, 2003). The severe social and
.
economic impact of infectious diseases is likely to intensify the struggle for the
political power to control scarce resources. Health must therefore be regarded as a major
economic factor and investments in health as a profitable business. According to the WHO, TB
affects working hours in formal and informal economies, as well as within households (WHO,
2008). Country studies document that each TB patient loses, on average, 34 months of work time
annually due to the disease, and lost earnings amount to 2030% of household income. Families
of people who die from the disease lose approximately 15 years of income. The
global burden
TB (3/4)
of TB in economic terms can therefore be easily calculated: given 8.4 million patients yearly
according to the most recent WHO estimates (Kim et al, 2008), the majority of whom are potential
wage-earners, and assuming a 30% decline in average productivity, the toll amounts to
approximately US$1 billion each year. Annual deaths are estimated at two million and, with an
average loss of 15 years of income per death, there is an additional deficit of US$11 billion. Every
12 months TB therefore causes roughly US$12 billion to disappear from the global
economy. The social cost of the lost productivity further increases the burden on society. By
contrast, a 50% reduction in TB-related deaths would cost US$900 million per year, but the return
on investment by 2010 would be 22 million people cured, 16 million deaths averted and US$6
billion saved. Each year there are between 400 and 900 million febrile infections owing to malaria
(0.72.7 million deaths), more than 75% of which are among African children, and less than 20% of
these malaria cases ever see a doctor for treatment. Pregnant women have a higher risk of dying
from the infection or of having children with low birth weight. Children suffer cognitive damage and
anaemia, and families spend up to 25% of their income on treatment. A study by Gallup & Sachs
(2000) showed that countries with endemic malaria had income levels in 1995 that were only 33%
of those in countries that do not suffer from malaria. Countries with a severe malaria burden grew
1.3% less per year, compared with those without. Gallup & Sachs estimated the aggregate loss
owing to the disease in some 25 countries at approximately US$73 billion in 1987, which
represented more than 15% of the GDP. AIDS/HIV also creates an enormous burden for the global
economy. In the year 2000, 36.1 million people were living with AIDS (25 million of whom were in
sub-Saharan Africa), 5.3 million people were infected (3.8 million in sub-Saharan Africa) and three
million people died (2.4 million in sub-Saharan Africa), and AIDS has caused 21.8 million deaths to
,
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date. This has a heavy economic impact on society. According to the WHO Macroeconomics Report,
the economic burden of AIDS on sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 72 million disability-adjusted
life years (DALY), and each AIDS death is estimated to have resulted in 34.6 DALYs lost, on average,
in 1999 (WHO, 2003). Assuming that each DALY is valued at the per capita income, the economic
value of lost life years in 1999 caused by AIDS represents 11.7% of the GNP. If each DALY is valued
at three times the per capita income, the losses represent 35.1% of the GNP. In addition, infectious
diseases n general, especially those that can cause an epidemic continue to make costly
disruptions to trade and commerce in every region of the world (Table 3). Emerging and reemerging diseases, many of which are likely to appear in poorer countries first, can easily spread to
richer parts of the world. The burden of infectious disease already weakens the military capabilities
of various countries and international peace-keeping efforts. This will contribute further to political
destabilization in the hardest-hit parts of the world. In slowing down social and economic
development, diseases challenge democratic developments and transitions, and contribute to civil
conflicts. Finally, trade embargoes or restrictions on travel and immigration owing to
i
outbreaks of infectious disease will cause more friction between developing and
developed countries, and hinder global commerce to the greater detriment of poor
countries. The effects of infectious diseases over the next decades depend on three variables: the
relationship between increasing microbial resistance and scientific efforts to develop new antibiotics
and vaccines; the future of developing and transitional economies, especially with regard to
improving the basic quality of life for the poorest people; and the success of global and national
efforts to create effective systems of surveillance and response. Depending on these variables, the
relationship between humans and infectious diseases, and their impact on the human race, could
take one of the following pathways. The optimistic scenario foresees steady improvement whereby
ageing populations and declining fertility, socioeconomic advances, and improvements in health
care and medical research will lead to a 'health transition' in which infectious diseases will be
replaced by non-infectious diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, as major health
challenges. By contrast, the pessimist scenario of steady deterioration foresees little or no progress
in countering infectious diseases in the future. According to this scenario, a vicious spiral will
develop between infectious diseases and poverty. Major diseases such as HIV/AIDSwill
reach catastrophic proportions as the viruses spread throughout populations as a

result of increased resistance to multi-drug treatments and the unavailability of
expensive treatments in developing countries, which face the majority of the problem. The third
and most likely scenario foresees an initial deterioration followed by limited improvement.
Persistent poverty in the least-developed countries will create conditions that sustain reservoirs of
infectious diseases. Microbial resistance will continue to increase faster than the pace of drug and
vaccine development. The threat, in particular from HIV/AIDS, TB or malaria, will cause such
massive socio-economic and cultural upheaval that it will eventually affect a

critical mass of humanity This will create the necessary pressure for a movement towards
.
better prevention and control efforts, with new and effective drugs and vaccines made affordable.
This will only later result in demographic changes such as reduced fertility and ageing populations,
and a gradual socioeconomic improvement in most countries. The good news is that infectious
TB (4/4)
diseases can be easily prevented through simple and inexpensive methods (Sidebar A). This
requires correct education and the spread of knowledge; however, even these simple measures will
not be enough to bring infectious diseases under control if there is no political and international
commitment. Governments must be made to understand the stakes involved in
fighting infectious diseasesthis is the only way to guarantee that the necessary
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resources will be allocated in sufficient quantities and on time . We need a global

commitment to address the most prominent infectious diseases and to complement local initiatives
with special attention to the least-developed countries (Alilio, 2001; Stop TB Partnership, 2006).
This will require analytical and advisory services in order to help countries generate and act on
information about the status and dynamics of most infectious diseases, and to estimate their social
and economic impact. Such information is essential for advocacy, and for making appropriate and
timely decisions. In the face of limited resources, joint efforts will have to focus on the main killer
diseasesincluding HIV/AIDS, TB and malariain order to have the greatest impact. Medical
treatment, psychosocial supportincluding palliative care for debilitating diseasesand highly
active anti-microbial therapy will be essential. In addition, the prevailing problem of the physical
and financial inaccessibility of most of these drugs will have to be addressed. Last, best practices
will have to be identified and scaled up. This will require special efforts to identify and overcome
legal barriers, and to analyse, country-by-country, financial and non-financial resources with a view
to mobilizing support internationally. In conclusion, infectious diseases constitute a major problem
for the world, but even more so for the developing world. No country can afford to remain aloof in
the battle against these diseases, especially given the potentially far-reaching and devastating
effects that they could have on the human race at large. Increasing globalization means that the
big questions in relation to epidemics will be those of where and whenand not whetherthe next
epidemic emerges, as historical examples have shown. Therefore, all stakeholdersresearchers,
politicians, health professionals, the financial sector and the community at largemust take the
necessary bold steps forward Even from the purely economic point of view, the
.
investment in the fight against infectious diseases is evidently good business: the
world economyand, subsequently, individual family economies stands to benefit from
such investments. We already know a lot of what we must do; we just need to do it. The future
of the human race depends on our actions today.
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TB
TB collapses the economy
Thomas, Writer for the WHO, 4/8/05 (Chris, Writer for the World Health
Organization
(WHO),
4/8/05
http://www.usaid.gov/press/frontlines/fl_apr05/pillars.htm )
TB tends to threaten the poorest and most marginalized groups of people. It
disrupts the social fabric of society and slows or undermines gains in economic
development. An overwhelming 98 percent of the 2 million annual TB deathsand
some 95 percent of all new casesoccur in developing countries. On average, TB
causes three to four months of lost work time and lost earnings for a household.
USAID has been a key player in the Stop TB Partnership, an effort of more than 350 partner
governments and organizations. Aside from funding, the Agency invests in the Stop TB Partnership
and GDF by providing technical support. This helps poor countries improve their drug management
systems, trains local TB experts, and helps health ministries draw up comprehensive TB strategies.
USAID has been particularly involved in administering DOTS, a system of observing people while
they take the full course of medicine to prevent drug-resistant strains from developing.
The timeframe for TB is immediate

Lite,
4/1/09
(Jordan
Lite,
4/1/09,
Scientific
American
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=drugresistant-tuberculosis-a-time-2009-04-01 )
The growing prevalence of drug-resistant tuberculosis is a "potentially explosive
situation," the World Health Organization's director general, Margaret Chan, said
today at the opening of a three-day meeting on the problem.Representatives from 27 countries
affected by multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant
tuberculosis (XDR-TB) are gathering in Beijing to discuss how to address the trend . MDR-TB is
resistant to first-line drugs; XDR-TB doesnt respond to those meds or second-line
therapies. More than 500,000 MDR-TB cases occur annuallyonly 3 percent of them treated
according to WHO standardsand XDR-TB exists in more than 50 countries, the agency says.
People with HIV, whose immune systems are already weakened by the AIDS-causing virus, are at
increased risk of TB. "Call it what you maya time bomb or a powder keg," Chan said
today, according to the Associated Press. "Any way you look at it, this is a
potentially explosive situation."
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Terror
A terrorist attack escalates to a global nuclear exchange
Speice 06
)Speice 06 06 JD Candidate @ College of William and Mary [Patrick F. Speice, Jr., NEGLIGENCE
AND NUCLEAR NONPROLIFERATION: ELIMINATING THE CURRENT LIABILITY BARRIER TO BILATERAL U.S.-RUSSIAN NONPROLIFERATION
ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS, William & Mary Law Review, February 2006, 47 Wm and Mary L. Rev. 1427])
is a significant and ever-present risk that terrorists could acquire a

nuclear device or fissile material from Russia as a result of the confluence of Russian economic
decline and the end of stringent Soviet-era nuclear security measures. 39 Terrorist groups could
acquire a nuclear weapon by a number of methods , including "steal[ing] one intact from
Accordingly, there
the stockpile of a country possessing such weapons, or ... [being] sold or given one by [*1438]
such a country, or [buying or stealing] one from another subnational group that had obtained it in
one of these ways." 40 Equally threatening, however, is the risk that terrorists will steal or purchase
fissile material and construct a nuclear device on their own. Very little material is necessary to
construct a highly destructive nuclear weapon. 41 Although nuclear devices are
extraordinarily complex, the technical barriers to constructing a workable weapon

are not significant. 42 Moreover, the sheer number of methods that could be used to deliver a
nuclear device into the United States makes it incredibly likely that terrorists could successfully
employ a nuclear weapon once it was built. 43 Accordingly, supply-side controls that are aimed at
preventing terrorists from acquiring nuclear material in the first place are the most effective means
of countering the risk of nuclear terrorism. 44 Moreover, the end of the Cold War eliminated the
rationale for maintaining a large military-industrial complex in Russia, and the nuclear cities were
closed. 45 This resulted in at least 35,000 nuclear scientists becoming unemployed in an economy
that was collapsing. 46 Although the economy has stabilized somewhat, there [*1439] are still at
least 20,000 former scientists who are unemployed or underpaid and who are too young to retire,
47 raising the chilling prospect that these scientists will be tempted to sell their nuclear knowledge,
or steal nuclear material to sell, to states or terrorist organizations with nuclear ambitions. 48 The
potential consequences of the unchecked spread of nuclear knowledge and material to terrorist
groups that seek to cause mass destruction in the United States are truly horrifying. A terrorist
attack with a nuclear weapon would be devastating in terms of immediate human

and economic losses. 49 Moreover, there would be immense political pressure in the United
States to discover the perpetrators and retaliate with nuclear weapons, massively increasing the
number of casualties and potentially triggering a full-scale nuclear conflict. 50 In addition to the
threat posed by terrorists, leakage of nuclear knowledge and material from Russia will reduce the
barriers that states with nuclear ambitions face and may trigger widespread proliferation of nuclear
weapons. 51 This proliferation will increase the risk of nuclear attacks against the
United States [*1440] or its allies by hostile states, 52 as well as increase the
likelihood that regional conflicts will draw in the United States and escalate to the
use of nuclear weapons. 53
A nuclear terrorist attack will trigger every single impact scenario
Zedillo 06
(Ernesto Zedillo, Former President of Mexico Director, Yale Center for the Study of
Globalization, FORBES, January 9, 2006, p. 25)
Even if you agree with what's being done in the war on terror, you still could be upset about what's
not happening: doing the utmost to prevent a terrorist nuclear attack. We all should have a
pretty clear idea of what would follow a nuclear weapon's detonation in any of the
world's major cities. Depending on the potency of the device the loss of life could be in
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the hundreds of thousands (if not millions), the destruction of property in the
trillions of dollars, the escalation in conflicts and violence uncontrollable, the
erosion of authority and government unstoppable and the disruption of global
trade and finance unprecedented. In short, we could practically count on the
beginning of another dark age.
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Terrorism turns Econ

Academic studies prove terrorism hurts the economy
Abadie and Gardeazabal, 7 (Alberto Abadie- professor of public policy @ Harvard, and Javier
Gareazabal- professor of economics @ the University of Baque Country, Terrorism and the World
Economy, August 2007, http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/twe.pdf)
It has been argued that terrorism should not have a large effect on economic activity,
because terrorist attacks destroy only a small fraction of the stock of capital of a country (see,
e.g., Becker and Murphy, 2001). In contrast, empirical estimates of the consequences of
terrorism typically suggest large effects on economic outcomes (see, e.g., Abadie and
Gardeazabal, 2003). The main theme of this article is that mobility of productive capital in an
open economy may account for much of the difference between the direct and the equilibrium
impact of terrorism. We use a simple economic model to show that terrorism may have a
large impact on the allocation of productive capital across countries, even if it represents a
small fraction of the overall economic risk. The model emphasizes that, in addition to
increasing uncertainty, terrorism reduces the expected return to investment. As a result,
changes in the intensity of terrorism may cause large movements of capital across countries if
the world economy is sufficiently open, so international investors are able to diversify other
types of country risks. Using a unique dataset on terrorism and other country risks, we find
that, in accordance with the predictions of the model, higher levels of terrorist risks are
associated with lower levels of net foreign direct investment positions, even after controlling
for other types of country risks. On average, a standard deviation increase in the terrorist risk
is associated with a fall in the net foreign direct investment position of about 5 percent of
GDP. The magnitude of the estimated effect is large, which suggests that the open-economy
channel" impact of terrorism may be substantial.
This paper analyzes the effects of terrorism in an integrated world economy. From an
economic standpoint, terrorism has been described to have four main effects (see, e.g., US
Congress, Joint Economic Committee, 2002). First, the capital stock (human and physical) of a
country is reduced as a result of terrorist attacks. Second, the terrorist threat induces higher
levels of uncertainty. Third, terrorism promotes increases in counter-terrorism expenditures,
drawing resources from productive sectors for use in security. Fourth, terrorism is known to
affect negatively specific industries such as tourism. 1 However, this classification does not
include the potential effects of increased terrorist threats in an open economy. In this article,
we use a stylized macroeconomic model of the world economy and international data on
terrorism and the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) assets and liabilities to study the
economic effects of terrorism in an integrated world economy
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Terrorism Defense
Nuclear weapons are too expensive
RAND,
5
(RAND
research
brief,
Combating
Nuclear
http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/ RB165/index1.html)
Terrorism
Nuclear Acquisition Remains Relatively Difficult for Terrorist Groups

Acquiring a nuclear weapon requires access to specialized material and a high level of
technical expertise that has historically been beyond the reach of terrorist groups. Throughout
the 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo tried without success to hire Russian nuclear experts, to purchase
Russian nuclear technology and data, to mine uranium, and to steal sensitive nuclear power
plant information. These efforts were thwarted by Russian officials refusal to cooperate and
by the lack of technical expertise within the group. Similarly, al Qaeda has been exposed to
numerous scams involving the sale of radiological waste and other non-weapons-grade
material. These difficulties may lead terrorists to conclude that nuclear acquisition is too
difficult and too expensive to pursue.
The threat of terrorism has been greatly exaggerated empirically

proven
Mueller, 05 (John, Professor of Political Science at OhioState. May 2005.
International Studies Perspectives, Volume 6 Issue 2 Page 208-234, Simplicity and
Spook: Terrorism and the Dynamics of Threat Exaggeration)
The capacity for small bands of terrorists to do harm is far less than was the
case for the great countries behind international Communism who possessed a
very impressive military (and nuclear) capacity and had, in addition, shown
great skill at political subversion. By contrast, for all the attention it evokes,
terrorism, in reasonable context, actually causes rather little damage and the
likelihood that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic.
Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in "the age of terror"
(Hoagland, 2004). However, the number of people worldwide who die as a result
of international terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny compared
with the numbers who die in most civil wars or from automobile accidents. In
fact, until 2001 far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all
forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning. And except for
2001, virtually none of these terrorist deaths occurred within the United States
itself. Indeed, outside of 2001, fewer people have died in America from
international terrorism than have drowned in toilets. Even with the September 11
attacks included in the count, however, the number of Americans killed by
international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State
Department began its accounting) is about the same as the number killed over
the same period by lightningor by accident-causing deer or by severe allergic
reaction to peanuts. In almost all years, the total number of people worldwide
who die at the hands of international terrorists is not much more than the
number who drown in bathtubs in the United States. Some of this is definitional. When terrorism becomes
really extensive, we generally no longer call it terrorism, but war. But people are mainly concerned about random terror, not sustained warfare. Moreover, even
using an expansive definition of terrorism and including domestic terrorism in the mix, it is likely that far fewer people were killed by terrorists in the entire world
over the last hundred years than died in any number of unnoticed civil wars during that century. Obviously, this could change if international terrorists are able to
assemble sufficient weaponry or devise new tactics to kill masses of people and if they come to do so routinelyand this, of course, is the central fear.
Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that 9/11 was an extreme event: until then, no more than 329 had ever been killed in a single terrorist attack (in a 1985
Air India explosion), and during the entire twentieth century fewer than 20 terrorist attacks resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people. The economic
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.A
bomb planted in a piece of checked luggage was responsible for the explosion
that caused a PanAm jet to crash into Lockerbie Scotland in 1988. Since that
time, hundreds of billions of pieces of luggage have been transported on
American carriers and none has exploded to down an aircraft. This does not
mean that one should cease worrying about luggage on airlines, but it does
suggest that extreme events do not necessarily assure repetitionany more
than Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 has.
destruction on September 11 was also unprecedented, of course. However, extreme events often remain exactly thataberrations, rather than harbingers
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Terrorism Defense
The costs of fighting terrorism outweigh the small risk of another attack
Fidas, 7 (George- Professor of Practice of International Affair @ Elliot school of
international affairs, "Terrorism: Existensial Threat or Exaggerated Threat:
Challenging
the
Dominant
Paradigm"
Feb
28,
2007
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p181269_index.html)
But terrorism is not likely to pose the kind of sustained existential threat that strong states,
especially nuclear-armed ones, posed against other strong states in the 20 th century. Treating
terrorism as such in an endless war is likely to lead to endless fear and the slighting of
other, perhaps more salient new and existing security threats, ever larger budget
expenditures that weaken our overall economy, and growing restrictions on civil liberties and
freedom of movement at home and loss of soft power abroad. It will also produce a selffulfilling sense of fear and terror that will accomplish the goals of our terrorist adversaries at
little risk to themselves.
Terrorist threats are exaggerated

Brookings Institue, 8 (The Brookings Institution, Have We Exaggerated the
Threat of Terrorism? http://www.brookings.edu/events/2008/0221_terrorism.aspx?
p=1, November 2008)
The Crisis in the Middle East Task Force addressed the topic of Have We Exaggerated the
Threat of Terrorism? in its sixth session on February 21, 2008. This session, hosted by the
Saban Center for Middle East Policy, assessed the risks of and appropriate responses to
terrorism. One participant argued that terrorism presents minimal cause for concern.
Discounting war zones, studies show that there have been very few people killed by Muslim
extremists each yearin fact, more people drown in bathtubs each year in the United States.
The FBI reported in 2005 that it had not found an al-Qaeda presence in the United States.
Additionally, terrorism, by its very nature, can be self-defeating: many attacks by al-Qaeda
have caused the group to lose popularity.
This participant questioned both the intentions and capability of al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden
has threatened many attacks that he has not been able to execute. In specific, this participant
thought it unlikely that that al-Qaeda would obtain nuclear weapons, despite fears to the
contrary. Another participant agreed that the fears about terrorism are exaggerated and
differentiated between the actual campaign against al-Qaeda and its supporters and the idea
of a general war on terrorism.
No Impact to terrorism
Fidas, 7 (George- Professor of Practice of International Affair @ Elliot school of
international affairs, "Terrorism: Existensial Threat or Exaggerated Threat:
Challenging
the
Dominant
Paradigm"
Feb
28,
2007
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p181269_index.html)
The overwhelmingly dominant-indeed only-paradigm concerning terrorism is that it is
pervasive, highly lethal, and poses a clear and present danger to the United States, in
particular, and tothe world in general. Yet, group think is rarely correct and this is evident
from the facts. There has been no terrorist act in the United States since 9/11 and less than
10 major terrorist attacks around the world resulting in fewer than 1000 casualties. The
riposte is that this is due to strong countermeasures, especially in the U.S., but this is belied
by the fact that borders remain porous and thousands of people cross them illegally on a daily
basis, many counterterrorism measures have failed official and unofficial tests, and key
facilities remain unprotected. Meanwhile, huge funds are being allocated to conduct the so-
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called war on terror, the balance between liberty and security is tilting toward security, and
both law enforcement officials and publics are "terrorized" by a pervasive uneasiness about
impending terrrorist attacks. There is no doubt that the 9/11 attacks were horrific, but they
have become an anchoring event in a psychological sense through which all subsequent
events and perceptions are being filtered, and thereby may be skewing our perceptions about
the continued seriousness of the terrorist threat. It is time to at least question the dominant
paradigm and that is the topic of this paper.
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Terrorism doesnt hurt the economy

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

Abadie and Gardeazabal, 7 (Alberto Abadie- professor of public policy @ Harvard, and Javier
Gareazabal- professor of economics @ the University of Baque Country, Terrorism and the World
Economy, August 2007, http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~aabadie/twe.pdf)
The amounts of foreign direct investment in the U.S. before and after the September 11th
attacks provide some suggestive evidence of the open-economy channel of terrorism. In the
year 2000, the year before the terrorist attacks, foreign direct investment inflows represented
about 15.8 percent of the Gross Fixed Capital Formation in the U.S. This figure decreased to
only 1.5 percent in 2003, two years after the attacks. Conversely, foreign direct investment
outflows from the U.S. increased from about 7.2 percent of the Gross Fixed Capital Formation
for the U.S. in 2000 to 7.5 percent in 2003 (see UNCTAD, 2004). Of course, not all this
variation in FDI can be attributed to the effect of the September 11th attacks. As of
September 2001 foreign direct investment inflows had fallen from its 2000 peak not only in
the U.S. but also in other developed economies (see UNCTAD, 3In related research, Frey,
Luechinger, and Stutzer (2004) study the effect of terrorism on life satisfaction. Frey,
Luechinger, and Stutzer (2007) surveys the existing research on the economic impact of
terrorism. 2 2002). These figures, however, motivate the question of to which extent an
increase in the perceived level of terrorism was responsible for the drop in FDI in the U.S. that
followed the events of September 11th. Surveys of international corporate investors provide
direct evidence of the importance of terrorism on foreign investment. Corporate investors rate
terrorism as one of the most important factors influencing their foreign direct investment
decisions (see Global Business Policy Council, 2004).
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Warming
Warming leads to nuclear war and famine that kills hundreds of millions
of people
Pfeiffer 2004
[Dale Allen, Geologist, Global Climate Change & Peak Oil, The Wilderness Publications, Online]
But the real importance of the report lies in the statement of probability and in the authors'
recommendations to the President and the National Security Council. While no statistical analysis
of probability is given in the report as it has been released (any such statistical analysis would most
likely be classified), the authors state that the plausibility of severe and rapid climate
change is higher than most of the scientific community and perhaps all of the
political community is prepared for .6 They say that instead of asking whether this
could happen, we should be asking when this will happen . They conclude: It is quite
plausible that within a decade the evidence of an imminent abrupt climate shift may become clear
and reliable.7
From such a shift , the report claims, utterly appalling ecological
consequences would follow. Europe and Eastern North America would plunge into a
mini-ice age, with weather patterns resembling present day Siberia. Violent storms
could wreak havoc around the globe. Coastal areas such as The Netherlands, New
York, and the West coast of North America could become uninhabitable, while most
island nations could be completely submerged . Lowlands like Bangladesh could be
permanently swamped. While flooding would become the rule along coastlines, mega-droughts
could destroy the world's breadbaskets. The dust bowl could return to America's Midwest . Famine
and drought would result in a major drop in the planet's ability to sustain the
present human population. Access to water could become a major battleground
hundreds of millions could die as a result of famine and resource wars . More than 400
million people in subtropical regions will be put at grave risk. There would be mass migrations
of climate refugees, particularly to southern Europe and North America. Nuclear arms
proliferation in conjunction with resource wars could very well lead to nuclear
wars.8 And none of this takes into account the effects of global peak oil and the North American
natural gas cliff. Not pretty.
Runaway warming leads to extinction

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

Hegemony is declining- counterbalancing and overstretch, hard power
and economic recovery wont solve
True, the United
States remains stronger than any other state individually, but its power to stand up
to the collective opposition of other major powers is falling precipitously . Though
The balance of world power circa 2008 and 2013 shows a disturbing trend.
these worlds depict potential power, not active counterbalancing coalitions, and this type of alliance
may never form, nonetheless, American relative power is declining to the point where
even subsets of major powers acting in concert could produce sufficient military
power to stand a reasonable chance of successfully opposing American military
policies. Indeed, if present trends continue to 2013 and beyond, China and Russia,
along with any one of the other major powers, would have sufficient economic
capacity to mount military opposition at least as serious as did the Soviet Union
during the cold war. And it is worth remembering that the Soviet Union never had more than
about half the world product of the United States, which China alone is likely to reach in the coming
decade. The faults in the arguments of the unipolar-dominance school are being
brought into sharp relief. The world is slowly coming into balance. Whether or not
this will be another period of great-power transition coupled with an increasing risk
of war will largely depend on how America can navigate its decline. Policy makers
must act responsibly in this new era or risk international opposition that poses far greater costs and
far greater dangers. A COHERENT grand strategy seeks to balance a states economic resources
and its foreign-policy commitments and to sustain that balance over time. For America, a coherent
grand strategy also calls for rectifying the current imbalance between our means and our ends,
adopting policies that enhance the former and modify the latter. Clearly, the United States is
not the first great power to suffer long-term declinewe should learn from history.
Great powers in decline seem to almost instinctively spend more on military forces
in order to shore up their disintegrating strategic positions, and some like Germany
go even further, shoring up their security by adopting preventive military
strategies, beyond defensive alliances, to actively stop a rising competitor from
becoming dominant. For declining great powers, the allure of preventive waror
lesser measures to merely firmly contain a rising powerhas a more compelling
logic than many might assume. Since Thucydides, scholars of international politics have
famously argued that a declining hegemon and rising challenger must necessarily face such intense
security competition that hegemonic war to retain dominance over the international system is
almost a foregone conclusion. Robert Gilpin, one of the deans of realism who taught for decades at
Princeton, believed that the first and most attractive response to a societys decline is to eliminate
the source of the problem . . . [by] what we shall call a hegemonic war. Yet, waging war just to
keep another state down has turned out to be one of the great losing strategies in
history. The Napoleonic Wars, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War,
German aggression in World War I, and German and Japanese aggression in World
War II were all driven by declining powers seeking to use war to improve their
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future security. All lost control of events they thought they could control. All suffered ugly
defeats. All were worse-off than had they not attacked. As China rises, America must
avoid this great-power trap. It would be easy to think that greater American military efforts
could offset the consequences of Chinas increasing power and possibly even lead to the formation
of a multilateral strategy to contain China in the future. Indeed, when Chinas economic star began
to rise in the 1990s, numerous voices called for precisely this, noting that on current trajectories
China would overtake the United States as the worlds leading economic power by 2050. 8 Now, as
that date draws nearerindeed, current-dollar calculations put the crossover point closer to 2040
and with Beijing evermore dependent on imported oil for continued economic growth, one might
think the case for actively containing China is all the stronger. Absent provocative military
adventures by Beijing, however, U.S. military efforts to contain the rising power are most
likely doomed to failure. Chinas growth turns mainly on domestic issuessuch as

shifting the workforce from rural to urban areasthat are beyond the ability of
outside powers to significantly influence. Although Chinas growth also depends on external
sources of oil, there is no way to exploit this vulnerability short of obviously hostile alliances (with
India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Japan) and clearly aggressive military measures (controlling the sealanes from the Persian Gulf to Asia) that together could deny oil to China. Any efforts along
these lines would likely backfireand only exacerbate Americas problems,

increasing the risk of counterbalancing. Even more insidious is the risk of
overstretch. This self-reinforcing spiral escalates current spending to maintain
increasingly costly military commitments, crowding out productive investment for
future growth. Today, the cold-war framework of significant troop deployments to Europe, Asia
and the Persian Gulf is coming unglued. We cannot afford to keep our previous promises. With
American forces bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan and mounting troubles in
Iran and Pakistan, the United States has all but gutted its military commitments to
Europe, reducing our troop levels far below the one hundred thousand of the 1990s. Nearly half
have been shifted to Iraq and elsewhere. Little wonder that Russia found an opportunity to
demonstrate the hollowness of the Bush administrations plan for expanding NATO to Russias
borders by scoring a quick and decisive military victory over Georgia that America
was helpless to prevent. If a large-scale conventional war between China and Taiwan broke out
in the near future, one must wonder whether America would significantly shift air and naval power
away from its ongoing wars in the Middle East in order to live up to its global commitments. If the
United States could not readily manage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same
time, could it really wage a protracted struggle in Asia as well? And as the gap
between Americas productive resources and global commitments grows, why will
others pass up opportunities to take advantage of Americas overstretched grand
strategy? Since the end of the cold war, American leaders have consistently claimed the ability to
maintain a significant forward-leaning military presence in the three major regions of the globe and,
if necessary, to wage two major regional wars at the same time. The harsh reality is that the United
States no longer has the economic capacity for such an ambitious grand strategy. With 30 percent
of the worlds product, the United States could imagine maintaining this hope. Nearing 20 percent,
it cannot. Yet, just withdrawing American troops from Iraq is not enough to put Americas grand
strategy into balance. Even assuming a fairly quick and problem-free drawdown, the risks of
instability in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region are likely to remain for many years to
come. Further, even under the most optimistic scenarios, America is likely to remain
dependent on imported oil for decades. Together, these factors point toward the Persian
Gulf remaining the most important region in American grand strategy. So, as Europe and Asia
continue to be low-order priorities, Washington must think creatively and look for opportunities to
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America needs to share the burden of regional security with its

allies and continue to draw down our troop levels in Europe and Asia, even
considering the attendant risks. The days when the United States could effectively
solve the security problems of its allies in these regions almost on its own are
coming to an end. True, spreading defense burdens more equally will not be easy and will be
make strategic trades.
fraught with its own costs and risks. However, this is simply part of the price of Americas declining
relative power. The key principle is for America to gain international support among
regional powers like Russia and China for its vital national-security objectives by
adjusting less important U.S. policies. For instance, Russia may well do more to discourage
Irans nuclear program in return for less U.S. pressure to expand NATO to its borders. And of course
America needs to develop a plan to reinvigorate the competitiveness of its economy. Recently,
Harvards Michael Porter issued an economic blueprint to renew Americas environment for
innovation. The heart of his plan is to remove the obstacles to increasing investment in science and
technology. A combination of targeted tax, fiscal and education policies to stimulate more
productive investment over the long haul is a sensible domestic component to Americas new grand
strategy. But it would be misguided to assume that the United States could easily
regain its previously dominant economic position, since the world will likely remain
globally competitive. To justify postponing this restructuring of its grand strategy,
America would need a firm expectation of high rates of economic growth over the
next several years. There is no sign of such a burst on the horizon. Misguided
efforts to extract more security from a declining economic base only divert
potential resources from investment in the economy, trapping the state in an everworsening strategic dilemma. This approach has done little for great powers in the
past, and America will likely be no exception when it comes to the inevitable costs
of desperate policy making. The United States is not just declining. Unipolarity is
becoming obsolete, other states are rising to counter American power and the
United States is losing much of its strategic freedom. Washington must adopt more
realistic foreign commitments.
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Hard Power doesnt solve Heg
Hard power doesnt maintain heg and ultimately causes counterbalancing

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

US withdrawal would result in a new dark age and collapse the global
economy
Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, A World without
Power July/August 4. http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into
fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might
quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether
more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more
populousroughly 20 times moremeaning that friction between the worlds disparate
tribes is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human
societies depend not merely on fresh water and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels
that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible not
just to sack a city but to obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for commodities,
labor, and capitalhas raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries
have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of
globalizationwhich a new Dark Age would producewould certainly lead to economic
stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second
September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open
society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as
Europes Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists infiltration of the E.U. would become
irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An
economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing the
centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose
out and conclude that lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The
wealthiest ports of the global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould become
the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas,
targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically
concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate
numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically
in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in evangelical
Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would
continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to
many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go
there?
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Kagan
US hegemony key to check multiple scenarios for nuclear war.
Kagan 7 Senior Associate @ the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
(End
of
Dreams,
Return
of
History,
Policy
Review,
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/8552512.html)
Hoover
Institution,
Finally, there is the United States itself. As a matter of national policy stretching back across
numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican, liberal and conservative, Americans have
insisted on preserving regional predominance in East Asia; the Middle East; the Western
Hemisphere; until recently, Europe; and now, increasingly, Central Asia. This was its goal after the
Second World War, and since the end of the Cold War, beginning with the first Bush administration
and continuing through the Clinton years, the United States did not retract but expanded its
influence eastward across Europe and into the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Even as
it maintains its position as the predominant global power, it is also engaged in hegemonic
competitions in these regions with China in East and Central Asia, with Iran in the Middle East and
Central Asia, and with Russia in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. The United States,
too, is more of a traditional than a postmodern power, and though Americans are loath to
acknowledge it, they generally prefer their global place as No. 1 and are equally loath to
relinquish it. Once having entered a region , whether for practical or idealistic reasons, they
are remarkably slow to withdraw from it until they believe they have substantially transformed
it in their own image. They profess indifference to the world and claim they just want to be left
alone even as they seek daily to shape the behavior of billions of people around the globe. The
jostling for status and influence among these ambitious nations and would-be nations is a
second defining feature of the new post-Cold War international system. Nationalism
in all
its
forms is back, if it ever went away, and so is international competition for
power, influence, honor, and status. American predominance prevents these

rivalries from intensifying its regional as well as its global predominance. Were the United
States to diminish its influence in the regions where it is currently the strongest power, the
other nations would settle disputes as great and lesser powers have done in the past:
sometimes through diplomacy and accommodation but often through confrontation and
wars of varying scope, intensity, and destructiveness. One novel aspect of such a multipolar
world is that most of these powers would possess nuclear weapons . That could make
wars between them less likely, or it could simply make them more catastrophic. It is easy but
also dangerous to underestimate the role the U nited States plays in providing a
measure of stability in the world even as it also disrupts stability. For instance, the
United States is the dominant naval power everywhere, such that other nations cannot compete
with it even in their home waters. They either happily or grudgingly allow the United States Navy to
be the guarantor of international waterways and trade routes, of international
access to markets and raw materials such as oil. Even when the U nited States
engages in a war, it is able to play its role as guardian of the waterways. In a more
genuinely multipolar world, however, it would not. Nations would compete for naval
dominance at least in their own regions and possibly beyond. Conflict between nations would
involve struggles on the oceans as well as on land. Armed embargos, of the kind used in
World War i and other major conflicts, would disrupt trade flows in a way that is now
impossible. Such order as exists in the world rests not merely on the goodwill of peoples but
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on a foundation provided by American power. Even the European Union, that great geopolitical
miracle, owes its founding to American power, for without it the European nations after World War ii
would never have felt secure enough to reintegrate Germany. Most Europeans recoil at the thought,
but even today Europes stability depends on the guarantee, however distant and
one hopes unnecessary, that the United States could step in to check any dangerous
development on the continent. In a genuinely multipolar world, that would not be
possible without renewing the danger of world war.
People who believe greater
equality among nations would be preferable to the present American predominance often
succumb to a basic logical fallacy. They believe the order the world enjoys today exists
independently of American power. They imagine that in a world where American power
was diminished, the aspects of international order that they like would remain in
place. But
thats not the way it works. International order does not rest on ideas and institutions.
It is shaped by configurations of power. The international order we know today reflects
the distribution of power in the world since World War ii, and especially since the end of the
Cold War. A different configuration of power, a multipolar world in which the poles were Russia,
China, the United States, India, and Europe, would produce its own kind of order, with
different rules and norms reflecting the interests of the powerful states that would have a hand in
shaping it. Would that international order be an improvement? Perhaps for Beijing and Moscow it
would. But it is doubtful that it would suit the tastes of enlightenment liberals in the United States
and Europe. The current order, of course, is not only far from perfect but also offers no guarantee
against major conflict among the worlds great powers. Even under the umbrella of unipolarity,
regional conflicts involving the large powers may erupt. War could erupt between China and Taiwan
and draw in both the United States and Japan. War could erupt between Russia and Georgia, forcing
the United States and its European allies to decide whether to intervene or suffer the consequences
of a Russian victory. Conflict between India and Pakistan remains possible, as does conflict between
Iran and Israel or other Middle Eastern states. These, too, could draw in other great powers,
including the United States. Such conflicts may be unavoidable no matter what policies
the United States pursues. But they are more likely to erupt if the United States
weakens or withdraws from its positions of regional dominance. This is especially true in East
Asia, where most nations agree that a reliable American power has a stabilizing and
pacific effect on the region. That is certainly the view of most of Chinas neighbors. But
even China, which seeks gradually to supplant the United States as the dominant power in the
region, faces the dilemma that an American withdrawal could unleash an ambitious,
independent, nationalist Japan. In Europe , too, the departure of the United States from
the scene even if it remained the worlds most powerful nation could be destabilizing. It could
tempt Russia to an even more overbearing and potentially forceful approach to unruly
nations on its periphery. Although some realist theorists seem to imagine that the
disappearance of the Soviet Union put an end to the possibility of confrontation between Russia and
the West, and therefore to the need for a permanent American role in Europe, history suggests
that conflicts in Europe involving Russia are possible even without Soviet
communism. If the United States withdrew from Europe if it adopted what some call a
strategy of offshore balancing this could in time increase the likelihood of conflict
involving Russia and its near neighbors, which could in turn draw the U nited States
back in under unfavorable circumstances. It is also optimistic to imagine

that a retrenchment of the American position in the Middle East and
passive, offshore role would lead to greater stability there.
the assumption of a more

The vital interest the
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United States has in access to oil and the role it plays in keeping access open to other
nations in Europe and Asia make it unlikely that American leaders could or would
stand back and hope for the best while the powers in the region battle it out. Nor
would a more even-handed policy toward Israel, which some see as the magic key to
unlocking peace, stability, and comity in the Middle East, obviate the need to come to
Israels aid if its security became threatened. That commitment, paired with the
American commitment to protect strategic oil supplies for most of the world , practically
ensures a heavy American military presence in the region, both on the seas and on the
ground. The subtraction of American power from any region would not end conflict
but would simply change the equation. In the Middle East, competition for
influence among powers both inside and outside the region has raged for at least two
centuries. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism doesnt change this. It only adds a new and more
threatening dimension to the competition, which neither a sudden end to the conflict between
Israel and the Palestinians nor an immediate American withdrawal from Iraq would change. The
alternative to American predominance in the region is not balance and peace. It is
further competition. The region and the states within it remain relatively weak. A
diminution of American influence would not be followed by a diminution of other

external influences. One could expect deeper involvement by both China and Russia, if
only to secure their interests. 18 And one could also expect the more powerful states of the region,
particularly Iran, to expand and fill the vacuum. It is doubtful that any American
administration would voluntarily take actions that could shift the balance of power in the
Middle East further toward Russia, China, or Iran. The world hasnt changed that much. An American
withdrawal from Iraq will not return things to normal or to a new kind of stability in the
region. It will produce a new instability, one likely to draw the U nited States back in
again. The alternative to American regional predominance in the Middle East and
elsewhere is not a new regional stability. In an era of burgeoning nationalism, the

future is likely to be one of intensified competition among nations and nationalist
movements. Difficult as it may be to extend American predominance into the future, no one
should imagine that a reduction of American power or a retraction of American influence and global
involvement will provide an easier path.
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Decline Inev
Rising asymmetric balancing, diplomatic countermovements, and
overstretch coupled with massive expenditure has rendered the decline
of hegemony imminent
Khanna
08
(Parag,
America
Strategy
Program
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
sr.
fellow,
1/27,
p.
1,
It is 2016, and the Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Barack Obama administration is nearing the end of its second term. America has pulled out of Iraq but
has about 20,000 troops in the i ndependent
state of Kurdistan, as well as warships anchored at Bahrain and an Air Force presence in
Qatar. Afghanistan is stable; Iran is nuclear. China has absorbed Taiwan and is steadily increasing its naval presence around
the Pacific Rim and, from the Pakistani port of Gwadar, on the Arabian Sea. The European Union has expanded to well over
30 members and has secure oil and gas flows from North Africa, Russia and the Caspian Sea, as well as substantial nuclear
Americas standing in the world remains in steady decline. Why? Werent we

supposed to reconnect with the United Nations and reaffirm to the world that America can, and should,
lead it to collective security and prosperity ? Indeed, improvements to Americas image
may or may not occur, but either way, they mean little. Condoleezza Rice has said America has no permanent enemies, but it has no
permanent friends either. Many saw the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as the symbols of a
global American imperialism; in fact, they were signs of imperial overstretch. Every expenditure has
weakened Americas armed forces, and each assertion of power has awakened
resistance in the form of terrorist networks, insurgent groups and asymmetric weapons like suicide
bombers.
Americas unipolar moment has inspired diplomatic and financial
countermovements to block American bullying and construct an alternate world
order. That new global order has arrived, and there is precious little Clinton or McCain or
Obama could do to resist its growth.
energy.
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Econ T/
US withdrawal would result in a new dark age and collapse the global
economy
Ferguson, 4 (Niall. Prof of history @ Harvard. Hoover Digest, A World without
Power July/August 4. http://www.hooverdigest.org/044/ferguson.html)
So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into
fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might
quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether
more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more
populousroughly 20 times moremeaning that friction between the worlds disparate
tribes is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human
societies depend not merely on fresh water and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels
that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too; it is now possible not
just to sack a city but to obliterate it.
For more than two decades, globalizationthe integration of world markets for commodities,
labor, and capitalhas raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries
have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of
globalizationwhich a new Dark Age would producewould certainly lead to economic
stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second
September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open
society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as
Europes Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists infiltration of the E.U. would become
irreversible, increasing transatlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An
economic meltdown in China would plunge the communist system into crisis, unleashing the
centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose
out and conclude that lower returns at home were preferable to the risks of default abroad.
The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers.
The wealthiest ports of the global economyfrom New York to Rotterdam to Shanghaiwould
become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom
of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations
frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars
could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps
ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would
seek solace in evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great
plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent
airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to
leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there?
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**WAR IMPACTS**
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War causes dehumanization

Dehumanization is used as propaganda during wars
Vinulan-Arellano 03. [Katharine, March 22 yonip.com Stop Dehumanization of
People to Stop Wars http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/nomorewars.html]
In war time, dehumanization is a key element in propaganda and brainwashing. By portraying
the enemy as less than human, it is much easier to motivate your troops to rape, torture or
kill. Ethnic cleansing or genocide would always be perceived as a crime against humanity if
human beings belonging to another race or religion are not dehumanized.
Throughout history, groups or races of human beings have been dehumanized. Slaves,
Negroes, Jews, and now, Muslims. Up to now, women are dehumanized in many societies -they are made sexual objects, treated as second-class human beings. The proliferation of the
sex trade are indications of the prevailing, successful dehumanization of women, worldwide.
During wars, mass rape of women is common.
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War Turns Disease

War increases the spread of fatal disease.
Boston Globe 07. [05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to
_us_combat_deployments/]
A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has
infected an estimated 2,500 US troops in the last four years because of massive
deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials
said. Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly,
usually shows up in the form of reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or
legs. But a more virulent form of the disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if
left untreated.
In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has become so
commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil." But in the United States, the
appearance of it among civilian contractors who went to Iraq or among tourists
who were infected in other parts of the world has caused great fear because family
doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of leishmaniasis
(pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious
diseases in the United States in recent years as a result of military deployments, as
well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business opportunities in the
developing world, health officials say. Among those diseases appearing more
frequently in the United States are three transmitted by mosquitoes: malaria,
which was contracted by 122 troops last year in Afghanistan; dengue fever; and
chikungunya fever.
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War turns Gender violence

War causes sexual violence and reifies the subjugation of women.
Eaton 04. [Shana JD Georgetown University Law Center 35 Geo. J. Int'l L. 873
Summer lexis]
While sexual violence against women has always been considered a negative side
effect of war, it is only in recent years that it has been taken seriously as a
violation of humanitarian law. In the "evolution" of war, women themselves have
become a battlefield on which conflicts are fought. Realizing that rape is often
more effective at achieving their aims than plain killing, aggressors have used
shocking sexual violence against women as a tool of conflict, allowing battling
forces to flaunt their power, dominance, and masculinity over the other side. The
stigma of rape is used to effectuate genocide, destroy communities, and
demoralize opponents-decimating a woman's will to survive is often only a
secondary side effect.
Sexual violence against women during wartime had to reach horrifying levels
before the international community was shocked enough to finally take these
atrocities seriously. It took the extremely brutal victimization of vast numbers of
women, played out against a backdrop of genocide, to prove that rape is not
simply a natural side effect of war to be lightly brushed aside.
The conflicts in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia put women's rights directly
in the spotlight, and the international community could no longer avoid the glare.
In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ethnic cleansing was central to the conflict. Raping
women helped to achieve this aim in a number of ways, from forced impregnation,
where offspring would have different ethnicities than their mothers, to the use of
sexual violence to prevent women from wanting to have sex again (thus limiting
their likelihood of bearing children in the future). Additionally, rape was used as a
means of destroying families and communities. Raping a woman stigmatized her,
making it unlikely that she would ever want to return home, and in many cases,
ensuring that if she did return home that she would be rejected. Civilians,
particularly women, came to be used as tools to achieve military ends, putting the
human rights of these women at the heart of the conflict.
War conditions cause sexual violence
Levy and Sidel, 7 (Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts
University School of Medicine, Victor Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the
Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health, Edition 2, 2007)
Women are especially vulnerable during war (see Chapter 12). Rape has been used
as a weapon in many wars- in Korea, Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Indonesia, Liberia,
Rwanda, Uganda, the former Yugslavia, and elsewhere. As acts of humiliation and
revenge, soldiers have raped the female family members of their enemies. For
example, at least 10,000 women were raped by military personnel during the war
in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The social chaos brought about by war also creates
situations and conditions conductive to sexual violence.
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War turns Human Right Violations

Wars undermine human rights
Ganesan and Vines 04. [Arvind, Business and Human Rights Program Director @
HRW Alex, Senior Researcher @ HRW, Head of Africa Programme Chatham House,
Royal Institue of Intl Affairs, Engine of War: Resources, Greed, and the Predatory
State,
Human
Rights
Watch
World
Report
2004
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/download/14.pdf]
Internal armed conflict in resource-rich countries is a major cause of human rights
violations around the world. An influential World Bank thesis states that the
availability of portable, high-value resources is an important reason that rebel
groups form and civil wars break out, and that to end the abuses one needs to
target rebel group financing. The focus is on rebel groups, and the thesis is that
greed, rather than grievance alone, impels peoples toward internal armed conflict.
Although examination of the nexus between resources, revenues, and civil war is
critically important, the picture as presented in the just-described greed vs.
grievance theory is distorted by an overemphasis on the impact of resources on
rebel group behavior and insufficient attention to how government
mismanagement of resources and revenues fuels conflict and human rights
abuses. As argued here, if the international community is serious about curbing
conflict and related rights abuses in resource-rich countries, it should insist on
greater transparency in government revenues and expenditures and more rigorous
enforcement of punitive measures against governments that seek to profit from
conflict.
Civil wars and conflict have taken a horrific toll on civilians throughout the world.
Killings, maiming, forced conscription, the use of child soldiers, sexual abuse, and
other atrocities characterize numerous past and ongoing conflicts. The level of
violence has prompted increased scrutiny of the causes of such wars. In this
context, the financing of conflict through natural resource exploitation has received
increased scrutiny over the last few years.
When unaccountable, resource-rich governments go to war with rebels who often
seek control over the same resources, pervasive rights abuse is all but inevitable.
Such abuse, in turn, can further destabilize conditions, fueling continued conflict.
Factoring the greed of governments and systemic rights abuse into the greed vs.
grievance equation does not minimize the need to hold rebel groups accountable,
but it does highlight the need to ensure that governments too are transparent and
accountable. Fundamentally, proper management of revenues is an economic
problem, and that is why the role of IFIs is so important. But it is an economic
problem that also has political dimensions and requires political solutions. Political
will and pressure, including targeted U.N. sanctions where appropriate, can
motivate opaque, corrupt governments to be more open and transparent. Where
such pressure is lacking, as in Liberia prior to enforcement of sanctions, continued
conflict, rights abuse, and extreme deprivation of civilians all too commonly are the
result.
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War turns human rights/ disease

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

War props up systems of racism and domination.
Martin 90. [Brian, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the
University
of
Wollongong,
,
Uprooting
War,
Freedom
Press,
[http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/index.html]
Antagonism between ethnic groups can be used and reinforced by the state to
sustain its own power. When one ethnic group controls all the key positions in the
state, this is readily used to keep other groups in subordinate positions, and as a
basis for economic exploitation. This was clearly a key process in apartheid in
South Africa, but is also at work in many other countries in which minority groups
are oppressed. From this perspective, the dominant ethnic group uses state power
to maintain its ascendancy. But at the same time, the use of political and economic
power for racial oppression helps to sustain and legitimate state power itself. This
is because the maintenance of racial domination and exploitation comes to depend
partly on the use of state power, which is therefore supported and expanded by
the dominant group. From this perspective it can be said that the state mobilises
racism to help maintain itself.
There are several other avenues used by the state to mobilise support. Several of
these will be treated in the following chapters, including bureaucracy and
patriarchy. In each case, structured patterns of dominance and submission are
mobilised to support the state, and state in turn helps to sustain the social
structure in question, such as bureaucracy or patriarchy. To counter the state, it is
necessary both to promote grassroots mobilisation and to undermine the key
structures from which the state draws its power and from which it mobilises
support.
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War Turns Everything

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

War creates many mental health issues
Given the brutality of war. many people survive wars only to be physically or mentally scarred for
life (see Box 1-1). Millions of survivors are chronically disabled from injuries sustained during
war or the immediate aftermath of war. Approximately one-third of Ihe soldiers who survived ihe
civil war in Ethiopia, for example, were injured or disabled, and at least 40,000 individuals lost
one or more limbs during the war.' Antipersonnel landmines represent a serious threat to
many people'' (see Chapter 7). For example, in Cambodia, I in 236 people is an amputee as a
result of a landmine explosion.'0
Millions more people are psychologically impaired from wars, during which they have been physically or
sexually assaulted or have physically or sexually assaulted others; have been tortured or have
participated in the torture of others; have been forced to serve as soldiers against their will; have
witnessed the death of family members; or have experienced the destruction of their communities or
entire nations (sec Chapter4). Psychological trauma may be demonstrated in disturbed and
antisocial behaviors, such as aggression toward family members and others. Many soldiers, on
returning from military action, suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). which also affects
many civilian survivors of war.
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War turns Health

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

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

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

Solving health problems eliminates a root cause of war
War is the one of the most serious threats lo public health. Public health pro fessionals can do much to prevent war and its health consequences. Preventing
war and its consequences should be part of the curricula of schools of public health, the
agendas of public health organizations, and the practice of public health professionals.
Activities by public health professionals to prevent war and its health
consequences are an essential part of our professional obligations. The greatest
threat to the health of people worldwide lies not in specific forms of acute or
chronic diseasesand not even in poverty, hunger, or homelessness. Rather, it lies
in the consequences of war. As stated in a resolution adopted by the World Health Assembly,
the governing body of the World Health Organization: "The role of physicians and other
health workers in the preservation and promotion of peace is the most significant
factor for the attainment of health for all." War is not inevitable. For perhaps 99
percent of human history, people lived in egalitarian groups in which generosity
was highly valued and war was rare. War first occurred relatively recently in human
history along with changes in social organization, especially the development of nation-states.
Even at present, when war seems ever-present, most people live peaceful,
nonviolent lives. If we can learn from history, we may be able to move beyond war
and create a culture of peace.
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Turns Everything
War causes destroys health, human rights, the environment, and causes
domestic violence
War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases combined. It destroys
families, communities, and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from
protection and promotion of health, medical care, and other human services. It destroys the
infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and contributes to social injustice. It
leads many people to think that violence is the only way to resolve conflictsa mindset that
contributes to domestic violence, street crime, and other kinds of vio lence. And it contributes
to the destruction of the environment and overuse of nonrenewable resources. In sum. war
threatens much of the fabric of our civilization.
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AIDS
War helps transmit HIV/AIDS
Unicef 96
(Unicef, 1996, Sexual violence as a weapon of war http://www.unicef.org/sowc96pk/sexviol.htm)
In addition to rape, girls and women are also subject to forced prostitution and
trafficking during times of war, sometimes with the complicity of governments and
military authorities. During World War II, women were abducted, imprisoned and forced to
satisfy the sexual needs of occupying forces, and many Asian women were also involved in
prostitution during the Viet Nam war. The trend continues in today's conflicts. The State of
the World's Children 1996 report notes that the disintegration of families in times of war leaves
women and girls especially vulnerable to violence. Nearly 80 per cent of the 53 million people
uprooted by wars today are women and children. When fathers, husbands, brothers and sons are
drawn away to fight, they leave women, the very young and the elderly to fend for themselves. In
Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar and Somalia, refugee families frequently cite rape or the fear of
rape as a key factor in their decisions to seek refuge. During Mozambique's conflict, young boys,
who themselves had been traumatized by violence, were reported to threaten to kill or starve girls
if they resisted the boys' sexual advances. Sexual assault presents a major problem in camps for
refugees and the displaced, according to the report. The incidence of rape was reported to be
alarmingly high at camps for Somali refugees in Kenya in 1993. The camps were located in isolated
areas, and hundreds of women were raped in night raids or while foraging for firewood. UNHCR (the
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees) has had to organize security patrols, fence camps
with thorn bushes and relocate the most vulnerable women to safer areas. Some rape victims who
were ostracized were moved to other camps or given priority for resettlement abroad. UNHCR has
formal guidelines for preventing and responding to sexual violence in the camps, and it trains field
workers to be more sensitive to victims' needs. Refugee women are encouraged to form
committees and become involved in camp administration to make them less vulnerable to men who
would steal their supplies or force them to provide sex in return for provisions. The high risk of
infection with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including HIV/AIDS,

accompanies all sexual violence against women and girls. The movement of
refugees and marauding military units and the breakdown of health services and
public education worsens the impact of diseases and chances for treatment. For
example, one study has suggested that the exchange of sex for protection during the
civil war in Uganda in the 1980s was a contributing factor to the country's high
rate of AIDS.
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Animal Rights T/
War hurts animal rights
Ernst 09
(Stephanie Ernst, 5-29-09, Animals in War: You Don't Have to Be Human to Die by the Millions
http://animalrights.change.org/blog/view/animals_in_war_you_dont_have_to_be_human_to_die_by_t
he_millions)
The Animals in War Memorial in London, unveiled in 2004, bears the following as part of its
inscription: "They had no choice." "They" refers to the literally millions of animals
killed in twentieth-century wars--horses, mules, donkeys, pigeons, elephants, glow worms,
and camels among them. Indeed, " eight million horses and countless mules and donkeys
died in the First World War. They were used to transport ammunition and supplies to the front
and many died, not only from the horrors of shellfire but also in terrible weather and
appalling conditions" (emphasis mine), a brief history on the monument's Web site explains-and that was only one war and only one set of animals among many different animals.
A BBC article further explains, "The monument pays special tribute to the 60 animals awarded the
PDSA Dickin Medal - the animals' equivalent of the Victoria Cross - since 1943." Fifty-four of the 60,
including 32 pigeons, were used in World War II. And before anyone is inclined to say or think "just
pigeons" or "just messages," consider what the birds were forced to endure to get the messages
back and forth. Examples: "Winkie, a pigeon that flew 129 miles with her wings clogged
with oil to save a downed bomber crew, " and "Mary of Exeter, another pigeon, which flew
back with her neck and right breast ripped open, savaged by hawks kept by the Germans at Calais."
(Note the BBC's irritating use of "which" and "that" here instead of "who.") Sometimes people make
remarks about such animals "giving" their lives. But they didn't give their lives. They didn't
choose to enlist. Their fate was decided for them . It was the ultimate, no-recourse draft.
For that reason, I am glad for that so-true inscription: "They had no choice." And animals certainly
don't have to be dragged to active battlefields to suffer and die because of humans' wars. The U.S.
military shoots, injures, and kills animals on our soil regularly, as part of training.
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Biodiversity
War destroys Forests and Biodiversity
Sierra Club, 2003
(No publish date, references 2003 in the past tense, http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/warand-environment.html)
Throughout history, war has invariably resulted in environmental destruction. However,
advancements in military technology used by combatants have resulted in increasingly severe
environmental impacts. This is well illustrated by the devastation to forests and biodiversity caused
by modern warfare. Military machinery and explosives have caused unprecedented levels of
deforestation and habitat destruction. This has resulted in a serious disruption of ecosystem
services, including erosion control, water quality, and food production. A telling example is the
destruction of 35% of Cambodias intact forests due to two decades of civil conflict. In Vietnam,
bombs alone destroyed over 2 million acres of land.[13] These environmental catastrophes are
aggravated by the fact that ecological protection and restoration become a low priority during and
after war. The threat to biodiversity from combat can also be illustrated by the Rwanda genocide of
1994. The risk to the already endangered population of mountain gorillas from the violence was of
minimal concern to combatants and victims during the 90-day massacre.[14] The threat to the
gorillas increased after the war as thousands of refugees, some displaced for decades, returned to
the already overpopulated country. Faced with no space to live, they had little option but to inhabit
the forest reserves, home to the gorilla population. As a result of this human crisis, conservation
attempts were impeded. Currently, the International Gorilla Programme Group is working with
authorities to protect the gorillas and their habitats. This has proven to be a challenging task, given
the complexities Rwandan leaders face, including security, education, disease, epidemics, and
famine.[15]
Chemical and Biological Warfare would destroy the environment-Vietnam

proves
Sierra Club, 2003
One of the most striking examples of military disregard for environmental and human health is the
use of chemical and biological agents in warfare. The American militarys use of Agent Orange
during the Vietnam War is one of the most widely known examples of using environmental
destruction as a military tactic. Agent Orange is a herbicide that was sprayed in millions of liters
over approximately 10% of Vietnam between 1962 and 1971. It was used to defoliate tropical
forests to expose combatants, and destroy crops to deprive peasants of their food
supply.[16] [17] The environmental and health effects were devastating. The spraying
destroyed 14% of South Vietnams forests, including 50% of the mangrove forests. Few, if any, have
recovered to their natural state. [18] A key ingredient of Agent Orange is dioxin, the most potent
carcinogen ever tested.[19] It is therefore not surprising that Agent Orange has been linked to an
array of health problems in Vietnam including birth defects, spontaneous abortions, chloracne, skin
and lung cancers, lower IQ and emotional problems for children (Forgotten Victims).[20] Similar to
toxic chemical spills, Agent Orange continues to threaten the health of Vietnamese. In 2001,
scientists documented extremely high levels of dioxin in blood samples taken from residents born
years after the end of the Vietnam War. Studies attribute such high levels to food chain
contamination: Soil contaminated with dioxin becomes river sediment, which is then passed to fish,
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a staple of the Vietnamese diet.[21] This is a clear reminder that poisoning our environments is akin
to poisoning
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Cap
War has become privatized, fueling a stronger capitalism
Ferguson 08
Francis Ferguson, PhD Economist , 3-22-08, The Privatization of War
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_francis__080320_the_privatization_of.htm
Since 2000, there has been a huge increase in private contracts let by the US
government. Spending on private contractors has risen from $174.4 billion to
$377.5 billion, an increase of 86%. Over this same period, private contractors'
collections for the Department of Defense increased from $133 billion to $279
billion annually, an increase of 102.3%. These expenditures represent a unique new
source of revenue and profit for American business, because much of what it being
purchased are services which would previously have been done by military
personnel. (source http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1071) With these tasks
shifting to private contractors, workers can be hired in low wage nations such and
put to work doing menial labor for the troops. This is not to say these services
come cheap. They do not. Contractors such as Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR)
charge handsomely for the meals, laundry and logistics provided. They just don't
pay the workers who perform these tasks much. The difference, of course, is profit.
What was once a relatively minor expense to taxpayers in the form of Army pay for
soldiers performing kitchen duties, now becomes a major source of bottom line
revenue for private companies who previously got nothing from these services. In
addition to new opportunities for profit in a war theater, there are new
opportunities for corruption. Third World contract workers have reported their
employers withholding their passports, effectively making them indentured
servants. KBR and it's subsidiaries have been discovered charging premium prices
for meals they never served and with supplying contaminated drinking water to the
troops. Government investigators report literally billions of dollars have gone
missing with no accounting for who received them or what was done with the
money. The Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?
act=pro&fil=IQ) has a listing of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and the value
of the contracts they hold. Many of the contracts are awarded without competitive
bidding, and billions of dollars have literally gone missing. The Chicago Tribune
reports ongoing investigations of Kellogg Brown and Root and various of their subcontractors for gross violations and fraud.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kbr-war-profiteersfeb21,1,5231766.story. All of this is symptomatic of deeper problems. We have
privatized war, an in so doing, we have reduced the populace's natural resistance
to war and increased its profitability. With contracting, our military can be smaller.
This means the conflicts can be more easily handled with a voluntary, professional
military. Conscription can more easily be avoided along, as can the political
backlash from potential draftees and their relatives. With privatization, a greater
portion of military spending flows as profit to American businesses. Spending on
contractor services can expand massively within the context of war. Wartime allows
emergency measures and expenditures which can proceed without customary
bidding or oversight. The result is a river of profit with little economic gain for the
nation.
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Civil Liberties T/
In times of war nations ignore civil liberties to deal with threats Britain
proves
Posner 92
HeinOnline -- 92 Mich. L. Rev. 1679 1993-1994, EXECUTIVE DETENTION IN TIME OF
WAR , IN THE HIGHEST DEGREE ODIOUS: DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL IN WARTIME
BRITAIN. By A. W. Brian Simpson. Oxford: Clarendon, Press. 1992. Pp. x, 453. $62.
The absence of a comparative dimension is a closely related source of Simpson's
disparagement of his country's response to national emergency. Peacetime civil
liberties are a luxury that nations engaged in wars of survival do not believe they
can afford. The question for the realistic civil libertarian is not whether Britain
curtailed civil liberties more than either seemed at the time or was in retrospect
necessary, but whether it reacted more or less temperately than other nations in
comparable circumstances would do or have done. So far as I can judge, the
answer to this question is more temperately - than the United States, for example,
which was far less endangered.8 Of course there are perils in using a purely
relative standard. The administration of Regulation 18B caused hardships and, in
hindsight at least, seems not to have contributed materially to Britain's survival or
to have shortened the war. If there are lessons here that might enable Britain or
the United States to deal more effectively with the problem of internal security in
wartime the next time the problem arises, they ought to be drawn. But the only
lesson Simpson draws is that Britain should not have destroyed "about 99 per cent
of public records dealing with detention, which is in line with general practice" (p.
422) and should not be refusing access, half a century later, to most of the rest. I
am sure this observation is right, but it makes for rather a tepid ending to the
book; the ending reads as if the British government's greatest sin with respect to
the wartime detention program was to make it difficult for academics to write the
program's history.
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Dehumanization T/
Dehumanization is used as propaganda during wars
Vinulan-Arellano 03. [Katharine, March 22 yonip.com Stop Dehumanization of
People to Stop Wars http://www.yonip.com/main/articles/nomorewars.html]
In war time, dehumanization is a key element in propaganda and brainwashing. By portraying
the enemy as less than human, it is much easier to motivate your troops to rape, torture or
kill. Ethnic cleansing or genocide would always be perceived as a crime against humanity if
human beings belonging to another race or religion are not dehumanized.
Throughout history, groups or races of human beings have been dehumanized. Slaves,
Negroes, Jews, and now, Muslims. Up to now, women are dehumanized in many societies -they are made sexual objects, treated as second-class human beings. The proliferation of the
sex trade are indications of the prevailing, successful dehumanization of women, worldwide.
During wars, mass rape of women is common.
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Democracy T/
Administrations use wartime to consolidate power and destroy democratic
institutions
Forward Newspaper, 2008
L.L.C. Apr 11, 2008, The President in Wartime. (2008, April 11). Retrieved July 23, 2009, from Ethnic
NewsWatch (ENW). (Document ID: 1478699201). New York, N.Y.: Apr 11, 2008. Vol. 111, Iss. 31700;
pg. 12, 1 pgs
The Bush administration recently declassified a secret Justice Department memo from 2003 that
shows just how serious a threat our democracy faces in the current war on terrorism. Unfortunately,
the threat revealed in the memo is not from Al Qaeda, but from us. The memo was addressed to the
legal department of the Pentagon. It was meant to advise the military on how far it may lawfully go
in roughing up captured terrorism suspects during interrogation. The answer was, pretty far indeed.
It was the considered legal opinion of the chief legal office of the United States, the Department of
Justice, that the president of the United States is - well, above the law. "In wartime, it is for the
President alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy," wrote
the memo's author, John Yoo, then a Justice Department lawyer. In fact, Yoo wrote, "Even if an
interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not
bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context." That
is, the law would conflict with the Constitution's designation of the president as commander in
chief, charged with doing whatever necessary to protect the nation during wartime. There's
"original intent" for you. And who decides what constitutes "wartime"? According to the
Constitution, the Senate does. But that's old stuff. Nowadays, we're at war whenever the president
says we are. All he has to do is decide we're under attack - or threatened with attack - and order
our troops to open fire. And when does the war end? When the president says so. Right now, for
example, we face an enemy so shadowy and ubiquitous - terrorism - that the war could last, we're
told, for a generation. Until then, according to the Bush Justice Department, the president may do
whatever he thinks necessary to protect us. In other words, anything he wants. The Yoo memo was
withdrawn a year after its drafting, following a revolt by government lawyers. But a similar Yoo
memo, issued to the CIA, remains.in force. Congress passed a law overriding it a few years ago, but
the president vetoed the bill. It's hard to imagine what terrorists could do that would threaten our
democracy more than this president's notion of his power. Next time we choose a president, we
ought to find out how the contenders define the job.
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Disease T/
War increases the spread of fatal disease.
Boston Globe 07. [05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has
infected an estimated 2,500 US troops in the last four years because of massive
deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials
said. Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly,
usually shows up in the form of reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or
legs. But a more virulent form of the disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if
left untreated.
In some US hospitals in Iraq, the disease has become so
commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil." But in the United States, the
appearance of it among civilian contractors who went to Iraq or among tourists
who were infected in other parts of the world has caused great fear because family
doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause. The spread of leishmaniasis
(pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious
diseases in the United States in recent years as a result of military deployments, as
well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business opportunities in the
developing world, health officials say. Among those diseases appearing more
frequently in the United States are three transmitted by mosquitoes: malaria,
which was contracted by 122 troops last year in Afghanistan; dengue fever; and
chikungunya fever.
War would increase immune system deficiency and create dangers of new
and deadly diseases
Sagan, former professor at Stanford and Harvard, 84
(Carl Sagan, former professor at Stanford and Harvard, Pulitzer prize winning author, 1984,
Foreign Affairs, Nuclear War and Climatic Catastrophe p. Lexis)
Each of these factors, taken separately, may carry serious consequences for the global
ecosystem: their interactions may be much more dire still. Extremely worrisome is the possibility of
poorly underatood or as yet entirely uncontemplated synergisms (where the net consequences of
two or more assaults on the environment are much more than the sum of the component parts).
For example, more than 100 rads (and possibly more than 200 rads) of external and
ingested ionizing radiation is likely to be delivered in a very large nuclear war to all
plants, animals and unprotected humans in densely populated regions of northern midlatitudes. After the soot and dust clear, there can, for such wars, be a 200 to 400 percent
increment in the solar ultraviolet flux that reaches the ground, with an increase of many
orders of magnitude in the more dangerous shorter-wavelength radiation. Together,
these radiation assaults are likely to suppress the immune systems of humans and
other species, making them more vulnerable to disease . At the same time, the high
ambient-radiation fluxes are likely to produce, through mutation, new varieties of
microorganisms, some of which might become pathogenic. The preferential
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radiation sensitivity of birds and other insect predators would enhance the
proliferation of herbivorous and pathogen-carrying insects. Carried by vectors with high
radiation tolerance, it seems possible that epidemics and global pandemics would
propagate with no hope of effective mitigation by medical care, even with reduced
population sizes and greatly restricted human mobility. Plants, weakened by low temperatures and
low light levels, and other animals would likewise be vulnerable to preexisting and newly arisen
pathogens.
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Disease T/
War helps the spread of disease
VOA News, 05
(Voice of America News, 8-31-05, Poverty and Conflict

Contribute the Spread of Infectious Diseases,
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-08/2005-08-31-voa23.cfm )
says war also spreads disease because it often creates large populations
of refugees. And they're moving from one town to another , or one country to another
(and) they may bring with them some prevalence of disease that may not be a
disease that is present in that other country.
Mr. Parkinson adds, It's also probably no coincidence that the great Spanish flu
epidemic of 1918 was associated with troop movements in Europe and especially
Dr. Garcia
afflicted the United States because that was the time of the U.S. involvement in the war, and the
troop movements back and forth created a great vector for infection.
The epidemic itself killed more people than died in the entire war -- an estimated 20 to 40 million
people died from the epidemic.
Where there are soldiers and conflict, there are also prostitutes and rape. This has
led to a rapid spread of AIDS in many war-torn African countries, say public health officials.
Conflict impacts disease in other ways, too, said Dr. Joseph Malone, director of the U.S. Navy's
program to track emerging global infections. Basic services such as clean water,
availability of food, are threatened when there's substantial conflict and generally
the health care infrastructure and availability of medicines is generally reduced
whenever there's conflict and even any supplies that might be available can be
diverted to non-helpful uses.
Military conflicts spread fatal diseases globally
Boston Globe 07
[Boston Globe 05-07, Spread of disease tied to U.S. combat deployments
A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected
an estimated 2,500 US troops in the last four years because of massive
deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan , military officials said.
Leishmaniasis , which is transmitted through the bite of the tiny sand fly , usually shows up in
the form of reddish skin ulcers on the face, hands, arms, or legs. But a more virulent form
of the disease also attacks organs and can be fatal if left untreate d. In some US
hospitals in Iraq, the disease has become so commonplace that troops call it the "Baghdad boil."
But in the United States, the appearance of it among civilian contractors who went
to Iraq or among tourists who were infected in other parts of the world has caused great fear
because family doctors have had difficulty figuring out the cause . The spread of
leishmaniasis (pronounced LEASH-ma-NYE-a-sis) is part of a trend of emerging infectious
diseases in the United States in recent years as a result of military deployments , as
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well as the pursuit of adventure travel and far-flung business opportunities in the developing world,
health officials say.
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Domestic Violence T/
War creates a cycle of violence that spills over to domestic violence
War often creates a cycle of violence, increasing domestic and community violence in the
countries engaged in war. War teaches people that violence is an acceptable method for
settling conflicts. Children growing up in environments in which violence is an established way
of settling conflicts may choose violence to settle conflicts in their own lives. Teenage gangs
may mirror the activity of military forces Men, sometimes former military servicemen who
have been trained to use violence, commit acts of violence against women; there have been
instances of men murdering their wives on return from battlefield.
War causes domestic violence and crime

Levy and Sidel, 7
(Barry Levy- Adjunct Professor of Community Health at Tufts University School of Medicine, Victor
Sidel- Professor of Social Medicine at the Albert Einstein Medical College, War and Public Health,
Edition 2, 2007)
War accounts for more death and disability than many major diseases com bined. It destroys families, communities, and sometimes whole cultures. It directs scarce resources away from protection and promotion of health, medical care, and other
human services. It destroys the infrastructure that supports health. It limits human rights and
contributes to social injustice. It leads many people to think that violence is the
only way to resolve conflictsa mindset that contributes to domestic violence,

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

Hart and Shapiro, 08
(Robert Shapiro is formerly the undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration and
currently the head of Sonecon, LLC, an economic consulting firm. Gary Hart is a former U.S. Senator
from Colorado and currently a professor at the University of Colorado.1-30-08,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/01/30/the-iraq-recession-debate_n_84060.html)
I think there is a sound case that the war policy has produced conditions that
contribute in a fairly modest way to the slow down. There are two main factors as I see it
in regards to the slow down: the [crisis in the] housing sector, which has reduced people's sense of
their wealth... and the subprime mess, which is reducing business investment and is doing so by
screwing up the balance sheets of financial institutions.
Having said that, there is no doubt that the Iraq war is a significant factor in the
current level of oil prices. Not the most important factor but a significant factor... For
American consumers whose consumption is being squeezed, relatively more of

their income has to go to energy, and that expense is just getting exported. It's not
stimulating the U.S. economy. The war is [also] a part of America' current account
deficit. It contributes to that and [that] is what's driving down the dollar.
Media and politicians rarely distinguish between government spending and government
investments. War costs are spending... When spent unnecessarily, that is without contributing
to national security (i.e., Iraq), war costs are, in effect, money down a rat hole. All
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spending over and above revenues creates deficits that must be financed with
borrowing, either from foreigners or future generations. So money spent on an
unnecessary war requires borrowing which drives down the value of the dollar and
hurts our economy.
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Edelman
Wars sacrifice soldiers to protect future generations, making the
queer expendable to protect conceptions of family norms
Donna Miles, Writer, Jan. 18, 2005
(Staff Writer for American Forces Press Service, Bush Begins Inaugural Celebration With
Military 'Salute', http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=24328)
The president credited the men and women in uniform for helping extend that same
power to more than 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past four years. He called
the first free elections in Afghanistan's 5,000-year history and the upcoming elections in Iraq
"landmark events in the history of liberty." "And none of it would have been possible without the
courage and the determination of the United States armed forces," he said. Bush told the troops
their service and sacrifice in the war on terror is making America safer for today and the future.
"Your sacrifice has made it possible for our children and grandchildren to grow up
in a safer world," he said. But this success has come at a great cost and through
tremendous sacrifice, the president noted. He acknowledged the long separations
families must endure, the wounds many service members will carry with them for
the rest of their lives, the heroes who gave their lives, and the families who grieve
them. "We hold them in our hearts," Bush said. "We lift them up in our prayers."
In times of war the life of the child is elevated above sacrificial adults,
sacrificing the queer
Deen, @ Ipsnews.net, Jan 9 2004
(POLITICS: U.N. Must Protect Children in War NGOs, http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?

idnews=21855)
A coalition of groups is urging U.N. Secretary-General

Kofi Annan to prepare an annual list of governments and groups that recruit or use
child soldiers or fail to protect children during military conflicts. Such a regular list, it says,
would keep such violators of international obligations constantly ''named and
shamed''. ''From Congo and Liberia to Iraq, Myanmar and Colombia, girls and boys are
subject to appalling violence and deprivation of their fundamental rights,'' said the Watchlist
on Children and Armed Conflict in a 43-page report released Friday. The study, which
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 9 (IPS) -
estimates 300,000 children under the age of 18 are still directly involved in armed conflicts
worldwide, was released ahead of a Security Council meeting on child soldiers scheduled for
Jan. 20. It says many countries do not adequately protect children, a situation exacerbated by
impeded access of civilians to much-needed humanitarian assistance in times of conflict. As a
result, says the study, ''more children die from malnutrition, diarrhoea and other preventable
diseases in conflict situations than die as a direct result of fighting.'' It wants Annan to
expand existing lists of violators beyond those countries and groups that use
child soldiers, to include nations that do not adequately protect children.
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Environment
Modern warfare devastates the environment- it destroys ecosystems
Worldwatch Institute, 2008
(January/February issue, Modern Warfare Causes Unprecedented Environmental Damage,
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5544)
Washington, D.C. Modern warfare tactics, as seen in the American war in Vietnam, the Rwandan
and Congolese civil wars, and the current war in Iraq, have greatly increased our capacity to
destroy the natural landscape and produce devastating environmental effects on the planet,
according to Sarah DeWeerdt, author of War and the Environment, featured in the
January/February 2008 issue of World Watch. Wartime destruction of the natural landscape is
nothing new, but the scope of destruction seen in more recent conflicts is unprecedented. For one
thing, there is the sheer firepower of current weapons technology, especially its shock-and-awe
deployment by modern superpowers. The involvement of guerrilla groups in many recent wars
draws that firepower toward the natural ecosystemsoften circumscribed and endangered ones
where those groups take cover, writes DeWeerdt. The deliberate destruction of the environment as
a military strategy, known as ecocide, is exemplified by the U.S. response to guerrilla warfare in
Vietnam. In an effort to deprive the communist Viet Cong guerrillas of the dense cover they found in
the hardwood forests and mangroves that fringed the Mekong Delta, the U.S. military sprayed 79
million liters of herbicides and defoliants (including Agent Orange) over about one-seventh of the
land area of southern Vietnam. By some estimates, half of the mangroves and 14 percent of
hardwood forests in southern Vietnam were destroyed during Operation Trail Dust, threatening
biodiversity and severely altering vegetation. Less deliberate, but still devastating, were the
environmental effects that stemmed from the mass migration of refugees during the Rwandan
genocide in 1994. Nearly 2 million Hutus fled Rwanda over the course of just a few weeks to
refugee camps in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, making it the most massive
population movement in history. Approximately 720,000 of these refugees settled in refugee camps
on the fringes of Virunga National Park, the first United Nations World Heritage site declared
endangered due to an armed conflict. The refugees stripped an estimated 35 square kilometers of
forest for firewood and shelter-building materials. The dense forests also suffered as a result of the
wide paths clear-cut by the Rwandan and Congolese armies traveling through the park to reduce
the threat of ambush by rebel groups. The longterm ecological effects of the current war in Iraq
remain to be seen. Looking to the effects of the recent Gulf War as a guide, scientists point to the
physical damage of the desert, particularly the millimeter-thin layer of microorganisms that forms a
crust on the topsoil, protecting it from erosion. Analysis of the area affected by the Gulf War has
already shown an increase in sandstorms and dune formation in the region, and one study suggests
that desert crusts might take thousands of years to fully recover from the movement of heavy
vehicles. Warfare is likely to have the most severe, longest-lasting effects on protected areas that
harbor endangered species, and slow-to-recover ecosystems such as deserts. Even in the most
fragile environments, sometimes natureand peoplecan surprise us, writes DeWeerdt. But turn
and look in another direction and you are likely to see warfares enduring scars.
War destroys infrastructure harming the environment

Sierra Club, 2003
The degradation of infrastructure and basic services brought on by war can wreak havoc on the
local environment and public health. Countries water supply systems, for example, can be
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contaminated or shut down by bomb blasts or bullet damage to pipes.[7] In Afghanistan,

destruction to water infrastructure combined with weakened public service during the war resulted
in bacterial contamination, water loss through leaks and illegal use.[8] The consequence was an
overall decline in safe drinking water throughout the country. Water shortages can also lead to
inadequate irrigation of cropland. Agricultural production may also be impaired by intensive
bombing and heavy military vehicles traveling over farm soil.[9] The presence of landmines can
also render vast areas of productive land unusable.[10] Additional war-related problems which
compound degradation of the natural and human environment include shortages in cooking fuel
and waste mismanagement during and after military conflicts. During the most recent warfare in
Iraq, individuals were forced to cut down city trees to use as cooking fuel.[11] In Afghanistan, the
creation of poorly located, leaky landfill sites resulted in contaminated rivers and groundwater.[12]
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Environment
War destroys the environment- both during and preparing for war
Finally, war and the preparation for war have profound impacts on the physical environment
(see Chapter 5). The disastrous consequences of war for the environment are often clear.
Examples include bomb craters in Vietnam that have filled with water and provide breeding
sites for mosquitoes that spread malaria and other diseases; destruction of urban
environments by aerial carpet bombing of major cities in Europe and Japan during World War
II; and the more than 600 oil-well fires in Kuwait that were ignited by retreating Iraqi troops in
1991, which had a devastating effect on the ecology of the affected areas and caused acute
respiratory symptoms among those exposed. Less obvious are the environmental impacts of
the preparation for war, such as the huge amounts of nonrenewable fossil fuels used by the
military before (and during and after) wars and the environmental hazards of toxic and
radioactive wastes, which can contaminate air, soil, and both surface water and groundwater.
For example, much of the area in and around Chelyabinsk, Russia, site of a major nuclear
weapons production facility, has been determined to be highly radioactive, leading to
evacuation of local residents (see chapter 10).
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Fascism
War desensitizes culture and politics to fascist authoritarian structures
Kallis, 04
(Aristotle, DOI: 10.1177/0265691404040007 2004; 34; 9 European History Quarterly

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

Bataille et al. 79
(The Psychological Structure of Fascism Author(s): Georges Bataille and Carl R. Lovitt
Source: New German Critique, No. 16 (Winter, 1979), pp. 64-87 Published by: New
German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487877 Accessed: 22/07/2009
12:32)
XII. The Fundamental Conditions of Fascism. As has already been indicated, heterogeneous
processes as a whole can only enter into play once the fundamental homogeneity of society (the
apparatus of production) has become dissociated because of its internal contradictions. Further, it
can be stated that, even though it generally occurs in the blindest fashion, the development of
heterogeneous forces necessarily comes to signify a solution to the problem posed by the
contradictions of homogeneity. Once in power, developed heterogeneous forces dispose of the
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means of coercion necessary to resolve the differences that had arisen between previously
irreconcilable elements. But it goes without saying that, at the end of a movement that excludes all
subversion, the thrust of these resolutions will have been consistent with the general direction of
the existing homogeneity, namely, with the interests of the capitalists.
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Gendered Violence T/
War causes sexual violence and reifies the subjugation of women.
Eaton 04. [Shana JD Georgetown University Law Center 35 Geo. J. Int'l L. 873
Summer lexis]
While sexual violence against women has always been considered a negative side
effect of war, it is only in recent years that it has been taken seriously as a
violation of humanitarian law. In the "evolution" of war, women themselves have
become a battlefield on which conflicts are fought. Realizing that rape is often
more effective at achieving their aims than plain killing, aggressors have used
shocking sexual violence against women as a tool of conflict, allowing battling
forces to flaunt their power, dominance, and masculinity over the other side. The
stigma of rape is used to effectuate genocide, destroy communities, and
demoralize opponents-decimating a woman's will to survive is often only a
secondary side effect.
Sexual violence against women during wartime had to reach horrifying levels
before the international community was shocked enough to finally take these
atrocities seriously. It took the extremely brutal victimization of vast numbers of
women, played out against a backdrop of genocide, to prove that rape is not
simply a natural side effect of war to be lightly brushed aside.
The conflicts in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia put women's rights directly
in the spotlight, and the international community could no longer avoid the glare.
In both Yugoslavia and Rwanda, ethnic cleansing was central to the conflict. Raping
women helped to achieve this aim in a number of ways, from forced impregnation,
where offspring would have different ethnicities than their mothers, to the use of
sexual violence to prevent women from wanting to have sex again (thus limiting
their likelihood of bearing children in the future). Additionally, rape was used as a
means of destroying families and communities. Raping a woman stigmatized her,
making it unlikely that she would ever want to return home, and in many cases,
ensuring that if she did return home that she would be rejected. Civilians,
particularly women, came to be used as tools to achieve military ends, putting the
human rights of these women at the heart of the conflict.
War conditions cause sexual violence
Women are especially vulnerable during war (see Chapter 12). Rape has been used
as a weapon in many wars- in Korea, Bangladesh, Algeria, India, Indonesia, Liberia,
Rwanda, Uganda, the former Yugslavia, and elsewhere. As acts of humiliation and
revenge, soldiers have raped the female family members of their enemies. For
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example, at least 10,000 women were raped by military personnel during the war
in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The social chaos brought about by war also creates
situations and conditions conductive to sexual violence.
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Health T/
Funds are prioritized for war over health services
Many countries spend large amounts of money per capita for military purposes. The countries
with the highest military expenditures are shown in Table I -1. War and the preparation for
war divert huge amounts of resources from health and human services and other
productive societal endeavors. This diversion of resources occurs in many countries. In
some less developed countries, national governments spend S10 to $20 per capita on military
expenditures but only SI per capita on all health-related expenditures. The same type of
distorted priorities also exist in more developed countries. For example, the United States
ranks first among nations in military expenditures and arms exports, but 38th among nations
in infant mortality rate and 45th in life expectancy at birth. Since 2003. during a period when
federal, state, and local governments in the United States have been experiencing budgetary
shortfalls and finding it difficult to maintain adequate health and human services, the U.S.
government has spent almost $500 b i l l i o n for the Iraq War, and is spending (in 2007) more
than $2 billion a week on the war.
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Heg T/
One more military engagement would deplete US ground forces and
utterly destroy US hegemony
Perry 06
(The U.S. Military: Under Strain and at Risk, The National Security Advisory Group, January 2006,
William J. Perry, Chair)
In the meantime, the United States has only limited ground force capability ready to respond to
other contingencies. The absence of a credible strategic reserve in our ground forces increases the
risk that potential adversaries will be tempted to challenge the United States Since the end of World
War II, a core element of U.S. strategy has been maintaining a military capable of deterring and, if
necessary, defeating aggression in more than one theater at a time. As a global power with global
interests, the United States must be able to deal with challenges to its interests in multiple regions
of the world simultaneously. Today, however, the United States has only limited ground force
capability ready to respond outside the Afghan and Iraqi theaters of operations. If the Army were
ordered to send significant forces to another crisis today, its only option would be to deploy units at
readiness levels far below what operational plans would require increasing the risk to the men and
women being sent into harms way and to the success of the mission. As stated rather blandly in
one DoD presentation, the Army continues to accept risk in its ability to respond to crises on the
Korean Peninsula and elsewhere. Although the United States can still deploy air, naval, and other
more specialized assets to deter or respond to aggression, the visible overextension of our ground
forces has the potential to significantly weaken our ability to deter and respond to some
contingencies.
War causes overstretch reducing hegemony- UK proves

Ferguson, 03
(Niall, Hegemony or Empire?, September/October 2003, Foreign Affairs)
Yet another, narrower definition is offered by Geoffrey Pigman, in his introduction to a useful and
original chapter in Two Hegemonies on agricultural trade liberalization in the 1990s. Pigman
describes a hegemon's principal function as underwriting a liberal international trading system that
is beneficial to the hegemon but, paradoxically, even more beneficial to its potential rivals. Pigman
traces this now widely used definition of the word back to the economic historian Charles
Kindleberger's seminal work on the interwar economy, which describes a kind of "hegemonic
interregnum." After 1918, Kindleberger suggested, the United Kingdom was too weakened by war to
remain an effective hegemon, but the United States was still too inhibited by protectionism and
isolationism to take over the role. This idea, which became known, somewhat inelegantly, as
"hegemonic stability theory," was later applied to the post-1945 period by authors such as Arthur
Stein, Susan Strange, Henry Nau, and Joseph Nye. In this literature, the fundamental question was
how far and for how long the United States would remain committed to free trade once other
economies -- benefiting from precisely the liberal economic order made possible by U.S. hegemony
-- began to catch up with it. Would Americans revert to protectionist or mercantilist policies in an
effort to perpetuate their hegemony, or stick with free trade at the risk of experiencing relative
decline? This is what Stein called "the hegemon's dilemma," and it appeared to him to be
essentially the same problem faced by the United Kingdom before 1914. Paul Kennedy drew a
similar parallel in his influential The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
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Homelessness
Wars create homelessness
Markee 03
(Markee, Patrick,Senior Policy Analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, 3-27-03
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/FileLib/PDFs/war_and_homelessness.pdf)
It is axiomatic that wars create homelessness in the territories where combat

occurs. Every war that the
United States has been involved in, from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm, has at
least temporarily displaced populations and destroyed the homes of civilians. Even
the undeclared wars that the United States has sponsored and supported, in Latin
America and elsewhere, produced hundreds of thousands of refugees and uprooted
rural and urban populations. However, since the Civil War there have been no sustained
military battles fought on United States territory, so most Americans have no first-hand contact with
the immediate impact of homelessness resulting from war. In contrast, our armed forces
veterans do have first-hand experience with homelessness that is a direct

consequence of American military and domestic policies . This briefing paper provides an
overview of the impact of homelessness on armed forces veterans, both historically and currently.
Throughout American history there has been high incidence of homelessness among veterans,
primarily as a result of combat related disabilities and trauma and the failure of government
benefits to provide adequate housing assistance for low-income and disabled veterans. The paper
concludes that, absent a dramatic change in Federal policies, the war on Iraq will create a
new generation of homeless veterans.
War leaves veterans unemployed and homeless

Markee 03
(Markee, Patrick,Senior Policy Analyst for Coalition for the Homeless, 3-27-03
http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/FileLib/PDFs/war_and_homelessness.pdf)
The post-Civil War era witnessed a much more significant growth in homelessness
nationwide. Indeed, asKusmer notes, even the words tramp and bum, as applied to the
homeless, can be traced to the Civil War era.3 One reason was the enormous economic
dislocation generated by the war and the succeeding economic recession, and by
the 1870s vagrancy was recognized as a national issue . Many of the new nomads
riding the rails and congregating in cities were Civil War veterans, and many had suffered physical
injuries and trauma during the war. As the early 1870s recession deepened, many cities responded
by creating new antivagrancy legislation. In 1874 the number of reported vagrants in Boston was
98,263, more than three times the number just two years earlier. From 1874 to 1878 the number of
vagrancy arrests in New York City rose by half.4 The homelessness crisis of the Great Depression,
which affected many World War I veterans, was dramatically abated in the early 1940s by the
enlistment of tens of thousands of Americans in the armed forces and by the wartime economic
upswing. In New York City, according to Kusmer, In one two-month period in 1943, 100 Bowery
residents joined the armed forces, while another 200 acquired jobs in hospitals, restaurants, or on
the railroads.5 With the end of World War II, however, homelessness re-emerged as a
significant problem in many cities. In New York City, demand for emergency shelter rose in
the late 1940s, with as many as 900 men bedding down in the Lodging House Annex (later the
Municipal Shelter) on East 3rd Street in the 1948-49 winter.6 Homelessness would have
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continued to affect many thousands of World War II veterans were it not for the
national economic upturn and the benefits provided by the G.I. Bill. With the advent of the
Vietnam War, however, the link between homelessness and military veterans
finally came to the attention of the general public. As Kusmer writes, Only a few years
after the end of the waranew wave of homeless persons, mostly in their 20s and 30s and
disproportionately black or Hispanic, began to appear on city street corners. Many were Vietnam
veterans, unable to find work after being discharged.7 By the late 1970s, when modern
homelessness fully emerged, a significant portion of the homeless men seen sleeping outdoors in
vast numbers in New York City and other large cities were armed forces veterans. Many veterans
suffered from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse disorders, and physical
disabilities caused by their experiences in combat. The 1991 Gulf War, the last major conventional
war involving the United States military, also left many veterans recovering from physical and
mental disabilities and confronting homelessness. A 1997 survey of 1,200 homeless veterans
nationwide who resided at mission shelters found that 10 percent of them were Gulf War veterans. 8
In New York City, homeless service providers also reported assisting significant
numbers of Desert Storm veterans.
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Homophobia
Wartime consensus favors inherently homophobic military culture
Dennis Sewell, 1993
(January 27, THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17, lexis)
If the public reasons why the armed forces are so set against admitting homosexuals bear such
little scrutiny, is there an unspoken reason? A homophobia that dare not speak its name? Certainly
there is a profoundly ingrained distaste for homosexuals prevalent among private soldiers and
NCOs. This stems partly from a fear of becoming the object of unwanted homosexual attentions.
Also there is a knee-jerk association of the homosexual with the effeminate or effete. To men
brought up in an exaggeratedly macho culture, one of the most effective taunts within the group is
that of being "queer". OFFICERS, of course, are keen to distance themselves from this way of
thinking or behaving. Such attitudes are, they say, part of ordinary working-class culture and not
specific to the military. They themselves, being middle class and having, doubtless, seen
homosexual behaviour at their public schools, affect a personal insoucience about the whole issue.
But they insist "the lads won't have it". This, too, we have heard before. The slow progress made by
blacks in becoming senior NCOs or officers in the British Army owed much to the same kind of
argument. Working-class culture was inherently racist, officers would say. Once the lads were told
they were jolly well going to have to lump it, of course they accepted black officers. But in the case
of homosexual servicemen, there is a complicating factor. Whereas officers did not, on the whole,
condone racist attitudes, they are often complicit in fostering homophobic attitudes. They make and
enjoy the jokes just as much as the men. Indeed, for the more insecure, a little queer baiting has
been one way of proving their own masculinity. They will find it hard now to tell the lads that they
were wrong all along.
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Inequality
Wars are fought by the poor who are sacrificed for the upper classes
turning case
Tyson, Wash Post, 05
(Ann Scott Youths in Rural U.S. Are Drawn To Military, Recruits' Job Worries Outweigh War Fears, Ann
Scott Tyson, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, November 4, 2005; Page A01)
As sustained combat in Iraq makes it harder than ever to fill the ranks of the all-volunteer force,
newly released Pentagon demographic data show that the military is leaning heavily for recruits on
economically depressed, rural areas where youths' need for jobs may outweigh the risks of going to
war. More than 44 percent of U.S. military recruits come from rural areas, Pentagon figures show. In
contrast, 14 percent come from major cities. Youths living in the most sparsely populated Zip codes
are 22 percent more likely to join the Army, with an opposite trend in cities. Regionally, most
enlistees come from the South (40 percent) and West (24 percent). Many of today's recruits are
financially strapped, with nearly half coming from lower-middle-class to poor households, according
to new Pentagon data based on Zip codes and census estimates of mean household income. Nearly
two-thirds of Army recruits in 2004 came from counties in which median household income is below
the U.S. median. Such patterns are pronounced in such counties as Martinsville, Va., that supply the
greatest number of enlistees in proportion to their youth populations. All of the Army's top 20
counties for recruiting had lower-than-national median incomes, 12 had higher poverty rates, and
16 were non-metropolitan, according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan research group
that analyzed 2004 recruiting data by Zip code.
The USFG recruits Hispanics to high fatality posts in the military

Hil, 2005
(Richard May Life lottery: US military targets poor Hispanics for frontline service in Iraq, New
Internationalist)
They have been variously described as 'working class mercenaries', 'green card troops', 'noncitizen' armies, or desperate recruits of the US Government's 'poverty draft'. They are the huge
contingent of Hispanic personnel who--for personal and economic reasons--have been recruited into
the ranks of the US military. According to US journalist Jim Ross, by February 2005 there were
110,000 of them. The biggest single contingent of such troops is made up of Mexicans and Mexican
descendants. Many were in the marine units from Camp Pendleton in San Diego that participated in
the initial stages of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and later fought 'insurgents' in Falluja. Puerto
Ricans, Dominicans, Central Americans and Ecuadorians are also well represented. Since the start
of the war about a third of the US forces stationed in Iraq--between 31,000 and 37,000 troops out of
a total of about 130,000--were non-US citizens serving in the navy, Marine Corps, army and air
force. Following the widespread insurgency in early 2004 the US Government has gone on a
nationwide recruitment drive that has targeted young Hispanics with promises of green cards,
scholarships, post-service employment, and various medical and pension benefits. The US
Government's interest in recruiting Latinos is hardly surprising since they make up about 12.5 per
cent of the US population: one in seven 18-year-olds are of Hispanic origin. Invariably poor and
jobless, they are prime candidates for US Military Occupational Specialists hungry for recruits. This
recruitment campaign is driven by an executive order signed in July 2002 by President Bush, which
effectively allows recruits in active duty during the 'war on terror' to apply for citizenship once they
join up rather than having to wait years for the granting of a green card. Since 11 September 2001,
the Bush Administration has tightened immigration procedures and cut public spending in a number
of areas such as housing and education. This has meant that many young Latinos feel they have
little choice but to pursue the inducements offered by the US military. These non-citizen members
of the military have a limited number of Military Occupational Specialties to choose from when
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enlisting. As a consequence, noncitizens are over-represented in some of the most dangerous field
operations. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanic troops make up about 17.5 per cent of
front-line forces. Not surprisingly, such troops die or are injured in disproportionate numbers. US
Department of Defense figures suggest a casualty rate for Latino military members of about 13 per
cent--almost two-and-a-half times the rate of other serving members and many times more than in
previous conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and the first Gulf War. Significantly, of the first 1,000 US deaths
in Iraq, the overwhelming majority was among the lowest-ranked, poorest-paid, and worst-trained
troops. Over 120 were Latinos--about 70 of them Mexican. With few prospects of gaining US
citizenship through the usual channels, and with little hope of employment, decent housing and
education, the call to arms clearly holds some attraction. Yet as the advocacy organization Latinos
against the Iraq War has pointed out, the various promises made by the Government frequently fail
to materialize when Latino service personnel return home. Many of these troops--especially those
who are injured--find they are in worse circumstances than when they left for Iraq; themselves
victims of the very 'war on terror' they were recruited to vanquish.
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Mental Health T/
War creates many mental health issues
Given the brutality of war. many people survive wars only to be physically or mentally scarred for
life (see Box 1-1). Millions of survivors are chronically disabled from injuries sustained during
war or the immediate aftermath of war. Approximately one-third of Ihe soldiers who survived ihe
civil war in Ethiopia, for example, were injured or disabled, and at least 40,000 individuals lost
one or more limbs during the war.' Antipersonnel landmines represent a serious threat to
many people'' (see Chapter 7). For example, in Cambodia, I in 236 people is an amputee as a
result of a landmine explosion.'0
Millions more people are psychologically impaired from wars, during which they have been physically or
sexually assaulted or have physically or sexually assaulted others; have been tortured or have
participated in the torture of others; have been forced to serve as soldiers against their will; have
witnessed the death of family members; or have experienced the destruction of their communities or
entire nations (sec Chapter4). Psychological trauma may be demonstrated in disturbed and
antisocial behaviors, such as aggression toward family members and others. Many soldiers, on
returning from military action, suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). which also affects
many civilian survivors of war.
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Poverty
Wartime spending causes poverty
Henderson, 98
(Errol Anthony Henderson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, The
Journal of Politics, Vol. 60, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 503-520, Cambridge University Press on behalf of
the Southern Political Science Association, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647920)
This analysis attempted to ascertain to what extent a relationship obtained between military
spending and poverty in the United States. With the declining significance of macroeconomic
forces, types of government spending have become salient in influencing poverty rate changes.
Partial support was found for the view that increased military spending, in the aggregate, is
associated with increased poverty though these effects are different for peacetime and wartime.
Peacetime military spending increases poverty, more than likely through its impact on increasing
inequality and unemployment, while wartime spending has the reverse effect. When disaggregated,
military personnel spending is shown to decrease poverty while other components are associated
with increasing poverty. Although military personnel spending reduces poverty, military buildups
since the Korean War have increased the share of procurement spending at the expense of
personnel expenditures (Chan 1995). In addition, to the extent that increased defense spending is
financed through deficit spending, the inflationary impact also disproportionately harms the poor.
While increased aggregate military spending fails as an antipoverty policy, focused spending on
military personnel may decrease poverty, suggesting its potential as a countercyclical instrument.
However, arguments in favor of such military spending increases are most persuasively put forth on
the basis of national security concerns within a hostile international environment or in the presence
of an arms race with a major power rival. Neither condition obtains in the post-Cold War climate.
The findings comport with the present discourse on military spending dominated by discussions of
the "peace dividend" resulting from decreased defense budgets (Chan 1995). While these findings
suggest that reduced aggregate defense spending is associated with decreased poverty, defense
reductions will have different impacts across regions, occupations, and ethnic groups. Defense
cutbacks will probably have more deleterious impacts on states that are heavily reliant upon direct
and indirect military spending, such as California, Texas, Virginia, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania,
and Ohio. In addition, economic conversion initiatives are dominated by concerns for relief for
defense contractors and their usually high-skilled workforce. To be sure, skilled workers in affected
regions will face difficulties as occupations such as aeronautics, industrial and mechanical
engineering, and metalworking decline; however, low-skilled laborers are more likely candidates for
poverty.
Empirically war spending has disproportionately hurt the poor

Henderson, 98
(Errol Anthony Henderson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, The
Journal of Politics, Vol. 60, No. 2 (May, 1998), pp. 503-520, Cambridge University Press on behalf of
the Southern Political Science Association, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2647920)
This article examines the extent to which military spending is associated with poverty in the United
States for the period 1959-92. The relationship is complicated by macroeconomic factors such as
economic growth and unemployment. Increased military spending is associated with increasing
poverty; however, there is an inverse relationship between wartime military spending and poverty
and a direct relationship between peacetime military spending and poverty. Also, military personnel
spending is inversely correlated with poverty while Operations and Maintenance (O&M),
procurement, and Research and Development (R&D) spending are directly correlated with poverty.
These findings suggest the antipoverty policy alternatives of increased social welfare spending,
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defense conversion that is poverty sensitive, or increased spending on military personnel, which is
usually only accompanied by war mobilization. The last option is untenable as social policy and the
first option is unlikely in the present political climate; therefore, the poor must rely on more
"efficiently targeted" conversion initiatives.
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Poverty
Conflict causes chronic poverty
Goodhand 03
(Johnathan Goodhand, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2003
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/research/research-domains/transdisciplinary-concepts-andmethods/favaia/workspace/documents/world-development-volume-31-issue-3-special-issue-onchronic-poverty-and-development-policy/pages629-646.pdf)
Research studies on the costs of conflict show that although the effects of war
varyaccording to the nature, duration and phase of the conflict, the background economic and
social conditions and the level of compensatory action by national governments or the international
communityprotracted conflicts are
likely to produce chronic poverty . This
particularly applies to collapsed state, warlord type conflicts characterized by the

systematic and deliberate violation of individual and group rights. In such conflicts
the deliberate impoverishment of the population may be used as a weapon of war.
9 Violent conflict is therefore likely to be both a driver and maintainer of
intergenerationally transmitted (IGT) poverty: Poor societies are at risk of falling into noexit cycles of conflict in which ineffective governance, societal warfare, humanitarian crises, and
the lack of development perpetually chase one another (Gurr et al., 2001, p. 13). (b) Macro effects
of conflict
Conflict has direct and indirect costs. The direct impacts including battlefield
deaths, disablement and displacement have long-term costs for societies. Chronic
poverty is likely to increase due to higher dependency ratios caused by an
increased proportion of the old, women and disabled in the population . But the
indirect costs are likely to have a more significant impact on IGT poverty. Many more
people die from wars as a result of lack of basic medical services, the destruction of rural life and
transport and collapse of the state, than from direct battlefield deaths. 10
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Woman Rights T/
War destroys womens rights
Marshall, founder of the feminist peace network, 04
(Lucinda Marshall Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, Feminist Writer and Activist, 12-18-04
Unacceptable:
The
Impact
of
War
on
Women
and
Children
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1219-26.htm)
Women and children account for almost 80% of the casualties of conflict and war as
well as 80% of the 40 million people in world who are now refugees from their homes. It is one of
the unspoken facts of militarism that women often become the spoils of war, their
deaths are considered collateral damage and their bodies are frequently used as
battlegrounds and as commodities that can be traded.
"Women and girls are not just killed, they are raped, sexually attacked, mutilated
and humiliated. Custom, culture and religion have built an image of women as
bearing the 'honour' of their communities. Disparaging a woman's sexuality and
destroying her physical integrity have become a means by which to terrorize,
demean and 'defeat' entire communities , as well as to punish, intimidate and
humiliate women," according to Irene Khan of Amnesty International.
Sexual violence as a tool of war has left hundreds of thousands of women raped, brutalized,
impregnated and infected with HIV/AIDS. And hundreds of thousands of women are trafficked
annually for forced labor and sexual slavery. Much of this trafficking is to service western troops in
brothels near military bases. Even women serving in the military are subjected to sexual violence.
U.S. servicewomen have reported hundreds of assaults in military academies and while serving on
active duty. The perpetrators of these assaults have rarely been prosecuted or punished.
The impact of war on children is also profound. In the last decade, two million of
our children have been killed in wars and conflicts. 4.5 million children have been
disabled and 12 million have been left homeless. Today there are 300,000 child soldiers, including
many girls who are forced to 'service' the troops.
War restricts womens freedom and suppresses their basic human rights
Abeyesekera, director of a humans rights organization, 03
(Sunila Abeyesekera, director of Inform, a Sri Lankan human rights organization 02-03
http://www.awid.org/eng/Issues-and-Analysis/Library/A-Women-s-Human-Rights-Perspective-on-Warand-Conflict)
At the same time, wars and conflicts have led to a host of negative consequences for
unarmed women civilians and dependent family members, children, the old and the infirm.
Figures worldwide point to the fact that the majority of refugees and internally displaced
persons are female. The erosion of democratic space that often accompanies conflict and war
also propel women into a more active role in political and social life. In moments when men and
male-dominated traditional political and social formations, such as political parties and trade
unions, are reluctant or unable to come forward in defense of human rights and democratic
principles, groups of women have had the courage to stand up to the armed might of both state
and non-state actors. War and conflict also push women into decision-making positions in their
families and communities, in particular in the role of head of household.
Most conflicts and wars emerge out of processes of identity formation in which competing identity
groups and communities resort to violence to affirm their equal status in society. Given this
dynamic, conflict and war situations result in the heightening of all forms of
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conservatism and extremism including religious fundamentalism, ultra-nationalism

and ethnic and linguistic chauvinism. The hardening of identity-based roles
ascribed to men and women within the community that happen as a part of this
process often has disastrous consequences for women. It restricts their mobility
and freedom, imposes dress codes, confines them to the domestic sphere, brings
them under the rigid control of male members of the family and the community
and, most critically, places them in the role of 'bearers of the community's honour'
and traditions. Thus, the rape and violation of the women of the 'enemy'
community becomes a critical military strategy in all identity-based wars and
conflict.
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Racism
Wartime culture results in racism
Dieckmann et al., 97
(Bernhard Dieckmann, Christoph Wulf, Michael Wimmer, Violence--racism,
nationalism, xenophobia, 134
War is as important as any other medium-term socio-economic or political factor in
leading to a rise in racism. In fact, anyone studying the history of race during the
twentieth century cannot avoid the conclusiuon that the worst persecution of
minorities has occurred during wartime. Apart from genocide, illustrated by the
Annenian genocide in World War I and the Nazi Holocaust in World War Two, states
such as Britain and Brazil experienced some of their worst twentieth century
outbreaks of violence during the First World War. The explanations as to why war
leads to an increase in intolerance are many, but revolve around the increase in
ostracisation of outgroups, facilitated by the seizure of control, directly or
indirectly, by the military, as members of the dominant society fell closer together
to fight the external enemy.
War props up systems of racism and domination.

Martin 90. [Brian, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the
University
of
Wollongong,
,
Uprooting
War,
Freedom
Press,
[http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/90uw/index.html]
Antagonism between ethnic groups can be used and reinforced by the state to
sustain its own power. When one ethnic group controls all the key positions in the
state, this is readily used to keep other groups in subordinate positions, and as a
basis for economic exploitation. This was clearly a key process in apartheid in
South Africa, but is also at work in many other countries in which minority groups
are oppressed. From this perspective, the dominant ethnic group uses state power
to maintain its ascendancy. But at the same time, the use of political and economic
power for racial oppression helps to sustain and legitimate state power itself. This
is because the maintenance of racial domination and exploitation comes to depend
partly on the use of state power, which is therefore supported and expanded by
the dominant group. From this perspective it can be said that the state mobilises
racism to help maintain itself.
There are several other avenues used by the state to mobilise support. Several of
these will be treated in the following chapters, including bureaucracy and
patriarchy. In each case, structured patterns of dominance and submission are
mobilised to support the state, and state in turn helps to sustain the social
structure in question, such as bureaucracy or patriarchy. To counter the state, it is
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necessary both to promote grassroots mobilisation and to undermine the key

structures from which the state draws its power and from which it mobilises
support.
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Rape
War facilitates the rape of women to force unwanted pregnancies and to
further ethnic cleansing
Robson 93
(Robson, has a Master's degree in African Literature and is an award winning writer, 06-93
http://www.newint.org/issue244/rape.htm)
No-one will ever know the exact number of women and girls raped during the
conflict in former Yugoslavia. But Heraks accounts of his forced participation in rapes of
Bosnian Muslim women his commander had told him it was good for morale accord
with evidence recounted to human-rights observers and journalists throughout the region. Though
all figures must be treated with caution in a war so plagued by propaganda, these witnesses tell of
the organized and systematic rape of at least 20,000 women and girls by the Serbian military and
the murder of many of the victims. Muslim and Croatian as well as some Serbian women are
being raped in their homes, in schools, police stations and camps all over the
country. The sexual abuse of women in war is nothing new. Rape has long been
tolerated as one of the spoils of war, an inevitable feature of military conflict like
pillage and looting. What is new about the situation in Bosnia is the attention it is receiving
and the recognition that it is being used as a deliberate military tactic to speed up the
process of ethnic cleansing. According to a recent report by European Community
investigators, rapes are being committed in particularly sadistic ways to inflict
maximum humiliation on victims, their families, and on the whole community. 1 In many
cases the intention is deliberately to make women pregnant and to detain them
until pregnancy is far enough advanced to make termination impossible . Women and
girls aged anything between 6 and 70 are being held in camps throughout the country and raped
repeatedly by gangs of soldiers. Often brothers or fathers of these women are forced to rape them
as well. If they refuse, they are killed.
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Rights T/
Wars undermine human rights
Ganesan and Vines 04. [Arvind, Business and Human Rights Program Director @
HRW Alex, Senior Researcher @ HRW, Head of Africa Programme Chatham House,
Royal Institue of Intl Affairs, Engine of War: Resources, Greed, and the Predatory
State,
Human
Rights
Watch
World
Report
2004
http://hrw.org/wr2k4/download/14.pdf]
Internal armed conflict in resource-rich countries is a major cause of human rights
violations around the world. An influential World Bank thesis states that the
availability of portable, high-value resources is an important reason that rebel
groups form and civil wars break out, and that to end the abuses one needs to
target rebel group financing. The focus is on rebel groups, and the thesis is that
greed, rather than grievance alone, impels peoples toward internal armed conflict.
Although examination of the nexus between resources, revenues, and civil war is
critically important, the picture as presented in the just-described greed vs.
grievance theory is distorted by an overemphasis on the impact of resources on
rebel group behavior and insufficient attention to how government
mismanagement of resources and revenues fuels conflict and human rights
abuses. As argued here, if the international community is serious about curbing
conflict and related rights abuses in resource-rich countries, it should insist on
greater transparency in government revenues and expenditures and more rigorous
enforcement of punitive measures against governments that seek to profit from
conflict.
Civil wars and conflict have taken a horrific toll on civilians throughout the world.
Killings, maiming, forced conscription, the use of child soldiers, sexual abuse, and
other atrocities characterize numerous past and ongoing conflicts. The level of
violence has prompted increased scrutiny of the causes of such wars. In this
context, the financing of conflict through natural resource exploitation has received
increased scrutiny over the last few years.
When unaccountable, resource-rich governments go to war with rebels who often
seek control over the same resources, pervasive rights abuse is all but inevitable.
Such abuse, in turn, can further destabilize conditions, fueling continued conflict.
Factoring the greed of governments and systemic rights abuse into the greed vs.
grievance equation does not minimize the need to hold rebel groups accountable,
but it does highlight the need to ensure that governments too are transparent and
accountable. Fundamentally, proper management of revenues is an economic
problem, and that is why the role of IFIs is so important. But it is an economic
problem that also has political dimensions and requires political solutions. Political
will and pressure, including targeted U.N. sanctions where appropriate, can
motivate opaque, corrupt governments to be more open and transparent. Where
such pressure is lacking, as in Liberia prior to enforcement of sanctions, continued
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conflict, rights abuse, and extreme deprivation of civilians all too commonly are the
result.
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Rights T/
Modern warfare involves crippling civilian infrastructure and violating
human rights
Modern military technology, especially the use of high-precision bombs, rockets, and missile
warheads, has now made it possible to attack civilian populations in industrialized societies
indirectlybut with devastating resultsby targeting the facilities on which life depends, while
avoiding the stigma of direct attack on the bodies and habitats of noncombatants. The
technique has been termed "bomb now, die later."
U.S. military action against Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and in the Iraq War has included
the specific and selective destruction of key aspects of the infrastructure necessary to
maintain ci vi l i an life and health (see Chapter 15). During the bombing phase of the Persian
Gulf War this deliberate effort almost totally destroyed Iraq's electrical-power generation and
transmission capacity and its civilian communications networks. In combination with the
prolonged application of economic sanctions and the disruption of highways, bridges, and
facilities for refining and distributing fuel by conventional bombing, these actions had severely
damaging effects on the health and survival of the civilian population, especially infants and
children. Without electrical power, water purification and pumping ceased immediately in all
major urban areas, as did sewage pumping and treatment. The appearance and epidemic
spread of infectious diarrheal disease in infants and of waterborne diseases, such as typhoid
fever and cholera, were rapid. At the same lime, medical care and public health measures
were totally disrupted. Modern multistory hospitals were left without clean water, sewage
disposal, or any electricity beyond what could he supplied by emergency generators designed
to operate only a few hours per day. Operating rooms, x-ray equipment, and other vital
facilities were crippled. Supplies of anesthetics, antibiotics, and other essential medications
were rapidly depleted. Vaccines and medications requiring refrigeration were destroyed, and
all immunization programs increased. Because almost no civilian telephones, computers, or
transmission lines were operable, the Ministry of Health was effectively immobilized. Fuel
shortages and the disruption of transportation limited civilian access to medical care.
Many reports provide clear and quantitative evidence of violations of the requirements of
immunity for civilian populations, proportionality, and the prevention of unnecessary
suffering. They mock the concept of life integrity rights. In contrast to the chaos and social
disruption that routinely accompany armed conflicts, these deaths have been the
consequence of and explicit military policy, with clearly foreseeable consequences to human
rights of civilians. The U.S. military has never conceded that its policies violated human rights
under the Geneva Conventions or the guidelines under which U.S. military personnel operate.
Yet the ongoing development of military technology suggests thatabsent the use of
weapons of mass destructionviolations of civilians human rights will be the
preferred method of warfare in the future.
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Social Service T/
Increased military spending from war would tradeoff with health care and
other social services
Tasini , executive director of labor research association ran for senate in NY, 8-13 -7
(Jonathan
,
Guns
Versus
Butter
-Our
Real
Economic
Challenge
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/guns-versus-butter-our_b_60150.html)
Guns versus butter. It's the classic debate that really tells us a lot about our
priorities that we set for the kind of society we can expect to live in -- how much
money a country spends on the military versus how much money is expended on
non-military, domestic needs. To perhaps explain the obvious, buying a gun (or missile
defense or a sophisticated bomber) means you don't have those dollars for butter
(or a national health care plan or free college education ). At some basic level, we all
know that those tradeoffs exist but, sometimes, numbers bring home the meaning of this
equation in stunning fashion. What made me think of this is a set of revealing numbers that jumped
out at me the other day -- numbers that underscore why there is, in my opinion, something lacking
in the message of most of the Democratic presidential candidates and our party's leadership.
War spending trades off with Medicaid Bush and the Iraq war proves
Star Tribune 5 ("Social programs would bear brunt of deficit reduction", February 8, @Lexis)
President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget Monday that would drastically cut
or shut down 150 government programs and slash spending on Medicaid, farming and
low-income housing, while boosting money for defense and homeland security. In what
Bush described as the most austere budget of his presidency, discretionary spending would grow by
2.1 percent - less than the projected rate of inflation. Meanwhile, non-defense spending would
be cut by nearly 1 percent - the first such proposed cut since the Reagan administration .
Hardest hit is Medicaid, which could cost Minnesota as much as $712 million over the
next decade.
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Starvation
War causes starvation
Messer 96
(Ellen Messer, University of Michigan, Ph.D., 1996,
http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu22we/uu22we0j.htm)
After the wars, communities decimated and depopulated
by physical and human

losses can remain underproductive and hungry for years, as food wars and the
conditions leading up to them remain a legacy of armed conflict that is not easily
remedied without outside assistance. Individuals, households, and communities must regain access
to land, water, and other sources of livelihood, and human resources and social infrastructure must
somehow recover. Communities in many cases must be re-formed, especially where areas have
experienced complete or selective depopulation. Production and markets must be re-established, so
that goods can flow and livelihoods rebound. During prolonged warfare, whole generations
may be conscripted into the military; with no other schooling, they must later be
socialized into peacetime occupations if they are not to revert to violence and
brigandage as a source of entitlements. In the African conflicts of Mozambique, Liberia, and
Sierra Leone, destruction of kinship units was a deliberate military strategy to remove
intergenerational ties and community bonds and create new loyalties to the military. These grown
youths now need sustenance, and basic and specialty education, if they are to contribute to a
peacetime economy and society, and to general food security. After decades of civil war, these
countries also lack skilled agricultural, social, and health professionals to speed
recovery. They require agricultural, health, educational, and economic services to
rebuild societies, as well as physical infrastructure such as agricultural works, transport and
communication lines, and market-places destroyed in the wars.
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Terror
Wars, like the Iraq war, have increased a chance of a terror attack
People Press 05
(Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 7-21-05, http://peoplepress.org/report/251/more-say-iraq-war-hurts-fight-against-terrorism)
The public is growing more skeptical that the war in Iraq is helping in the effort to
fight terrorism. A plurality (47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on
terrorism, up from 41% in February of this year. Further, a plurality (45%) now says that the
war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at home , up from 36% in
October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in
the U.S. (22% now and 32% in October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no
effect on the chances of a terrorist attack in the U.S. Older Americans are more skeptical than
younger people that the war in Iraq is helping the effort to fight terrorism. A 56% majority of
those age 50 and over say the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrori sm, up from 39%
in February. Those younger than age 50 are divided on this issue, with 45% saying the war in Iraq
has helped and 41% saying it hurt the war on terrorism; that pattern has remained stable since
February.
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**X TURNS CASE**
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AIDS T/ Readiness
AIDS kills readiness- it decreases troops and erodes govt control
Still, IDs. impact in the contemporary international system may be somewhat different. Unlike
other diseases, AIDS has an incubation period of ten years or more, making it unlikely that it
will produce significant casualties on the front lines of a war. It will still, however, deplete
force strength in many states. On average, 20.40 percent of armed forces in sub-Saharan
countries are HIV-positive, and in a few countries the rate is 60 percent or more. In Zimbabwe,
it may be as high as 80 percent.147 In high incidence countries, AIDS significantly erodes
military readiness, directly threatening national security. Lyndy Heinecken chillingly describes
the problem in sub-Saharan Africa: AIDS-related illnesses are now the leading cause of death in
the army and police forces of these countries, accounting for more than 50% of inservice and
post-service mortalities. In badly infected countries, AIDS patients occupy 75% of military
hospital beds and the disease is responsible for more admissions than battlefield injuries. The
high rate of HIV infection has meant that some African armies have been unable to deploy a
full contingent, or even half of their troops, at short notice.. [In South Africa, because]
participation in peace-support operations outside the country is voluntary, the S[outh]
A[frican] N[ational] D[efence] F[orce] is grappling with the problem of how to ensure the
availability of sufficiently suitable candidates for deployment at short notice. Even the use of
members for internal crime prevention and border control, which subjects them to adverse
conditions or stationing in areas where local infrastructure is limited, presents certain
problems. Ordinary ailments, such as diarrhoea and the common cold, can be serious enough
to require the hospitalization of an immune-compromised person, and, in some cases, can
prove fatal if they are not treated immediately. 148 Armed forces in severely affected states will
be unable to recruit and train soldiers quickly enough to replace their sick and dying
colleagues, the potential recruitment pool itself will dwindle, and officers corps will be
decimated. Military budgets will be sapped, military blood supplies tainted, and organizational
structures strained to accommodate unproductive soldiers. HIV-infected armed forces also
threaten civilians at home and abroad. Increased levels of sexual activity among military
forces in wartime means that the military risk of becoming infected with HIV is as much as 100
times that of the civilian risk. It also means that members of the armed forces comprise a key
means of transmitting the virus to the general population; with sex and transport workers, the
military is considered one of the three core transmission groups in Africa. 149 For this reason,
conflict-ridden states may become reluctant to accept peacekeepers from countries with high
HIV rates. Rather than contributing directly to military defeat in many countries, however, AIDS
in the military is more likely to have longer term implications for national security. First, IDs
theoretically could deter military action and impede access to strategic resources or areas.
Tropical diseases erected a formidable, although obviously not insurmountable, obstacle to
colonization in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. French and later American efforts to open the
Panama Canal, similarly, were stymied until U.S. mosquito control efforts effectively checked
yellow fever and malaria. Second, in many countries AIDS already strains military medical
systems and their budgets, and it only promises to divert further spending away from defense
toward both military and civilian health. Third, AIDS in the military promises to have its
greatest impact by eroding a government.s control over its armed forces and further
destabilizing the state. Terminally ill soldiers may have little incentive to defend their
government, and their government may be in more need of defending as AIDS siphons funds
from housing, education, police, and administration. Finally, high military HIV/AIDS rates could
alter regional balances of power. Perhaps 40.50 percent of South Africa.s soldiers are HIVinfected. Despite the disease.s negative impact on South Africa.s absolute power, Price-Smith
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notes, AIDS may increase that nation.s power relative to its neighbors, Zimbabwe and
Botswana, with potentially important regional consequences.150 AIDS poses obvious threats to
the military forces of many countries, particularly in sub- Saharan Africa, but it does not
present the same immediate security problems for the United States. The authors of a
Reagan-era report on the effects of economic and demographic trends on security worried
about the effects of the costs of AIDS research, education, and funding on the defense
budget,151 but a decade of relative prosperity generated budget surpluses instead. These
surpluses have evaporated, but concerns about AIDS spending have not reappeared and are
unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future, given the relatively low levels of HIV-infection in
the United States. AIDS presents other challenges, including prevention education and
measures to limit infection of U.S. soldiers and peacekeepers stationed abroad, particularly in
high risk settings, and HIV transmission by these forces to the general population. These
concerns could limit U.S. actions where American interests are at stake.152
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AIDS T/ Readiness
Aids kills military readiness
Upton, 4 ( Maureen- member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of
the 21st Century Trust, World Policy Journal, Global Public Health Trumps the
Nation-State
Volume
XXI,
No
3,
Fall
2004,
http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/Upton.html)
The political economist Nicholas Eberstadt has demonstrated that the coming Eurasian AIDS
pandemic has the potential to derail the economic prospects of billions of peopleparticularly
in Russia, China, and Indiaand to thereby alter the global military balance. 5 Eurasia (defined
as Russia, plus Asia), is home to five-eighths of the worlds population, and its combined GNP
is larger than that of either the United States or Europe. Perhaps more importantly, the region
includes four of the worlds five militaries with over one million members and four declared
nuclear states. Since HIV has a relatively long incubation period, its effects on military
readiness are unusually harsh. Officers who contract the disease early in their military careers
do not typically die until they have amassed significant training and expertise, so armed
forces are faced with the loss of their most senior, hardest-to-replace officers.
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Disesase T/ Readiness
Diseases kill military readiness- empirically proven
Military readiness. Even when disease is not deliberately used, it can alter the evolution and
outcome of military conflict by eroding military readiness and morale. As Jared Diamond
notes, .All those military histories glorifying great generals oversimplify the ego-deflating
truth: the winners of past wars were not always the armies with the best generals and
weapons, but were often merely those bearing the nastiest germs to transmit to their
enemies..142 During the European conquest of the Americas, the conquistadors shared
numerous lethal microbes with their native American foes, who had few or no deadly diseases
to pass on to their conquerors. When Hernando Cortez and his men first attacked the Aztecs
in Mexico in 1520, they left behind smallpox that wiped out half the Aztec population.
Surviving Aztecs were further demoralized by their vulnerability to a disease that appeared
harmless to the Europeans, and on their next attempt the Spanish succeeded in conquering
the Aztec nation.143 Spanish conquest of the Incan empire in South America followed a similar
pattern: In 1532 Francisco Pizarro and his army of 168 Spaniards defeated the Incan army
of 80,000. A devastating smallpox epidemic had killed the Incan emperor and his heir,
producing a civil war that split the empire and allowed a handful of Europeans to defeat a
large, but divided enemy.144 In modern times, too, pandemic infections have affected the
ability of military forces to prosecute and win a war. The German Army chief of staff in the
First World War, General Erick Von Ludendorf, blamed Germany.s loss of that war at least
partly on the negative effects of the 1918 influenza epidemic on the morale of German
troops.145 In the Second World War, similarly, malaria caused more U.S. casualties in
certain areas than did military action.146 Throughout history, then, IDs have had a
significant potential to decimate armies and alter military history.
Pandemics kill military readiness

Major Hesko, 6 (Gerald, Air Command And Staff College Pandemic Influenza:
Military Operational Readiness Implications April 2006)
There exists in the world today the possibility of a great influenza pandemic matching those of
the past century with the potential to far exceed the pain, suffering and deaths of past
pandemics. Although global pandemics are difficult to accurately predict, scientists theorize
that another pandemic on a scale of the deadly 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic is imminent.
If a pandemic influenza occurs, as predicted by many in the medical and scientific community,
the number of Americans affected could easily overwhelm our medical capability resulting in
untold suffering and deaths. Although an influenza pandemic, if it occurs, has the potential to
devastate and threaten our society, an equally alarming consequence is the effects it could
have on the operational readiness of the United States military establishment. With our
current engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with other smaller engagements worldwide, if an influenza pandemic were to strike the military, our level of operational readiness,
preparedness and ability to defend our vital national interests could be decreased or threaten.
As a result of the pending threat of an influenza pandemic, the United States military, must
take decisive actions to mitigate the potential devastation an influenza pandemic might have
on operational readiness.
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Disease T/ Readiness
Suburban Emergency Management Project, 7 (Disease Outbreak Readiness
Update, U.S. Department of Defense
Biot Report #449: July 25, 2007, http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?
BiotID=449)
An infectious disease pandemic could impair the militarys readiness, jeopardize ongoing
military operations abroad, and threaten the day-to-day functioning of the Department of
Defense (DOD) because of up to 40% of personnel reporting sick or being absent during a
pandemic, according to a recent GAO report (June 2007).
Congressman Tom Davis, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform in the U.S. House of Representatives, requested the GAO investigation. (1) The 40%
number (above) comes from the Homeland Security Councils estimate that 40% of the U.S.
workforce might not be at work due to illness, the need to care for family members who are
sick, or fear of becoming infected. (2) DOD military and civilian personnel and contractors
would face a similar absentee rate, according to the GAO writers.
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Disease T/ War
Disease increases the likelihood of war and genocide
How might these political and economic effects produce violent conflict? Price-Smith offers
two possible answers: Disease .magnif[ies].both relative and absolute deprivation
and.hasten[s] the erosion of state capacity in seriously affected societies. Thus, infectious
disease may in fact contribute to societal destabilization and to chronic low-intensity
intrastate violence, and in extreme cases it may accelerate the processes that lead to state
failure..83 Disease heightens competition among social groups and elites for scarce resources.
When the debilitating and deadly effects of IDs like AIDS are concentrated among a particular
socio-economic, ethnic, racial, or geographic group, the potential for conflict escalates. In
many parts of Africa today, AIDS strikes rural areas at higher rates than urban areas, or it hits
certain provinces harder than others. If these trends persist in states where tribes or ethnic
groups are heavily concentrated in particular regions or in rural rather than urban areas, AIDS
almost certainly will interact with tribal, ethnic, or national differences and make political and
military conflict more likely. Price-Smith argues, moreover, that .the potential for intra-elite
violence is also increasingly probable and may carry grave political consequences, such as
coups, the collapse of governance, and planned genocides..84
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Ecodestruction T/ Disease
Worldwatch Institute, 96 (Infectious Diseases Surge: Environmental
Destruction, Poverty To Blame http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1593)
Rates of infectious disease have risen rapidly in many countries during the past decade,
according to a new study released by the Worldwatch Institute. Illness and death from
tuberculosis, malaria, dengue fever, and AIDS are up sharply; infectious diseases killed 16.5
million people in 1993, one-third of all deaths worldwide, and slightly more than cancer and
heart disease combined.
The resurgence of diseases once thought to have been conquered stems from a deadly mix of
exploding populations, rampant poverty, inadequate health care, misuse of antibiotics, and
severe environmental degradation, says the new report, Infecting Ourselves: How
Environmental and Social Disruptions Trigger Disease. Infectious diseases take their greatest
toll in developing countries, where cases of malaria and tuberculosis are soaring, but even in
the United States, infectious disease deaths rose 58 percent between 1980 and 1992.
Research Associate Anne Platt, author of the report, says, "Infectious diseases are a basic
barometer of the environmental sustainability of human activity. Recent outbreaks result from
a sharp imbalance between a human population growing by 88 million each year and a
natural resource base that is under increasing stress."
"Water pollution, shrinking forests, and rising temperatures are driving the upward surge in
infections in many countries," the report says. "Only by adopting a more sustainable path to
economic development can we control them."
"Beyond the number of people who die, the social and economic cost of infectious diseases is
hard to overestimate," Platt says. "It can be a crushing burden for families, communities, and
governments. Some 400 million people suffer from debilitating malaria, about 200 million
have schistosomiasis, and nine million have tuberculosis."
By the year 2000, AIDS will cost Asian countries over $50 billion a year just in lost
productivity. "Such suffering and economic loss is doubly tragic," says Platt, "because the cost
of these diseases is astronomical, yet preventing them is not only simple, but inexpensive."
The author notes, "The dramatic resurgence of infectious diseases is telling us that we are
approaching disease and medicine, as well as economic development, in the wrong way.
Governments focus narrowly on individual cures and not on mass prevention; and we fail to
understand that lifestyle can promote infectious disease just as it can contribute to heart
disease. It is imperative that we bring health considerations into the equation when we plan
for international development, global trade, and population increases, to prevent disease from
spreading and further undermining economic development."
The report notes that this global resurgence of infectious disease involves old, familiar
diseases like tuberculosis and the plague as well as new ones like Ebola and Lyme disease. Yet
all show the often tragic consequences of human actions:
Population increases, leading to human crowding, poverty, and the growth of mega-cities, are
prompting dramatic increases in dengue fever, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS.
Lack of clean water is spreading diseases like cholera, typhoid, and dysentery. Eighty percent
of all disease in developing countries is related to unsafe drinking water and poor sanitation.
Poorly planned development disrupts ecosystems and provides breeding grounds for
mosquitoes, rodents, and snails that spread debilitating diseases.
Inadequate vaccinations have led to resurgences in measles and diphtheria.
Misuse of antibiotics has created drug-resistant strains of pneumonia and malaria.
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Ecodestruction T/ Disease
Environmental collapse threatens health and civilization collapse
In a fundamental sense, ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems - for the human
species and all other forms of life (see Figure 1.1). The needs of the human organism for food,
water, clean air, shelter and relative climatic constancy are basic and unalterable. That is,
ecosystems are essential to human well-being and especially to human health defined by
the World Health Organization as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.
Those who live in materially comfortable, urban environments commonly take for granted
ecosystem services to health. They assume that good health derives from prudent consumer
choices and behaviours, with access to good health care services. But this ignores the role of
the natural environment: of the array of ecosystems that allow people to enjoy good health,
social organization, economic activity, a built environment and life itself. Historically,
overexploitation of ecosystem services has led to the collapse of some societies
(SG3). There is an observable tendency for powerful and wealthy societies eventually to
overexploit, damage and even destroy their natural environmental support base. The
agricultural-based civilizations of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, the Mayans, and (on a microscale) Easter Island all provide well documented examples. Industrial societies, although in
many cases more distant from the source of the ecosystem services on which they depend,
may reach similar limits. Resource consumption in one location can lead to degradation of
ecosystem services and associated health effects in other parts of the world (SG3). At its most
fundamental level of analysis, the pressure on ecosystems can be conceptualized as a
function of population, technology and lifestyle. In turn, these factors depend on many social
and cultural elements. For example, fertilizer use in agricultural production increasingly is
dependent on resources extracted from other regions and has led to eutrophication of rivers,
lakes and coastal ecosystems. Notwithstanding ecosystems' fundamental role as
determinants of human health, sociocultural factors play a similarly important role. These
include infrastructural assets; income and wealth distribution; technologies used; and level of
knowledge. In many industrialized countries, changes in these social factors over the last few
centuries have both enhanced some ecosystem services (through more productive
agriculture, for instance) and improved health services and education, contributing to
increases in life expectancy. The complex multifactorial causation of states of health and
disease complicates the attribution of human health impacts to ecosystem changes. A
precautionary approach to ecosystem management is appropriate.
Environmental destruction causes new diseases

Disturbance or degradation of ecosystems can have biological effects that are highly relevant
to infectious disease transmission (C14). The reasons for the emergence or re-emergence of
some diseases are unknown, but the following mechanisms have been proposed: altered
habitat leading to changes in the number of vector breeding sites or reservoir host
distribution; niche invasions or transfer of interspecies hosts; biodiversity change
(including loss of predator species and changes in host population density); human-induced
genetic changes in disease vectors or pathogens (such as mosquito resistance to pesticides or
the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria); and environmental contamination by
infectious disease agents (such as faecal contamination of source waters).
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Ecodestruction T/ War
Environmental degradation increases war, instability, and hurts the
economy
UN, 4 (United Nations News Center, Environmental destruction during war
exacerbates
instability
November
5,
2004,
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?
NewsID=12460&Cr=conflict&Cr1=environment,
"These scars, threatening water supplies, the fertility of the land and the cleanliness of the air
are recipes for instability between communities and neighbouring countries," he added.
Citing a new UNEP report produced in collaboration with the UN Development Programme
(UNDP) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Toepfer
stressed that environmental degradation could undermine local and international security by
"reinforcing and increasing grievances within and between societies."
The study finds that a decrepit and declining environment can depress economic activity and
diminish the authority of the state in the eyes of its citizens. It also points out that the
addressing environmental problems can foster trust among communities and neighbouring
countries.
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Ecodestruction T/ Agriculture
Environmental degradation destroys cropland
Homer-Dixon, 91 (Thomas- Professor of Political Science and Director of the Peace and Conflict
Studies Program at the University of Toronto, International Security On The Threshold:
Environmental Changes as Causes of Acute Conflict 199,
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/pcs/thresh/thresh2.htm)
Decreased agricultural production is often mentioned as potentially the most worrisome
consequence of environmental change,47 and Figure 2 presents some of the causal scenarios
frequently proposed by researchers. This illustration is not intended to be exhaustive: the
systemic interaction of environmental and agricultural variables is far more complex than the
figure suggests.48 Moreover, no one region or country will exhibit all the indicated processes:
while some are already clearly evident in certain areas, others are not yet visible anywhere.
The Philippines provides a good illustration of deforestation's impact, which can be traced out
in the figure. Since the Second World War, logging and the encroachment of farms have
reduced the virgin and second-growth forest from about sixteen million hectares to 6.8-7.6
million hectares.49 Across the archipelago, logging and land-clearing have accelerated erosion,
changed regional hydrological cycles and precipitation patterns, and decreased the land's
ability to retain water during rainy periods. The resulting flash floods have damaged irrigation
works while plugging reservoirs and irrigation channels with silt. These factors may seriously
affect crop production. For example, when the government of the Philippines and the
European Economic Community commissioned an Integrated Environmental Plan for the still
relatively unspoiled island of Palawan, the authors of the study found that only about half of
the 36,000 hectares of irrigated farmland projected within the Plan for 2007 will actually be
irrigable because of the hydrological effects of decreases in forest cover. 50
Figure 2 also highlights the importance of the degradation and decreasing availability of good
agricultural land, problems that deserve much closer attention than they usually receive.
Currently, total global cropland amounts to about 1.5 billion hectares. Optimistic estimates of
total arable land on the planet, which includes both current and potential cropland, range
from 3.2 to 3.4 billion hectares, but nearly all the best land has already been exploited. What
is left is either less fertile, not sufficiently rainfed or easily irrigable, infested with pests, or
harder to clear and work.51
For developing countries during the 1980s, cropland grew at just 0.26 percent a year, less than half
the rate of the 1970s. More importantly, in these countries arable land per capita dropped by 1.9
percent a year.52 In the absence of a major increase in arable land in developing countries, experts
expect that the world average of 0.28 hectares of cropland per capita will decline to 0.17 hectares
by the year 2025, given the current rate of world population growth. 53 Large tracts are being lost
each year to urban encroachment, erosion, nutrient depletion, salinization, waterlogging,
acidification, and compacting. The geographer Vaclav Smil, who is generally very conservative in
his assessments of environmental damage, estimates that two to three million hectares of cropland
are lost annually to erosion; perhaps twice as much land goes to urbanization, and at least one
million hectares are abandoned because of excessive salinity. In addition, about one-fifth of the
world's cropland is suffering from some degree of desertification. 54 Taken together, he concludes,
the planet will lose about 100 million hectares of arable land between 1985 and 2000. 55
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**NUCLEAR WAR SCENARIOS**
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Central Asian Conflict

Central Asia is the most likely scenario for global nuclear war
Blank, Research Professional of National Security Affairs at the Strategic
Studies Institute of the US Army War College, 2000
(Dr. Stephen J Blank, Research Professional of National Security Affairs at the Strategic
Studies
Institute
of
the
US
Army
War
College
June,
pg.
http://www.milnet.com/pentagon/Russia-2000-assessment-SSI.pdf)
Central Asias physical infrastructure might charitably be called Third World and the region is
highly diverse ethnically and politically. Thus we might quickly end up on the wrong
side of a Central Asian ethnic conflict. In such a case we would also quite likely be
opposed by one or more of the key neighboring states, China, Iran, or Russia, all of
whom might find it easier to project and sustain power into the area (or use proxies
for that purpose) than we could.
Central Asia is the most likely scenario for a global nuclear war
Stephen Blank,, Director of Strategic Studies Institute at US Army War College,
1999 Central Asian Survey (18; 2), [Every Shark East of Suez: Great Power
Interests, Policies and Tactics in the Transcaspian Energy Wars]
Thus many structural conditions for conventional war or protracted ethnic conflict where
third parties intervene now exist in the Transcaucasus . And similarly many conditions exist for
internal domestic strife if the leadership of any of these governments changes or if one of the many
disaffected minority groups revolts. Many Third World conflicts generated by local structural
factors have a great potential for unintended escalation. Big powers often feel
obliged to rescue their proxies and protgs . One or another big power may fail to grasp the
stakes for the other side since interests here are not as clear as in Europe. Hence commitments
involving the use of nuclear weapons or perhaps even conventional war to prevent defeat of
a client are not well established or clear as in Europe. For instance, in 1993 Turkish noises
about intervening on behalf of Azerbaijan induced Russian leaders to threaten a
nuclear war in that case. This episode tends to confirm the notion that `future wars involving
Europe and America as allies will be fought either over resources in chaotic Third World locations or
in ethnic upheavals on the southern fringe of Europe and Russia . 95 Sadly, many such causes
for conflict prevail across the Transcaspian. Precisely because Turkey is a Nato
members but probably could not prevail in a long war against Russia or if it could,
would conceivably trigger a potential nuclear blow (not a small possibility given the
erratic nature of Russia s declared nuclear strategies), the danger of major war is
higher here than almost every-where else in the CIS or the so-called arc of crisis from the
Balkans to China.
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China-US
US China war goes nuclear
Hadar, adjunct scholar at Cato, 96
(Louis
Hadar
,
The
Sweet
and
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-248.html)
Sour
Sino-American
Relationship,
1/23/96,
Some analysts, including Nicholas D. Kristof, former Beijing chief of the New York Times, have
drawn a historical parallel between the rise of Germany as a world economic and
military power at the end of the 19th century and China's rise in the last decade of the
20th century. They suggest that, given the similar authoritarian and insecure nature
of the regimes in post-Bismarck Germany the post-Deng China, China could
emerge as a leading anti-status quo player, challenging the dominant position of
the United States, which like Great Britain in the 19th century occupies the leading economic and
military position in the world. "The risk is that Deng's successor will be less talented and more
aggressive--a Chinese version of Wilhelm II," writes Kristof. "Such a ruler unfortunately may be
tempted to promote Chinese nationalism as a unifying force and ideology, to replace the carcass of
communism." For all the differences between China and Wilhelmine Germany, "the latter's
experience should remind us of the difficulty that the world has had accommodating newly powerful
nations," warns Kristof, recalling that Germany's jockeying for a place in the front rank of nations
resulted in World War I.(66) Charles Krauthammer echoes that point, contending that China is
"like late 19th-century Germany, a country growing too big and too strong for the
continent it finds itself on."( 67) Since Krauthammer and other analysts use the term
"containment" to describe the policy they urge Washington to adopt toward China, it is the Cold War
with the Soviet Union that is apparently seen as the model for the future Sino- American
relationship. Strategist Graham Fuller predicts, for example, that China is "predisposed to a
role as leader of the dispossessed states" in a new cold war that would pit an
American-led West against an anti-status quo Third World bloc .(68) Although
Krauthammer admits that China lacks the ideological appeal that the Soviet Union
possessed (at least in the early stages of the Cold War), he assumes that, like the
confrontation with the Soviet Union but unlike the British-German rivalry, the
contest between America and China will remain "cold" and not escalate into a "hot"
war. That optimism is crucial. Advocates of containment may be able to persuade a
large number of Americans to adopt an anti-China strategy if the model is the
tense but manageable Soviet-American rivalry. However, not many Americans are
likely to embrace containment if the probable outcome is a bloody rerun of World
War I--only this time possibly with nuclear weapons.
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Economic Collapse
Economic decline leads to global nuclear war and totalitarian regimes
Cook, former analyst for the US Treasury Department, 2007
Richard Cook, Writer, Consultant, and Retired Federal Analyst U.S. Treasury Department, 6/14/2k7
"It's Official: The Crash of the U.S. Economy has begun," Global Research,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5964
Times of economic crisis produce international tension and politicians tend to go to

war rather than face the economic music. The classic example is the worldwide
depression of the 1930s leading to World War II . Conditions in the coming years could be
as bad as they were then. We could have a really big war if the U.S. decides once and
for all to haul off and let China, or whomever, have it in the chops. If they dont
want our dollars or our debt any more, how about a few nukes? Maybe well finally
have a revolution either from the right or the center involving martial law,
suspension of the Bill of Rights, etc., combined with some kind of military or
forced-labor dictatorship. Were halfway there anyway. Forget about a revolution from
the left. They wouldnt want to make anyone mad at them for being too radical.
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India/Pakistan War
India Pakistan War leads to extinction
Gertz, Staff Writer at the Washington Times, 2001
(Bill Gertz, Staff writer at the Washington Times 12/31/2001, India, Pakistan prepare
nukes, troops for war, Lexis)
Pakistan and India are readying their military forces - including their ballistic
missiles and nuclear weapons - for war, The Washington Times has learned. U.S. intelligence
officials say Pakistani military moves include large-scale troop movements, the dispersal of fighter
aircraft and preparations for the transportation of nuclear weapons from storage sites. India also is
moving thousands of its troops near the border with Pakistan and has dispersed some aircraft to
safer sites away from border airfields, say officials familiar with intelligence reports of the war
moves. Pakistan is moving the equivalent of two armored brigades - several thousand troops and
hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles - near the northern part of its border with India. Indian and
Pakistani troops exchanged heavy mortar fire over their border in southern Kashmir today, Agence
France-Presse reported. Five Indian soldiers were seriously injured in the heaviest shelling in four
months, a senior Indian army official said. More than 1,000 villagers were evacuated from their
homes overnight for the operation, according to the report. Officials say the most alarming signs
are preparations in both states for the use of nuclear-tipped missiles. Intelligence agencies have
learned of indications that India is getting its short-range Prithvi ballistic missiles ready for use. The
missiles are within range of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Meanwhile, Pakistan is mobilizing its
Chinese-made mobile M-11 missiles, also known as the Shaheen, which have been readied for
movement from a base near Sargodha, Pakistan. Intelligence reports indicate that India will have all
its forces ready to launch an attack as early as this week, with Thursday or Friday as possible dates.
Pakistan could launch its forces before those dates in a pre-emptive strike. Disclosure of the war
preparations comes as President Bush on Saturday telephoned leaders of both nations, urging them
to calm tensions, a sign of administration concern over the military moves in the region. The
administration also fears that a conflict between India and Pakistan would undermine
U.S. efforts to find terrorists in Afghanistan. U.S. military forces are heavily reliant
on Pakistani government permission to conduct overflights for bombing and other
aircraft operations into Afghanistan, primarily from aircraft carriers located in the
Arabian Sea. With tensions growing between the states, U.S. intelligence officials are divided over
the ultimate meaning of the indicators of an impending conflict. The Pentagon's Joint Staff
intelligence division, known as J-2, late last week had assessed the danger of conflict at "critical"
levels. Other joint intelligence centers outside the Pentagon, including those supporting the U.S.
military forces responsible for the Asia-Pacific region and for Southwest Asia, assess the danger of
an India-Pakistan war as less than critical but still "serious ." Intelligence officials are
especially worried about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal because control over the
weapons is decentralized. Even before the latest moves, regional commanders
could order the use of the weapons, which are based on missiles or fighterbombers.
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Iraq Pullout
Iraq pullout causes Middle-Eastern nuclear war
Gerecht, resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy
Research, 2007
(Reuel,
The
Consequences
of
Failure
in
Iraq,
http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.25407,filter.all/pub_detail.asp)
Jan
15,
If we leave Iraq any time soon, the battle for Baghdad will probably lead to a
conflagration that consumes all of Arab Iraq, and quite possibly Kurdistan, too.
Once the Shia become both badly bloodied and victorious, raw nationalist and
religious passions will grow. A horrific fight with the Sunni Arabs will inevitably draw
in support from the ferociously anti-Shiite Sunni religious establishments in Jordan
and Saudi Arabia, and on the Shiite side from Iran . It will probably destroy most of
central Iraq and whet the appetite of Shiite Arab warlords, who will by then
dominate their community, for a conflict with the Kurds. If the Americans stabilize Arab
Iraq, which means occupying the Sunni triangle, this won't happen. A strong, aggressive American
military presence in Iraq can probably halt the radicalization of the Shiite community. Imagine an
Iraq modeled on the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps. The worst elements
in the Iranian regime are heavily concentrated in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the
Ministry of Intelligence, the two organizations most active inside Iraq. The Lebanese Hezbollah is
also present giving tutorials. These forces need increasing strife to prosper. Imagine Iraqi Shiites,
battle-hardened in a vicious war with Iraq's Arab Sunnis, spiritually and operationally linking up with
a revitalized and aggressive clerical dictatorship in Iran. Imagine the Iraqi Sunni Islamic militants,
driven from Iraq, joining up with groups like al Qaeda, living to die killing Americans. Imagine the
Hashemite monarchy of Jordan overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Sunni Arab
refugees. The Hashemites have been lucky and clever since World War II. They've escaped
extinction several times. Does anyone want to take bets that the monarchy can survive the
implantation of an army of militant, angry Iraqi Sunni Arabs? For those who believe that the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process is the epicenter of the Middle East, the mass
migration of Iraq's Sunni Arabs into Jordan will bury what small chances remain
that the Israelis and Palestinians will find an accommodation. With Jordan in
trouble, overflowing with viciously anti-American and anti-Israeli Iraqis, peaceful
Palestinian evolution on the West Bank of the Jordan river is about as likely as the
discovery of the Holy Grail. The repercussions throughout the Middle East of the
Sunni-Shiite clash in Iraq are potentially so large it's difficult to digest. Sunni Arabs
in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia will certainly view a hard-won and bloody Shiite
triumph in Iraq as an enormous Iranian victory. The Egyptians or the Saudis or both
will go for their own nukes. What little chance remains for the Americans and the
Europeans to corral peacefully the clerical regime's nuclear-weapons aspirations
will end with a Shiite-Sunni death struggle in Mesopotamia, which the Shia will
inevitably win. The Israelis, who are increasingly likely to strike preemptively the
major Iranian nuclear sites before the end of George Bush's presidency, will feel
even more threatened, especially when the Iranian regime underscores its struggle
against the Zionist enemy as a means of compensating for its support to the
bloody Shiite conquest in Iraq. With America in full retreat from Iraq, the clerical regime,
which has often viewed terrorism as a tool of statecraft, could well revert to the mentality and
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tactics that produced the bombing of Khobar Towers in 1996. If the Americans are retreating, hit
them. That would not be just a radical Shiite view; it was the learned estimation of Osama bin
Laden and his kind before 9/11. It's questionable to argue that the war in Iraq has
advanced the radical Sunni holy war against the United States. There should be no
question, however, that an American defeat in Mesopotamia would be the greatest
psychological triumph ever for anti-American jihadists. Al Qaeda and its militant
Iraqi allies could dominate western Iraq for years--it could take awhile for the
Shiites to drive them out.
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Iran
Iran attack will cause a global nuclear war that leads to human extinction
Hirch Professor at the University og Califorina at San Diego 2008
(Seymour Hirsch, Professor of physics @ the University of California @ San Diego,
4/10/2k8 http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=HIR20060422&articleId=2317)
Iran is likely to respond to any US attack using its considerable missile arsenal
against US forces in Iraq and elsewhere in the Persian Gulf . Israel may attempt to stay
out of the conflict, it is not clear whether Iran would target Israel in a retaliatory strike
but it is certainly possible. If the US attack includes nuclear weapons use against
Iranian facilities, as I believe is very likely, rather than deterring Iran it will cause a much
more violent response. Iranian military forces and militias are likely to storm into
southern Iraq and the US may be forced to use nuclear weapons against them,
causing large scale casualties and inflaming the Muslim world. There could be
popular uprisings in other countries in the region like Pakistan, and of course a
Shiite uprising in Iraq against American occupiers . Finally I would like to discuss the grave
consequences to America and the world if the US uses nuclear weapons against Iran. First, the
likelihood of terrorist attacks against Americans both on American soil and abroad
will be enormously enhanced after these events. And terrorist's attempts to get
hold of "loose nukes" and use them against Americans will be enormously
incentivized after the US used nuclear weapons against Iran. , it will destroy
America's position as the leader of the free world. The rest of the world rightly
recognizes that nuclear weapons are qualitatively different from all other weapons,
and that there is no sharp distinction between small and large nuclear weapons, or
between nuclear weapons targeting facilities versus those targeting armies or
civilians. It will not condone the breaking of the nuclear taboo in an unprovoked war of aggression
against a non-nuclear country, and the US will become a pariah state. Third, the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty will cease to exist, and many of its 182 non-nuclear-weaponcountry signatories will strive to acquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent to an
attack by a nuclear nation. With no longer a taboo against the use of nuclear
weapons, any regional conflict may go nuclear and expand into global nuclear war.
Nuclear weapons are million-fold more powerful than any other weapon, and the
existing nuclear arsenals can obliterate humanity many times over. In the past,
global conflicts terminated when one side prevailed. In the next global conflict we
will all be gone before anybody has prevailed.
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Japanese Relations (Spratly Islands)

US-Japan alliance is key to prevent war over the Spratly Islands.
Okimoto President of Okamoto Associates and Special Adviser to the
Cabinet and Chairman of the Japanese prime minister's Task Force on
Foreign Relations 2002
[Yukio, Japan and the United States: The Essential Alliance, spring 2002, Vol. 25, No.
2, http://www.twq.com/02spring/okamoto.pdf]
The Japan-U.S. alliance also probably serves as a deterrent against any one nation
seizing control of the Spratly Islands and, by extension, the sea lanes and
resources of the South China Sea . Formally, the area is outside the Far East region that the
United States and Japan agree is covered by Article 6 of the security treaty. For the countries vying
for control of the sea, however, the proximity of two of the worlds great maritime forces
must at least urge them to use caution as they pursue their competition.
Spratly Conflict goes nuclear
Nikkei 1995
[The Nikkei weekly, Developing Asian nations should be allowed a grace period to allow their
economies to grow before being subjected to trade liberalization demands, says Malaysian Prime
Minister Mahathir Mohamad, July 3, 1995, lexis]
Developing Asian nations should be allowed a grace period to allow their economies to grow before
being subjected to trade liberalization demands, says Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir
Mohamad. He dismisses an argument put forward by some industrialized countries that fair trade
can be realized when trading conditions are the same for all countries. It is not fair when small
developing countries are obliged to compete with Japan and the U.S. under the same conditions,
the outspoken champion of Asian interests insists. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
forum originated as a loose discussion platform. But it has become an institution, and agendas are
prepared ahead of meetings. However, Mahathir is dissatisfied with its management, because, he
says, group policy is decided by a handful of leading nations. He is also resentful of some countries'
opposition to the Malaysian-proposed East-Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC), aimed at promoting
economic cooperation in the region. The EAEC, which the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) defines as a part of APEC, doesn't stand in opposition to APEC, he says. "The EAEC and
APEC can coexist," he says. The EAEC is just a conference, not a trade bloc like the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAF-TA), he adds. Mahathir has gone to some lengths to bring Japan on
board. Without the world's No. 2 economy, the EAEC will not be taken seriously by the international
community, he says. Some have suggested also sending out invitations to Australia and New
Zealand. But in order to join the EAEC, those two nations should not only just call themselves Asian
countries, he says. They should also share values and culture with their Asian partners, he stresses,
because the caucus is a group of Asian countries. Mahathir strongly opposes the use of weapons to
settle international disputes. The prime minister hails the ASEAN Regional Forum as a means for
civilized nations of achieving negotiated settlement of disputes. Many members of the forum,
including Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Thailand, have problems with their neighbors, but
they are trying to solve them through continued dialogue, he adds. Three scenarios Mahathir sees
Asia developing in three possible ways in future. In his worst-case scenario, Asian countries
would go to war against each other, possibly over disputes such as their conflicting
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claims on the Spratly Islands. China might then declare war on the U.S., leading to
full-scale, even nuclear, war.
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Japanese Relations (Middle Eastern Conflict)

US-Japan alliance is key to preventing war in the Middle East
Recent events have focused international attention on relations between the

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

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

US-Japan alliance is key to preventing North Korean War
Despite its years of famine; its evaporating industrial and energy infrastructure; and its choking,
inhumane society, the DPRK government still refuses to retreat to its place on the ash heap
of history. Despite the poverty of the people, the North Korean military maintains an
arsenal of thousands of rocket launchers and pieces of artillerysome of which are

possibly loaded with chemical and biological warheadsawaiting the signal to wipe
Seoul off the map. The DPRKs immense stock of weapons includes large numbers of Nodong
missiles capable of striking Japans western coastal regions and probably longer-range missiles
capable of hitting every major Japanese city. The United States has two combat aircraft wings in the
ROK, in Osan and Kunsan. In addition, some 30,000 U.S. Army troops are stationed near Seoul .
Most military experts admit that the army troops serve a largely symbolic function;
if an actual war were to erupt, a massive North Korean artillery bombardment
could pin down both the U.S. Eighth Army and the ROK armed forces at the incipient stage.
The firepower the USFJ can bring to bear upon the Korean Peninsula within a
matter of hours makes the U.S.-Japan alliance the Damoclean sword hanging over
the DPRK. The DPRK leaders are masters of deception and manipulation, but they
know that launching a military strike against the ROK will expose them to a strong
and final counterstrike from U.S. forces in Japan.
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Japanese Relations (Sino-Russian Ties)

A. Strengthening the US-Japan alliance is critical to loosen Sino-Russian
ties and checking agression
Brookes, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 5
(Peter Brooks, Senior Fellow at the heritage foundation, 8/15/05 An Alarming Alliance: Sino Russian
ties tightening The Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/Press/Commentary/ed081505a.cfm
The first- ever joint Chinese-Russian military exercises kick off Thursday in Northeast Asia.
The exercises are small in scale but huge in implication. They indicate a further warming of the
"strategic partnership" that Moscow and Beijing struck back in 1996. More importantly, they signal
the first real post-Cold War steps, beyond inflammatory rhetoric, by Russia and China to
balance and, ultimately, diminish U.S. power across Asia. If America doesn't
take strategic steps to counter these efforts, it will lose influence to Russia and
China in an increasingly important part of the world. Unimaginable just a few years ago,
the weeklong military exercises dubbed "Peace Mission 2005" will involve 10,000 troops on
China and Russia's eastern coasts and in adjacent seas. This unmistakable example of Sino-Russian
military muscle-flexing will also include Russia's advanced SU-27 fighters, strategic TU-95 and TU22 bombers, submarines, amphibious and anti-submarine ships. The exercise's putative purpose is
to "strengthen the capability of the two armed forces in jointly striking international terrorism,
extremism and separatism," says China's Defense Ministry. But the Chinese defense minister was
more frank in comments earlier this year. Gen. Cao Gangchuan said: "The exercise will exert both
immediate and far-reaching impacts." This raised lots of eyebrows especially in the United
States, Taiwan and Japan. For instance, although Russia nixed the idea, the Chinese demanded
the exercises be held 500 miles to the south a move plainly aimed at
intimidating Taiwan. Beijing clearly wanted to send a warning to Washington (and,
perhaps, Tokyo) about its support for Taipei, and hint at the possibility that if there
were a Taiwan Strait dust-up, Russia might stand with China. The exercise also gives
Russia an opportunity to strut its military wares before its best customers Chinese generals.
Moscow is Beijing's largest arms supplier, to the tune of more than $2 billion a year for purchases
that include subs, ships, missiles and fighters. Rumors abound that Moscow may finally be ready to
sell strategic, cruise-missile-capable bombers such as the long-range TU-95 and supersonic TU-22
to Beijing strengthening China's military hand against America and U.S. friends and allies in Asia.
Russia and China are working together to oppose American influence all around
their periphery. Both are upset by U.S. support for freedom in the region notably in
the recent Orange (Ukraine), Rose (Georgia) and Tulip (Kyrgyzstan) revolutions all of which fell in
what Moscow or Beijing deems its sphere of influence. In fact, at a recent meeting of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (i.e., Russia, China and the four 'Stans'), Moscow and Beijing conspired to
get Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan to close U.S. airbases. As a result, Uzbekistan gave America 180
days to get out, despite the base's continued use in Afghanistan operations. (Quick diplomacy by
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld saved the Kyrgyz base, but it remains on the ropes.) Moreover,
it shouldn't be overlooked that the "Shanghai Six" have invited Iran, India and Pakistan to join the
group as observers, expanding China and Russia's influence into South Asia and parts of the Middle
East. What to do? First, the Pentagon must make sure the forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review
balances U.S. forces to address both the unconventional terrorist threat and the big-power
challenge represented by a Russia-China strategic partnership. Second, the United States must
continue to strengthen its relationship with its ally Japan to ensure a balance of
power in Northeast Asia and also encourage Tokyo to improve relations with
Moscow in an effort to loosen Sino-Russian ties. Third, Washington must persevere in
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advancing its new relationship with (New) Delhi in order to balance Beijing's growing power in Asia
and take advantage of India's longstanding, positive relationship with Russia. And be ready to deal.
Russia has historically been wary of China. America must not ignore the possibilities of developing a
long-term, favorable relationship with Russia despite the challenges posed by Russian President
Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed rule. These unprecedented military exercises don't make a
formal Beijing-Moscow alliance inevitable. But they represent a new, more intimate phase in
the Sino-Russian relationship. And China's growing political/economic clout mated

with Russia's military would make for a potentially potent anti-American bloc. For
the moment, Beijing and Moscow are committed to building a political order in Asia
that doesn't include America atop the power pyramid. With issues from Islamic
terrorism to North Korean nukes to a conflict in the Taiwan Strait, the stakes in Asia
are huge. Washington and its friends must not waste any time in addressing the
burgeoning Sino-Russian entente.
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North Korea
North Korean War goes nuclear
CNN 2003
[CNN, N K. Warns of nuclear conflict, 2/26/2003 ,
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/25/nkorea.missile/index.html]
Pyongyang cites upcoming U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises scheduled to begin on March
4, as "reckless war moves" designed to "unleash a total war on the Korean peninsula with a preemptive nuclear strike". "The situation of the Korean Peninsula is reaching the brink of
a nuclear war," the statement, issued by the official Korean Central News Agency,
says. The North also called on South Koreans to "wage a nationwide anti-U.S. and anti-war struggle
to frustrate the U.S. moves for a nuclear war." The United States denies it has any plans to attack
North Korea, consistently saying it is seeking a diplomatic and political solution to the increasing
tensions sparked by Pyongyang's decision to reactivate its nuclear program. U.S. Secretary of State
Colin Powell on Tuesday wrapped up a four-day tour of Japan, China and South Korea during which
he lobbied Asian leaders to support a multi-lateral approach to pressure North Korea to abandon its
nuclear ambitions. Powell repeated the U.S. position that it had no intention of invading North Korea
and had no plans to impose fresh economic sanctions on the impoverished communist nation. While
Japan and South Korea indicated they might support a regional initiative to sway Pyongyang, China
-- a key ally and aid donor to the North -- appeared to remain unconvinced. China says the United
States must deal with Pyongyang equally on a one-to-one basis. "We believe diplomatic, political
pressure still has a role to play. And there are countries who have considerable influence with the
North Koreans who will continue to apply pressure," Powell said Tuesday. "We also made it clear that
if they begin reprocessing (nuclear material), it changes the entire political landscape. And we're
making sure that is communicated to them in a number of channels." Powell would not be drawn on
how would Washington react if Pyongyang did begin reprocessing but did say that the U.S. had "no
intention of invading" North Korea. Tensions on the peninsula have been ratcheting up
over the past few weeks with North Korea becoming increasingly provocative . On
Monday, the North fired a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan, or East Sea, an act many
believe was designed to upstage the inauguration of new South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun.
(Roh sworn in) Last week, a North Korean MiG-19 fighter briefly flew into South Korean air space.
(MiG incursion) The North has also threatened to abandon the 1953 armistice that
ended the fighting of the Korean War.
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Pakistan Collapse
Pakistan Collapse leads to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism
Brooks, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 2007
Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, 7/2/2007 (Peter, BARACK'S BLUNDER
INVADE A NUCLEAR POWER?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/08022007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/baracks_blunder_opedcolumni
sts_peter_brookes.htm?page=2)
The fall of Musharraf's government might well lead to a takeover by pro-U.S. elements of
the Pakistani military - but other possible outcomes are extremely unpleasant, including the
ascendance of Islamist factions. The last thing we need is for Islamabad to fall to
the extremists. That would exacerbate the problem of those terrorist safe havens
that Obama apparently thinks he could invade. And it would also put Pakistan's
nuclear arsenal into the wrong hands. That could lead to a number of nightmarish
scenarios - a nuclear war with India over Kashmir , say, or the use of nuclear
weapons by a terrorist group against any number of targets, including the United
States.
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Sino-Russian Conflict
Sino Russian War leads to Extinction
Sharavin Head of the Institute for Political and military analysis 2001,
(Alexander Sharavin, head of the institute for political and military analysis, 10/1/2001 The Third
Threat http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/5470.html)
Russia may face the "wonderful" prospect of combating the Chinese army, which, if
full mobilization is called, is comparable in size with Russia's entire population, which
also has nuclear weapons (even tactical weapons become strategic if states have
common borders) and would be absolutely insensitive to losses (even a loss of a few
million of the servicemen would be acceptable for China). Such a war would be more horrible
than the World War II. It would require from our state maximal tension, universal
mobilization and complete accumulation of the army military hardware, up to the
last tank or a plane, in a single direction (we would have to forget such "trifles" like Talebs
and Basaev, but this does not guarantee success either). Massive nuclear strikes on basic
military forces and cities of China would finally be the only way out, what would
exhaust Russia's armament completely. We have not got another set of intercontinental
ballistic missiles and submarine-based missiles, whereas the general forces would be extremely
exhausted in the border combats. In the long run, even if the aggression would be
stopped after the majority of the Chinese are killed, our country would be
absolutely unprotected against the "Chechen" and the "Balkan" variants both, and
even against the first frost of a possible nuclear winter.
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Sunni/Shiite Conflict
A war between Sunnis and Shiites would spill over resulting in extinction
Hutson Correspondent for Renew America 2007
(Warner Todd Huston, Correspondent for Renew America, recently appeared 1/24/2007, Media:
Bushs
flawed
portrayal
of
the
enemy
in
the
State
of
the
Union
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/huston/070124)
Once again, a National U.S. paper "arguably" chooses sides with Europe's interests
over that of America. Under Bush's rubric, a country such as Iran which enjoys
diplomatic representation and billions of dollars in trade wit major European
countries is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of
the same totalitarian threat," Bush said, referring to the different branches of the Muslim
religion. Trade? How is trade an assurance of the benevolence of any nation? Nations didn't stop
trading with Nazi Germany even as Hitler was Blitzkrieging through Europe, for instance. Even the
USA was still trading with the Confederacy after the Civil War had already begun. The fact that
Europe is still trading with Iran as if everything is hunkeydorie does NOT say one word as to the
Iranian regime's status as a bunch of nice guys. Trade is one of the last things that is
affected by war. Business is business, after all. Further Bush did not "lump
together" al-Qaeda and Iran as if they were indistinguishable, as the Post seems to be
claiming. Here is what Bush actually said: In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an
escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined
to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is
funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah a group second only to al Qaeda in the American
lives it has taken. The president said that the Shia extremists in Iran are "second only to al Qaeda"
among the enemies we face. He did not, however, say they were one and the same. The Post's
simple-minded efforts to make Bush himself look simple minded only makes the Post out to be
practicing partisan political demagogy. Bush's saying that Shia and Sunni extremism are only
"different faces of the same totalitarian threat" is not to say they are wholly the same, only that
they share a similar end game: total domination over the Middle East in the near term and the
world in the long term. Using WWII as an example again, it would like saying that the
Nazis and the Japanese were indistinguishable merely because they both wanted
to rule the world. No one would make such an absurd claim. Yet both threatened
our extinction. Just as both Shia and Sunni extremism today threatens our interests
and our way of life. Unfortunately, the Post seems to see no threat from Iran in particular and
Shia extremism in general. Perhaps no one let the Washington Post in on the badly kept secret that
Iran has been sending weapons, manpower, advisors and thousands of IEDs into
Iraq to attack us since the first day Saddam's hold over the country ended. Not to
mention the constant threat and rhetoric against us emanating from the president
of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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Russia-US
Russia-US conflict guarantees nuclear Armageddon nuclear stockpiles
Bostrom Professor of philosophy at Yale, 2002
(Nick, Professor of Philosophy at Yale. Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and
Related Hazards, 2002, www.transhumanist.com/volume9/risks.html)
A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in
the US and the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a
substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough
to qualify as global and terminal . There was a real worry among those best acquainted with
the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it
might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human civilization .[4] Russia
and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future
confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one
day build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however tha t a smaller nuclear exchange, between
India and Pakistan for instance , is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or
thwart humankinds potential permanently.
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Taiwan/China War
China Taiwan War would draw in the US and lead to extinction
Straits Times 2000
[The Straits Times, No One Gains in War over Taiwan, 6/25/00, Lexis]
THE high-intensity scenario postulates a cross-strait war escalating into a full-scale

war between the US and China. If Washington were to conclude that splitting China
would better serve its national interests, then a full-scale war becomes
unavoidable. Conflict on such a scale would embroil other countries far and near
and -horror of horrors -raise the possibility of a nuclear war. Beijing has already told
the US and Japan privately that it considers any country providing bases and
logistics support to any US forces attacking China as belligerent parties open to its
retaliation. In the region, this means South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and, to a lesser
extent, Singapore. If China were to retaliate, east Asia will be set on fire. And the
conflagration may not end there as opportunistic powers elsewhere may try to
overturn the existing world order. With the US distracted, Russia may seek to
redefine Europe's political landscape. The balance of power in the Middle East may
be similarly upset by the likes of Iraq. In south Asia, hostilities between India and
Pakistan, each armed with its own nuclear arsenal, could enter a new and
dangerous phase. Will a full-scale Sino-US war lead to a nuclear war? According to General
Matthew Ridgeway, commander of the US Eighth Army which fought against the Chinese in
the Korean War, the US had at the time thought of using nuclear weapons against China to save the
US from military defeat. In his book The Korean War, a personal account of the military and political
aspects of the conflict and its implications on future US foreign policy, Gen Ridgeway said that US
was confronted with two choices in Korea -truce or a broadened war, which could have led to the
use of nuclear weapons. If the US had to resort to nuclear weaponry to defeat China long before the
latter acquired a similar capability, there is little hope of winning a war against China 50
years later, short of using nuclear weapons. The US estimates that China possesses
about 20 nuclear warheads that can destroy major American cities. Beijing also
seems prepared to go for the nuclear option. A Chinese military officer disclosed
recently that Beijing was considering a review of its "non first use" principle
regarding nuclear weapons. Major-General Pan Zhangqiang, president of the military-funded
Institute for Strategic Studies, told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for
Scholars in Washington that although the government still abided by that principle, there were
strong pressures from the military to drop it. He said military leaders considered the use
of
nuclear weapons mandatory if the country risked dismemberment as a result of

foreign intervention. Gen Ridgeway said that should that come to pass, we would
see the destruction of civilisation. There would be no victors in such a war. While
the prospect of a nuclear Armaggedon over Taiwan might seem inconceivable, it
cannot be ruled out entirely, for China puts sovereignty above everything else.
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Taiwan
Taiwan is the most probable scenario for nuclear war
Johnson President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, 2001
(Chalmers Johnson, President of the Japan Policy Research Institute, The
Nation, 5/14/2k1 http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?
i=20010514&c=1&s=Johnson)
China is another matter. No sane figure in the Pentagon wants a war with China,
and all serious US militarists know that China's minuscule nuclear capacity is not
offensive but a deterrent against the overwhelming US power arrayed against it
(twenty archaic Chinese warheads versus more than 7,000 US warheads). Taiwan, whose status
constitutes the still incomplete last act of the Chinese civil war, remains the most
dangerous place on earth. Much as the 1914 assassination of the Austrian crown prince in
Sarajevo led to a war that no one wanted, a misstep in Taiwan by any side could bring the
United States and China into a conflict that neither wants. Such a war would
bankrupt the United States, deeply divide Japan and probably end in a Chinese
victory, given that China is the world's most populous country and would be
defending itself against a foreign aggressor. More seriously, it could easily escalate
into a nuclear holocaust. Since any Taiwanese attempt to declare its independence formally
would be viewed as a challenge to China's sovereignty, forward-deployed US forces on China's
borders have virtually no deterrent effect. The United States uses satellites to observe changes in
China's basic military capabilities. But the coastal surveillance flights by our twelve (now eleven)
EP-3E Aries II spy planes, like the one that was forced down off Hainan Island, seek information that
is useful only in an imminent battle. They are inherently provocative and inappropriate when used
to monitor a country with which we are at peace. The United States itself maintains a 200-mile area
off its coasts in which it intercepts any aircraft attempting similar reconnaissance. America's
provocative military posture in East Asia makes war with China more likely because
it legitimizes military strategies in both Beijing and Taipei as well as in Washington
and Tokyo.
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Terrorism Nuclear Escalation

Nuclear Terrorism leads to global nuclear war
Chesney, JD candidate at Harvard Law, 1997
(Robert, Loyola of Los Angeles International & Comparative Law Journal, November)
The horrible truth is that the threat of nuclear terrorism is real , in light of the potential
existence of a black market in fissile material. Nuclear terrorists might issue demands, but then
again, they might not. Their target could be anything: a U.S. military base in a foreign
land, a crowded U.S. city, or an empty stretch of desert highway. In one fell swoop,
nuclear terrorists could decapitate the U.S. government or destroy its financial
system. The human suffering resulting from a detonation would be beyond
calculation, and in the aftermath, the remains of the nation would demand both
revenge and protection. Constitutional liberties and values might never recover.
When terrorists strike against societies already separated by fundamental social fault lines, such as
in Northern Ireland or Israel, conventional weapons can exploit those fault lines to achieve
significant gains. n1 In societies that lack such pre-existing fundamental divisions, however,
conventional weapon attacks do not pose a top priority threat to national security, even though the
pain and suffering inflicted can be substantial. The bedrock institutions of the United States will
survive despite the destruction of federal offices; the vast majority of people will continue to
support the Constitution despite the mass murder of innocent persons. The consequences of
terrorists employing weapons of mass destruction, however, would be several orders
of magnitude worse than a conventional weapons attack. Although this threat includes
chemical and biological weapons, a nuclear weapon's devastating [*32] potential is in a
class by itself. n2 Nuclear terrorism thus poses a unique danger to the United States:
through its sheer power to slay, destroy, and terrorize, a nuclear weapon would
give terrorists the otherwise-unavailable ability to bring the United States to its
knees. Therefore, preventing terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons should be
considered an unparalleled national security priority dominating other policy
considerations.
Nuclear terrorism will cause global nuclear war, leading to extinction
Sid-Ahmed, Egyptian political analyst for the Al-Ahram newspaper, 2004:
(Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Egyptian political analyst for the Al-Ahram newspaper, Al-Ahram online,
August 26, 2004,http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/705/op5.htm)
A nuclear attack by terrorists will be much more critical than Hiroshima and Nagazaki, even if
-- and this is far from certain -- the weapons used are less harmful than those used then, Japan, at
the time, with no knowledge of nuclear technology, had no choice but to capitulate. Today, the
technology is a secret for nobody. So far, except for the two bombs dropped on Japan, nuclear
weapons have been used only to threaten. Now we are at a stage where they can be detonated.
This completely changes the rules of the game. We have reached a point where anticipatory
measures can determine the course of events. Allegations of a terrorist connection can be used to
justify anticipatory measures, including the invasion of a sovereign state like Iraq. As it turned out,
these allegations, as well as the allegation that Saddam was harbouring WMD, proved to be
unfounded. What would be the consequences of a nuclear attack by terrorists? Even if it fails, it
would further exacerbate the negative features of the new and frightening world in
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which we are now living. Societies would close in on themselves, police measures
would be stepped up at the expense of human rights, tensions between
civilisations and religions would rise and ethnic conflicts would proliferate. It would
also speed up the arms race and develop the awareness that a different type of
world order is imperative if humankind is to survive. But the still more critical
scenario is if the attack succeeds. This could lead to a third world war, from which
no one will emerge victorious. Unlike a conventional war which ends when one side
triumphs over another, this war will be without winners and losers. When nuclear
pollution infects the whole planet, we will all be losers.
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Terror = Extinction
Terrorist attack risks extinction.
Alexander Prof and Director of Inter-University for Terrorism Studies 3
(Yonah, Terrorism Myths and Realities, Washington Times, Prof and Director of InterUniversity
For Terrorism Studies)
Last week's brutal suicide bombings in Baghdad and Jerusalem have once again illustrated
dramatically that the international community failed, thus far at least, to understand
the magnitude and implications of the terrorist threats to the very survival of
civilization itself. Even the United States and Israel have for decades tended to regard terrorism
as a mere tactical nuisance or irritant rather than a critical strategic challenge to their national
security concerns. It is not surprising, therefore, that on September 11, 2001, Americans were
stunned by the unprecedented tragedy of 19 al Qaeda terrorists striking a devastating blow at the
center of the nation's commercial and military powers. Likewise, Israel and its citizens, despite the
collapse of the Oslo Agreements of 1993 and numerous acts of terrorism triggered by the second
intifada that began almost three years ago, are still "shocked" by each suicide attack at a time of
intensive diplomatic efforts to revive the moribund peace process through the now revoked ceasefire arrangements (hudna). Why are the United States and Israel, as well as scores of other
countries affected by the universal nightmare of modern terrorism surprised by new terrorist
"surprises"? There are many reasons, including misunderstanding of the manifold specific factors
that contribute to terrorism's expansion, such as lack of a universal definition of terrorism, the
religionization of politics, double standards of morality, weak punishment of terrorists, and the
exploitation of the media by terrorist propaganda and psychological warfare. Unlike their
historical counterparts, contemporary terrorists have introduced a new scale of

violence in terms of conventional and unconventional threats and impact. The
internationalization and brutalization of current and future terrorism make it clear
we have entered an Age of Super Terrorism (e.g. biological, chemical, radiological,
nuclear and cyber) with its serious implications concerning national, regional and
global security concerns.
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**NUKE WAR IMPACTS**
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Nuclear War Disease

Nuclear war collapses global infrastructure and causes mass disease
pandemics
Sagan, Former Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University, 1985,
(Carl, The Nuclear Winter, http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/sagan_nuclear_winter.html)
In addition, the amount of radioactive fallout is much more than expected . Many previous
calculations simply ignored the intermediate time-scale fallout. That is, calculations were
made for the prompt fallout -- the plumes of radioactive debris blown downwind from each targetand for the long-term fallout, the fine radioactive particles lofted into the stratosphere that would
descend about a year later, after most of the radioactivity had decayed. However, the radioactivity
carried into the upper atmosphere (but not as high as the stratosphere) seems to have been largely
forgotten. We found for the baseline case that roughly 30 percent of the land at northern
midlatitudes could receive a radioactive dose greater than 250 rads, and that about 50 percent of
northern midlatitudes could receive a dose greater than 100 rads. A 100-rad dose is the equivalent
of about 1000 medical X-rays. A 400-rad dose will, more likely than not, kill you. The cold, the
dark and the intense radioactivity , together lasting for months , represent a severe
assault on our civilization and our species. Civil and sanitary services would be wiped
out. Medical facilities, drugs, the most rudimentary means for relieving the vast human
suffering, would be unavailable. Any but the most elaborate shelters would be
useless, quite apart from the question of what good it might be to emerge a few months later.
Synthetics burned in the destruction of the cities would produce a wide variety of toxic
gases, including carbon monoxide, cyanides, dioxins and furans. After the dust and soot
settled out, the solar ultraviolet flux would be much larger than its present value.
Immunity to disease would decline. Epidemics and pandemics would be rampant,

especially after the billion or so unburied bodies began to thaw . Moreover, the
combined influence of these severe and simultaneous stresses on life are likely to
produce even more adverse consequences -- biologists call them synergisms -- that we are
not yet wise enough to foresee.
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Nuclear War Extinction

Nuke war is the highest risk for human extinction
Kateb 1992
(George, The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture, Thinking About Human Extinction (1): Nuclear Weapons
and Individual Rights, p. 111-112)
Schell's work attempts to force on us an acknowledgment that sounds far-fetched and even
ludicrous, an acknowledgment hat the possibility of extinction is carried by any use of
nuclear weapons, no matter how limited or how seemingly rational or seemingly morally
justified. He himself acknowledges that there is a difference between possibility and certainty. But
in a matter that is more than a matter, more than one practical matter in a vast series of practical
matters, in the "matter" of extinction, we are obliged to treat a possibility -a genuine
possibility-as a certainty. Humanity is not to take any step that contains even the
slightest risk of extinction . The doctrine of no-use is based on the possibility of extinction.
Schell's perspective transforms the subject. He takes us away from the arid stretches of strategy
and asks us to feel continuously, if we can, and feel keenly if only for an instant now and then, how
utterly distinct the nuclear world is. Nuclear discourse must vividly register that distinctiveness. It
is of no moral account that extinction may be only a slight possibility . No one can say
how great the possibility is, but no one has yet credibly denied that by some sequence
or other a particular use of nuclear weapons may lead to human and natural
extinction. If it is not impossible it must be treated as certain: the loss signified by
extinction nullifies all calculations of probability as it nullifies all calculations of
costs and benefits. Abstractly put, the connections between any use of nuclear
weapons and human and natural extinction are several. Most obviously, a sizable
exchange of strategic nuclear weapons can, by a chain of events in nature, lead to the earth's
uninhabitability, to "nuclear winter," or to Schell's "republic of insects and grass." But the
consideration of extinction cannot rest with the possibility of a sizable exchange of strategic
weapons. It cannot rest with the imperative that a sizable exchange must not take place. A so-
called tactical or "theater" use, or a so-called limited use, is also prohibited

absolutely, because of the possibility of immediate escalation into a sizable
exchange or because, even if there were not an immediate escalation, the possibility of
extinction would reside in the precedent for future use set by any use whatever in a
world in which more than one power possesses nuclear weapons. Add other consequences:
the contagious effect on nonnuclear powers who may feel compelled by a mixture
of fear and vanity to try to acquire their own weapons, thus increasing the
possibility of use by increasing the number of nuclear powers; and the unleashed emotions of
indignation, retribution, and revenge which, if not acted on immediately in the form of escalation,
can be counted on to seek expression later. Other than full strategic uses are not confined, no
matter how small the explosive power: each would be a cancerous transformation of the
world. All nuclear roads lead to the possibility of extinction . It is true by definition, but
let us make it explicit: the doctrine of no-use excludes any first or retaliatory or later use, whether
sizable or not. No-use is the imperative derived from the possibility of extinction. By containing the
possibility of extinction, any use is tantamount to a declaration of war against
humanity. It is not merely a war crime or a single crime against humanity. Such a
war is waged by the user of nuclear weapons against every human individual as
individual (present and future), not as citizen of this or that country. It is not only a war against
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the country that is the target. To respond with nuclear weapons, where possible, only increases the
chances of extinction and can never, therefore, be allowed. The use of nuclear weapons establishes
the right of any person or group, acting officially or not, violently or not, to try to punish those
responsible for the use. The aim of the punishment is to deter later uses and thus to try to reduce
the possibility of extinction, if, by chance, the particular use in question did not directly lead to
extinction. The form of the punishment cannot be specified. Of course the chaos ensuing from a
sizable exchange could make punishment irrelevant. The important point, however, is to see that
those who use nuclear weapons are qualitatively worse than criminals , and at the
least forfeit their offices. John Locke, a principal individualist political theorist, says that in a state
of nature every individual retains the right to punish transgressors or assist in the effort to punish
them, whether or not one is a direct victim. Transgressors convert an otherwise tolerable condition
into a state of nature which is a state of war in which all are threatened. Analogously, the use of
nuclear weapons, by containing in an immediate or delayed manner
the possibility of extinction, is in Locke's phrase "a trespass against the whole species" and
places the users in a state of war with all people. And people , the accumulation of
individuals, must be understood as of course always indefeasibly retaining the right
of selfpreservation, and hence as morally allowed, perhaps enjoined, to take the appropriate
preserving steps.
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Nuclear War Pollution

Nuclear arms race would cause pollution and destroy the environment
Sierra Club, 2003

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

A.) Nuclear war produces aerosol spikes killing phytoplankton
Crutzen and Birks 83
(Paul, Director of the Air Chemistry Division of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, and John, Associate Professor of
Chemistry and Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, in The Aftermath: The Human
and Ecological Consequences of Nuclear War, ed. Peterson, p.84)
If the production of aerosol by fires is large enough to cause reductions in the

penetration of sunlight to ground level by a factor of a hundred, which would be quite
possible in the event of an all-out nuclear war, most of the phytoplankton and
herbivorous zooplankton in more than half of the Northern Hemisphere oceans would die
(36). This effect is due to the fast consumption rate of phytoplankton by zooplankton in
the oceans. The effects of a darkening of such a magnitude have been discussed recently in
connection with the probable occurrence of such an event as a result of the impact of a
large extraterrestrial body with the earth (37). This event is believed by many to have
caused the widespread and massive extinctions which took place at the Cretacious-Tertiary
boundary about 65 million years ago.
B.) Phytoplankton depletion collapses the global carbon cycle causing

extinction
Bryant 03
(Donald, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
The beauty in small things revealed, Volume 100, Number 17, August 19,
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/17/9647)
Oxygenic photosynthesis accounts for nearly all the primary biochemical production
of organic matter on Earth. The byproduct of this process, oxygen, facilitated the evolution
of complex eukaryotes and supports their/our continuing existence. Because
macroscopic plants are responsible for most terrestrial photosynthesis, it is relatively easy to
appreciate the importance of photosynthesis on land when one views the lush green diversity of
grasslands or forests. However, Earth is the "blue planet," and oceans cover nearly 75%
of its surface. All life on Earth equally depends on the photosynthesis that occurs in
Earth's oceans. A rich diversity of marine phytoplankton, found in the upper 100 m of
oceans, accounts only for 1% of the total photosynthetic biomass, but this virtually
invisible forest accounts for nearly 50% of the net primary productivity of the
biosphere (1). Moreover, the importance of these organisms in the biological pump, which
traps CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it in the deep sea, is increasingly recognized as
a major component of the global geochemical carbon cycle (2). It seems obvious that it
is as important to understand marine photosynthesis as terrestrial photosynthesis, but the
contribution of marine photosynthesis to the global carbon cycle was grossly
underestimated until recently. Satellite-based remote sensing (e.g., NASA sea-wide field
sensor) has allowed more reliable determinations of oceanic photosynthetic productivity to be made
(refs. 1 and 2; see Fig. 1).
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Nuclear War Ozone Scenario

A). Nuclear war causes massive ozone depletion
Sagan and Turco 90
(Carl, David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences at Cornell, and Richard, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
at UCLA, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, p. 57)
But in a nuclear war, the atmosphere would be so perturbed that our normal way of
thinking about the ozone layer needs to be modified. To help refocus our understanding, several
research groups have constructed models that describe the ozone layer following
nuclear war. The principal work has been carried out by research teams at the National Center for
Atmospheric Research and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (ref. 4.9). Both find that there is
an additional mechanism by which nuclear war threatens the ozone layer. With massive
quantities of smoke injected into the lower atmosphere by the fires of nuclear war, nuclear
winter would grip not only the Earth's surface, but the high ozone layer as well. The
severely disturbed wind currents caused by solar heating of smoke would, in a matter
of weeks, sweep most of the ozone layer from the northern midlatitudes deep into the
Southern Hemisphere. The reduction in the ozone layer content in the North could reach a
devastating 50% or more during this phase. As time progressed, the ozone depletion
would be made still worse by several effects: injection of large quantities of nitrogen
oxides and chlorine-bearing molecules along with the smoke clouds; heating of the
ozone layer caused by intermingling of hot smoky air (as air is heated, the amount of ozone
declines); and decomposition of ozone directly on smoke particles (carbon particles are
sometimes used down here near the ground to cleanse air of ozone).
B). Ozone depletion causes extinction

Greenpeace 95
(Full of Homes: The Montreal Protocol and the Continuing Destruction of the Ozone Layer,
http://archive.greenpeace.org/ozone/holes/holebg.html)
When chemists Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina first postulated a link between
chlorofluorocarbons and ozone layer depletion in 1974, the news was greeted with scepticism, but
taken seriously nonetheless. The vast majority of credible scientists have since
confirmed this hypothesis. The ozone layer around the Earth shields us all from harmful
ultraviolet radiation from the sun. Without the ozone layer, life on earth would not
exist. Exposure to increased levels of ultraviolet radiation can cause cataracts, skin
cancer, and immune system suppression in humans as well as innumerable effects
on other living systems. This is why Rowland's and Molina's theory was taken so seriously, so
quickly - the stakes are literally the continuation of life on earth.
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Nuke War Oceans

Nuclear war would result in the death of the entire ocean ecosystem
Perkins, professor of effects of nuclear war, 01
(Simon Perkins, professor in the effects of nuclear war, May 22, 2001, Climate Conditions
http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~samp/nuclearage/lonterm.html )
Assuming that you have been lucky enough to survive the initial hazards of a nuclear explosion
what would happen next? Above ground zero the huge clouds of dust and debris will rise
to 10 miles into the atmosphere. When merged together these clouds will effectively block
out all sunlight plunging the sky into darkness for at least several weeks after. During this
period the temperature will fall dramatically. Along the continent this could be as much as a
40c drop. For counties along the Northern Hemisphere this is enough produce an Arctic winter.
Fortunately for us small islands like the UK will have a less dramatic temperature decrease due tot
he warming effect of the oceans. Looking at some past examples of volcanic eruptions can give us
some idea of biological effects; the severe cold would destroy most crops, rivers would freeze
over and many animals would die of cold and hunger. The effect on tropical plants and
creatures would be even more profound and biologists have concluded that many species will
become extinct. Surely most of the plants and animals in the deep oceans would have a better
chance? The average drop in the world's oceans would be only about 1 C 3 and as most species are
acclimatised to the cold conditions anyway. This would be the case in the Artic regions were species
are used to long dark periods but for those in tropical waters most would die from lack of nutrients
and light. The lack of light would disrupt the food chain of microscopic creatures
dependent of photoplankton (algae). Within a few months all the fish would die off ,
the population decline for many species would be irreversible.
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Nuclear War Biodiversity Scenario (1/2)

A). Nuclear winter following exchange kills all plant and animal life
SGR 03
(Scientists for Global Responsibility, Newsletter, Does anybody remember the Nuclear Winter? July 27,
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/NuclearWinter_NL27.htm)
Obviously, when a nuclear bomb hits a target, it causes a massive amount of devastation,
with the heat, blast and radiation killing tens or hundreds of thousands of people instantly
and causing huge damage to infrastructure. But in addition to this, a nuclear explosion
throws up massive amounts of dust and smoke. For example, a large nuclear bomb bursting
at ground level would throw up about a million tonnes of dust. As a consequence of a nuclear war,
then, the dust and the smoke produced would block out a large fraction of the sunlight
and the sun's heat from the earth's surface, so it would quickly become be dark and
cold - temperatures would drop by something in the region of 10-20C - many places would
feel like they were in an arctic winter. It would take months for the sunlight to get back to near
normal. The drop in light and temperature would quickly kill crops and other plant and animal
life while humans, already suffering from the direct effects of the war, would be
vulnerable to malnutrition and disease on a massive scale.
B). We have high probability degree changes devastate entire

ecosystems risking extinction
Sagan and Turco, 1990
(Carl and Richard, astrophysicist and astronomer at Cornell University, and founding director of UCLA's Institute of the
Environment, A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race, pg 22)
Life on Earth is exquisitely dependent on the climate (see Appendix A). The average
surface temperature of the Earth averaged, that is, over day and night, over the seasons, over
latitude, over land and ocean, over coastline and continental interior, over mountain range and
desertis about 13C, 13 Centigrade degrees above the temperature at which fresh water freezes.
(The corresponding temperature on the Fahrenheit scale is 55F.) It's harder to change the
temperature of the oceans than of the continents, which is why ocean temperatures are much more
steadfast over the diurnal and seasonal cycles than are the temperatures in the middle of large
continents. Any global temperature change implies much larger local temperature
changes, if you don't live near the ocean. A prolonged global temperature drop of a few
degrees C would be a disaster for agriculture; by 10C, whole ecosystems would be

imperiled; and by 20C, almost all life on Earth would be at risk. The margin of
safety is thin.
C) Nuclear war collapses ecosystems and kills all biodiversity
Ehrlich et al, 1983
(Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford University; Mark A. Harwell, Cornell University; Carl Sagan, Cornell University; Anne H. Ehrlich,
Stanford University; Stephen J. Gould, Harvard University; biologists on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological Consequences of
Nuclear War (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 25 and 26 April 1983)., Science, New Series, Vol. 22, No. 4630, Dec. 23, 1983, pg
1293-1300, jstor)
The 2 billion to 3 billion survivors of the immediate effects of the war would be forced to turn to
natural ecosystems as organized agriculture failed. Just at the time when these natural
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ecosystems would be asked to support a human population well beyond their carrying capacities,
the normal functioning of the ecosystems themselves would be severely curtailed by the
effects of nuclear war. Subjecting these ecosystems to low temperature, fire, radiation, storm,
and other physical stresses (many occurring simultaneously) would result in their increased
vulnerability to disease and pest outbreaks, which might be prolonged. Primary productivity would
be dramatically reduced at the prevailing low light levels; and, because of UV-B, smog, insects,
radiation, and other damage to plants, it is unlikely that it would recover quickly to normal levels,
even after light and temperature values had recovered. At the same time that their plant foods
were being limited severely, most, if not all, of the vertebrates not killed outright by blast and
ionizing radiation would either freeze or face a dark world where they would starve or die of thirst
because surface waters would be frozen and thus unavailable. Many of the survivors would be
widely scattered and often sick, leading to the slightly delayed extinction of many additional
species. Natural ecosystems provide civilization with a variety of crucial services in addition to food
and shelter. These include regulation of atmospheric composition, moderation of climate and
weather, regulation of the
Nuclear War Biodiversity Scenario (2/2)

hydrologic cycle, generation and preservation of soils, degradation of wastes, and recycling of
nutrients. From the human perspective, among the most important roles of ecosystems are their
direct role in providing food and their maintenance of a vast library of species from which Homo
sapiens has already drawn the basis of civilization (27). Accelerated loss of these genetic resources
through extinction would be one of the most serious potential consequences of nuclear war.
Wildfires would be an important effect in north temperate ecosystems, their scale and distribution
depending on such factors as the nuclear war scenario and the season. Another major uncertainty
is the extent of fire storms, which might heat the lower levels of the soil enough to damage or
destroy seed banks, especially in vegetation types not adapted to periodic fires. Multiple airbursts
over seasonally dry areas such as California in the late summer or early fall could burn off much of
the state's forest and brush areas, leading to catastrophic flooding and erosion during the next
rainy season. Silting, toxic runoff, and rainout of radio- nuclides could kill much of the
fauna of fresh and coastal waters, and concentrated radioactivity levels in surviving filter-feeding
shellfish populations could make them dangerous to consume for long periods of time. Other major
consequences for terrestrial ecosystems resulting from nuclear war would include: (i) slower
detoxification of air and water as a secondary result of damage to plants that now are important
metabolic sinks for toxins; (ii) reduced evapotranspiration by plants contributing to a lower rate of
entry of water into the atmosphere, especially over continental regions, and therefore a more
sluggish hydrologic cycle; and (iii) great disturbance of the soil surface, leading to accelerated
erosion and, probably, major dust storms (28). Revegetation might superficially resemble
that which follows local fires. Stresses from radiation, smog, erosion, fugitive dust, and toxic
rains, however, would be superimposed on those of cold and darkness, thus delaying and
modifying postwar succession in ways that would retard the restoration of ecosystem services (29).
It is likely that most ecosystem changes would be short term. Some structural and functional
changes, however, could be longer term, and perhaps irreversible, as ecosystems undergo
qualitative changes to alternative stable states (30). Soil losses from erosion would be serious
in areas experiencing widespread fires, plant death, and extremes of climate. Much would depend
on the wind and precipitation patterns that would develop during the first postwar year (4, 5). The
diversity of many natural communities would almost certainly be substantially reduced,
and numerous species of plants, animals, and microorganisms would become extinct.
D). Biodiversity collapse causes extinction
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Diner Judge Advocate Generals Corps-1994

[Major David N., United States Army Military Law Review Winter, p. lexis]
causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As

biologic simplicity increases, so does the risk of ecosystem failure . The spreading Sahara
By
Desert in Africa, and the dustbowl conditions of the 1930s in the United States are relatively mild examples of what might be
each new animal or plant extinction, with all its dimly

cause total ecosystem collapse and human extinction.
Each new extinction increases the risk of disaster. Like a mechanic removing, one
by one, the rivets from an aircraft's wings, n80 mankind may be edging closer to
the abyss.
expected if this trend continues. Theoretically,
perceived and intertwined affects, could
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**NUKE WAR PROBABILITY**
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Nuclear War Evaluated First

Nuclear war precedes all ethics
Nye, Harvard Professor, 86
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. 24
This leads us to the last and most difficult problem with nuclear weapons: that they
risk nuclear holocaust. This holocaust is a case of extreme (excessive?) violence,
since it may very well entail the end of all human civilization as well as the
destruction of numerous other forms of life (probably everything except cockroaches). It is
difficult to see how such a war can be viewed as following St. Augustine's just war standard of
creating peace. Even outside the precepts of just war, it is hard to see the utilitarian
aspects of such a war. It is extremely hard to defend as a step towards ultimate
good, unless you believe that the world needs to be completely destroyed and
started anew.
Since nuclear holocaust is a combination of massive destruction
and residual effects, possibly including the remaking of all life on the planet through
genetic mutations and nuclear winter, it is essentially just an extension, albeit extreme, of the
combination of excessive violence and residual effects. Since our earlier analysis of these
two areas failed to provide an ethical framework for either of them even in isolation,
we shall not even begin to try to defend their combination, nuclear holocaust, as
ethically acceptable.
Nuclear war is the end of all ethics

Nye, Harvard Professor, 86
Joseph Nye, prof. of IR at Harvard University, 1986 Nuclear Ethics, p. 24
The first of these ethical points is rather simple: if the intent of the overall war is ethically
unsound, then the use of any weapons in such a cause is wrong, be they clubs or nuclear
missiles. This fact does not let us differentiate ethically between nuclear and non-nuclear arms, but
merely returns us to a basis for our original assumption that war can be just. This point does bear
on the ethicality of all- out nuclear war, however, since although the announced intent of the
war may be to save the earth from the yoke of Communism or Imperialism, the actual end of the
war would probably be a silent, smoking planet. Each of us must draw our own conclusions as
to the ethicality of such an action, based on our own cultural, religious, political, and ethical
backgrounds. But it is an old ethical axiom that no right action aims at greater evil in the results,
and my personal feelings on all out war is that there is no provocation that can ethically
support such devastation.9 In the eloquent words of John Bennett, "How can a nation live
with its conscience and . . . kill twenty million children in another nation . . .?"10
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Schell
Extinction from nuclear war dwarfs all other impact calculus you must
treat the RISK of extinction as morally equivalent to its certainty
Schell, 82
Jonathan Fate of the Earth, pp. 93-96 1982
To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation just as it
would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a
holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If
they do use all their weapons, the global effects in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And
if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand
them without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that
mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is
unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our sense of urgency. Yet at the same time
we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their
weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we as yet unaware, may be severe, that
the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be extinguished.
We are left with uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in a state of uncertainty.
If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster our resolve in spite of our awareness that
the life of the species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other hand, if we wish to ignore
the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the species may be in danger of
imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful
people everywhere in the world realized that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race
the human species would sooner or later face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in
the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They
knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy
in mass of "the basic power of the universe" and of a means by which man could release that
energy altered the relationship between man and the source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of
this power, the earth became small and the life of the human species doubtful. In that sense, the
question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the world ever since the first
nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the world to build up its present
tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At just what point the species crossed, or will
have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical knowledge to destroy itself and
actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any second, is not precisely knowable. But
it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand megatons of nuclear explosive power in
existence, and with more being added every day, we have entered into the zone of uncertainty,
which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere risk of extinction has a
significance that is categorically different from, and immeasurably greater than that of
any other risk and as we make our decisions we have to take that significance into
account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the framework of life; extinction
would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some purpose but an abyss in
which all human purpose would be drowned for all time. We have no right to place the
possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risk that we run in the
ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To
employ a mathematician's analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may
be fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still
infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have
no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone
else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all
the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring
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about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no
choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty
that their use would put an end to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it,
our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a
mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should
make us humble, our humility should inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and
caution should lead us to act without delay to withdraw the threat we now post to the world and to
ourselves.
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Nuclear War Likely

With all the problems that the status quo presents a nuclear war will
defiantly happen but with so many nuclear countries we cannot find out
where it will start.
Hirsch 05 [Jorge, Ph.D. @ Univ. of Chicago, professor of physics at Cal, member of the American
Physical Society, a society of physicists opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, Dec. 16, 2005,
Nuclear Deployment for an Attack on Iran http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8263]
The nuclear hitmen: Stephen Hadley, Stephen Cambone, Robert Joseph, William Schneider Jr., J.D.
Crouch II, Linton Brooks, and John Bolton are nuclear-weapons enthusiasts who advocate aggressive
policies and occupy key positions in the top echelons of the Bush administration. A nuclear
doctrine that advocates nuclear strikes against non-nuclear countries that precisely
fit the Iran profile: the "Nuclear Posture Review" and the "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear
Operations." The doctrine of preemptive attack adopted by the Bush
administration and already put into practice in Iraq, and the "National Strategy to
Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" (NSPD 17), which promises to respond to a
WMD threat with nuclear weapons. 150,000 American soldiers in Iraq, whose lives
are at risk if a military confrontation with Iran erupts, and who thus provide the
administration with a strong argument for the use of nuclear weapons to defend
them. Americans' heightened state of fear of terrorist attacks and their apparent
willingness to support any course of action that could potentially protect them from
real or imagined terrorist threats. The allegations of involvement of Iran in terrorist activities
around the world [1], [2], including acts against America [1], [2], and its alleged possession of
weapons of mass destruction. The determination of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission
that
Iran has connections with al-Qaeda. Senate Joint Resolution 23, "Authorization for
Use of Military Force," which allows the president "to take action to deter and
prevent acts of terrorism against the United States" without consulting Congress,
and the War Powers Resolution [.pdf], which "allows" the president to attack
anybody in the "global war on terror." The Bush administration's willingness to use military
power based on unconfirmed intelligence and defectors' fairy tales. The fact that Iran has been
declared in noncompliance [.pdf] with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which makes it "legal" for
the U.S. to use nuclear weapons against Iran. The course of action followed by the Bush
administration with respect to Iran's drive for nuclear technology, which can only lead to a
diplomatic impasse. The Israel factor [1], [2] .
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Nuclear War Likely Escalation

Mutually assured destruction insures a quick escalation of a nuclear war
hence leading to all out destruction.
Nuclear Files 2009, Project of the Nuclear Age Peace Project.
(Mutually Assured Destruction, http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclearweapons/history/cold-war/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm)
When the Soviet Union achieved nuclear parity with the United States, the Cold War had entered a
new phase. The cold war became a conflict more dangerous and unmanageable than anything
Americans had faced before. In the old cold war Americans had enjoyed superior nuclear force, an
unchallenged economy, strong alliances, and a trusted Imperial President to direct his incredible
power against the Soviets. In the new cold war, however, Russian forces achieved nuclear equality.
Each side could destroy the other many times. This fact was officially accepted in a military
doctrine known as Mutual Assured Destruction, a.k.a. MAD. Mutual Assured

Destruction began to emerge at the end of the Kennedy administration. MAD
reflects the idea that one's population could best be protected by leaving it
vulnerable so long as the other side faced comparable vulnerabilities. In short:
Whoever shoots first, dies second.
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Nuclear War Likely Middle East Prolif

The Arms Race in the Middle East is creating a breeding ground for a
chance of a nuclear war. Nuclear war is guaranteed if the status quo
continues.
Cirincione, 8/21/2007
[Joseph,
"The
Middle
East
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/08/nuclear_surge.html]
Nuclear
Surge,"
Iran is still probably five to 10 years away from gaining the ability to make nuclear fuel or
nuclear bombs. But its program is already sending nuclear ripples through the Middle
East. The race to match Iran's capabilities has begun. Almost a dozen Muslim nations have
declared their interest in nuclear energy programs in the past year. This unprecedented
demand for nuclear programs is all the more disturbing paired with the unseemly rush of nuclear
salesman eager to supply the coveted technology. While U.S. officials were reaching a new nuclear
agreement with India last month, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France signed a nuclear
cooperation deal with Libya and agreed to help the United Arab Emirates launch its
own civilian nuclear program. Indicating that this could be just the beginning of a
major sale and supply effort, Sarkozy declared that the West should trust Arab
states with nuclear technology. Sarkozy has a point: No one can deny Arab states access to
nuclear technology, especially as they are acquiring it under existing international rules and
agreeing to the inspection of International Atomic Energy Agency officials. But is this really about
meeting demands for electric power and desalinization plants? There is only one nuclear power
reactor in the entire Middle Eastthe one under construction in Busher, Iran. In all of Africa there
are only two, both in South Africa. (Israel has a research reactor near Dimona, as do several other
states.) Suddenly, after multiple energy crises over the 60 years of the nuclear age,
these countries that control over one-fourth of the world's oil supplies are investing
in nuclear power programs. This is not about energy; it is a nuclear hedge against
Iran. King Adbdullah of Jordan admitted as much in a January 2007 interview when he said: "The
rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. . . . After this summer
everybody's going for nuclear programs." He was referring to the war in Lebanon
last year between Israel and Hezbollah, perceived in the region as evidence of
Iran's growing clout. Other leaders are not as frank in public, but confide similar sentiments in
private conversations. Here is where the nuclear surge currently stands. Egypt and
Turkey, two of Iran's main rivals, are in the lead. Both have flirted with nuclear
weapons programs in the past and both have announced ambitious plans for the
construction of new power reactors. Gamal Mubarak, son of the current Egyptian
president and his likely successor, says the country will build four power reactors,
with the first to be completed within the next 10 years. Turkey will build three new
reactors, with the first beginning later this year. Not to be outdone, Saudi Arabia and the five other
members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab
Emirates) at the end of 2006 "commissioned a joint study on the use of nuclear technology for
peaceful purposes." Algeria and Russia quickly signed an agreement on nuclear development in
January 2007, with France, South Korea, China, and the United States also jockeying for nuclear
sales to this oil state. Jordan announced that it, too, wants nuclear power. King Abdullah met
Canada's prime minister in July and discussed the purchase of heavy water Candu reactors.
Morocco wants assistance from the atomic energy agency to acquire nuclear
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technology and in March sponsored an international conference on Physics and

Technology of Nuclear Reactors. Finally, the Arab League has provided an overall
umbrella for these initiatives when, at the end of its summit meeting in March, it
"called on the Arab states to expand the use of peaceful nuclear technology in all
domains serving continuous development." Perhaps these states are truly
motivated to join the "nuclear renaissance" promoted by the nuclear power
industry and a desire to counter global warming. But the main message to the West from
these moderate Arab and Muslim leaders is political, not industrial. "We can't trust you," they are
saying, "You are failing to contain Iran and we need to prepare." It is not too late to prove them
wrong. Instead of seeing this nuclear surge as a new market, the countries with nuclear technology
to sell have a moral and strategic obligation to ensure that their business does not result in the
Middle East going from a region with one nuclear weapon state - Israel - to one with three, four, or
five nuclear nations. If the existing territorial, ethnic, and political disputes continue
unresolved, this is a recipe for nuclear war.
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Great Power War Likely

Great power wars are not obsolete and are still on the table
Professor John J. Mearsheimer (1998-99 Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow, Council on Foreign
Relations; R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, University of
Chicago) CFR February 25, 1999 http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/index.html
Now I think the central claim thats on the table is wrong-headed, and let me tell you why. First of
all, there are a number of good reasons why great powers in the system will think
seriously about going to war in the future, and Ill give you three of them and try and illustrate
some cases. First, states oftentimes compete for economic resources. Is it hard to imagine a
situation where a reconstituted Russia gets into a war with the United States and the Persian Gulf
over Gulf oil? I dont think thats implausible. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a
war in the South China Sea over economic resources? I dont find that hard to imagine.
A second reason that states go to war which, of course, is dear to the heart of realists like me,
and thats to enhance their security. Take the United States out of Europe, put the Germans on
their own; you got the Germans on one side and the Russians on the other, and in between a huge
buffer zone called eastern or central Europe. Call it what you want. Is it impossible to imagine the
Russians and the Germans getting into a fight over control of that vacuum? Highly likely, no, but
feasible, for sure. Is it hard to imagine Japan and China getting into a war over the South China Sea,
not for resource reasons but because Japanese sea-lines of communication run through there and a
huge Chinese navy may threaten it? I dont think its impossible to imagine that.
What about nationalism, a third reason? China, fighting in the United States over Taiwan? You
think thats impossible? I dont think thats impossible. Thats a scenario that makes me very
nervous. I can figure out all sorts of ways, none of which are highly likely, that the Chinese and the
Americans end up shooting at each other. It doesnt necessarily have to be World War III, but it is
great-power war. Chinese and Russians fighting each other over Siberia? As many of you know,
there are huge numbers of Chinese going into Siberia. You start mixing ethnic populations in most
areas of the world outside the United States and its usually a prescription for big trouble. Again, not
highly likely, but possible. I could go on and on, positing a lot of scenarios where great
powers have good reasons to go to war against other great powers.
Mandlebaum flows neg he concedes that great power war is still likely
with Russia and China
Michael Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, 1999 Is Major War
Obsolete?, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/
Now having made the case for the obsolescence of modern war, I must note that there
are two major question marks hanging over it: Russia and China. These are great powers
capable of initiating and waging major wars, and in these two countries, the forces of
warlessness that I have identified are far less powerful and pervasive than they are in the industrial
West and in Japan. These are countries, in political terms, in transition, and the political
forms and political culture they eventually will have is unclear. Moreover, each harbors
within its politics a potential cause of war that goes with the grain of the post-Cold War
period-with it, not against it-a cause of war that enjoys a certain legitimacy even now;
namely, irredentism.
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War to reclaim lost or stolen territory has not been rendered obsolete in the way that
the more traditional causes have. China believes that Taiwan properly belongs to it. Russia
could come to believe this about Ukraine, which means that the Taiwan Strait and the RussianUkrainian border are the most dangerous spots on the planet, the places where World War III could
begin.
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Nuke War Not Likely

Nuclear war wont escalate; the US could disarm any nuclear opponent
before they could retaliate
Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre
Dame, and Press Associate Professor of Political Science at the University
of Pennsylvania 2006
(Keir Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and
Press Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Spring
2006, International Security, The End of Mad The Nuclear dimension of US Primacy
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)
For nearly half a century, the worlds most powerful nuclear-armed countries have
been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the
early 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union possessed such large, welldispersed nuclear
arsenals that neither state could entirely destroy the others nuclear forces in a rst strike. Whether
the scenario was a preemptive strike during a crisis, or a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack, the
victim would always be able to retaliate and destroy the aggressor. Nuclear war was therefore
tantamount to mutual suicide. Many scholars believe that the nuclear stalemate helped prevent
conict between the superpowers during the Cold War, and that it remains a powerful force for
great power peace today. 1 The age of MAD, however, is waning. Today the United States
stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy vis--vis its plausible great power
adversaries. For the frst time in decades, it could conceivably disarm the longrange nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a nuclear first strike . A preemptive
strike on an alerted Russian arsenal would still likely fail, but a surprise attack at peacetime
alert levels would have a reasonable chance of success. Furthermore, the Chinese
nuclear force is so vulnerable that it could be destroyed even if it were alerted
during a crisis.
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Nuke War Not Likely US Russia

A US first strike would cripple Russia, retaliation would be impossible
Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre
Dame, and Press Associate Professor of Political Science at the University
of Pennsylvania 2006
(Keir Liber, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and
Press Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania, Spring
2006, International Security, The End of Mad The Nuclear dimension of US Primacy
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.2006.30.4.7)
A critical issue for the outcome of a U.S. attack is the ability of Russia to launch on
warning (i.e., quickly launch a retaliatory strike before its forces are destroyed ). It is unlikely
that Russia could do this. Russian commanders would need 713 minutes to carry
out the technical steps involved in identifying a U.S. attack and launching their
retaliatory forces. They would have to (1) confirm the sensor indications that an attack was
under way; (2) convey the news to political leaders; (3) communicate launch authorization and
launch codes to the nuclear forces; (4) execute launch sequences; and (5) allow the missiles to fly a
safe distance from the silos.38 This timeline does not include the time required by Russian leaders to
absorb the news that a nuclear attack is The End of MAD? 21 under way and decide to authorize
retaliation. Given that both Russian and U.S. early warning systems have had false
alarms in the past, even a minimally prudent leader would need to think hard and
ask tough questions before authorizing a catastrophic nuclear response .39 Because
the technical steps require 713 minutes, it is hard to imagine that Russia could
detect an attack, decide to retaliate, and launch missiles in less than 1015
minutes. The Russian early warning system would probably not give Russias
leaders the time they need to retaliate; in fact it is questionable whether it would
give them any warning at all. Stealthy B-2 bombers could likely penetrate Russian air
defenses without detection. Furthermore, low-flying B-52 bombers could fire stealthy
nuclear-armed cruise missiles from outside Russian airspace; these missilessmall,
radar-absorbing, and flying at very low altitude would likely provide no warning
before detonation. Finally, Russias vulnerability is compounded by the poor state
of its early warning system. Russian satellites cannot reliably detect the launch of
SLBMs; Russia relies on groundbased radar to detect those warheads. 40 But there is a large
east-facing hole in Russias radar network; Russian leaders might have no warning
of an SLBM attack from the Pacific.41 Even if Russia plugged the east-facing hole in its
radar network, its leaders would still have less than 10 minutes warning of a U.S.
submarine attack from the Atlantic, and perhaps no time if the U.S. attack began
with hundreds of stealthy cruise missiles and stealth bombers.
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Nuke War Not Likely Rising Costs

Major war is obsolete nuclear weapons and rising cost check aggression
Michael Mandelbaum, American foreign policy professor at the Nitze School of Advanced
International
Studies
at
Johns
Hopkins
University,
1999 Is
Major
War
Obsolete?, http://www.ciaonet.org/conf/cfr10/
My argument says, tacitly, that while this point of view, which was widely believed 100 years ago,
was not true then, there are reasons to think that it is true now. What is that argument? It is
that major war is obsolete. By major war, I mean war waged by the most powerful members of
the international system, using all of their resources over a protracted period of time with
revolutionary geopolitical consequences. There have been four such wars in the modern period: the
wars of the French Revolution, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Few though they have
been,their consequences have been monumental. They are, by far, the most influential events in
modern history. Modern history which can, in fact, be seen as a series of aftershocks to these four
earthquakes. So if I am right, then what has been the motor of political history for the last two
centuries that has been turned off? This war, I argue, this kind of war, is obsolete; less than
impossible, but more than unlikely. What do I mean by obsolete? If I may quote from the article on
which this presentation is based, a copy of which you received when coming in, Major war is
obsolete in a way that styles of dress are obsolete. It is something that is out of fashion and,
while it could be revived, there is no present demand for it. Major war is obsolete in the way
that slavery, dueling, or foot-binding are obsolete. It is a social practice that was once considered
normal, useful, even desirable, but that now seems odious. It is obsolete in the way that the central
planning of economic activity is obsolete. It is a practice once regarded as a plausible, indeed a
superior, way of achieving a socially desirable goal, but that changing conditions have made
ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst. Why is this so? Most simply, the costs have risen
and the benefits of major war have shriveled. The costs of fighting such a war are
extremely high because of the advent in the middle of this century of nuclear weapons,
but they would have been high even had mankind never split the atom. As for the
benefits, these now seem, at least from the point of view of the major powers, modest to nonexistent. The traditional motives for warfare are in retreat, if not extinct. War is no longer regarded
by anyone, probably not even Saddam Hussein after his unhappy experience, as a paying
proposition. And as for the ideas on behalf of which major wars have been waged in the past, these
are in steep decline. Here the collapse of communism was an important milestone, for that ideology
was inherently bellicose. This is not to say that the world has reached the end of ideology; quite the
contrary. But the ideology that is now in the ascendant, our own, liberalism, tends to be pacific.
Moreover, I would argue that three post-Cold War developments have made major war even
less likely than it was after 1945. One of these is the rise of democracy, for democracies, I
believe, tend to be peaceful. Now carried to its most extreme conclusion, this eventuates in an
argument made by some prominent political scientists that democracies never go to war with one
another. I wouldnt go that far. I dont believe that this is a law of history, like a law of nature,
because I believe there are no such laws of history. But I do believe there is something in it. I
believe there is a peaceful tendency inherent in democracy. Now its true that one important cause
of war has not changed with the end of the Cold War. That is the structure of the international
system, which is anarchic. And realists, to whom Fareed has referred and of whom John
Mearsheimer and our guest Ken Waltz are perhaps the two most leading exponents in this country
and the world at the moment, argue that that structure determines international activity, for it
leads sovereign states to have to prepare to defend themselves, and those preparations sooner or
later issue in war. I argue, however, that a post-Cold War innovation counteracts the effects of
anarchy. This is what I have called in my 1996 book, The Dawn of Peace in Europe, common
security. By common security I mean a regime of negotiated arms limits that reduce the
insecurity that anarchy inevitably produces by transparency-every state can know what
weapons every other state has and what it is doing with them-and through the principle of
defense dominance, the reconfiguration through negotiations of military forces to make them
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more suitable for defense and less for attack. Some caveats are, indeed, in order where
common security is concerned. Its not universal. It exists only in Europe. And there it is certainly
not irreversible. And I should add that what I have called common security is not a cause, but a
consequence, of the major forces that have made war less likely. States enter into common
security arrangements when they have already, for other reasons, decided that they do
not wish to go to war. Well, the third feature of the post-Cold War international system that
seems to me to lend itself to warlessness is the novel distinction between the periphery and the
core, between the powerful states and the less powerful ones. This was previously a cause of
conflict and now is far less important. To quote from the article again, While for much of recorded
history local conflicts were absorbed into great-power conflicts, in the wake of the Cold War, with
the industrial democracies debellicised and Russia and China preoccupied with internal affairs,
there is no great-power conflict into which the many local conflicts that have erupted can be
absorbed.
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Nuke War Not Likely Deterrence

Nuclear deterrence prevents great power
G John Ikenberry Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University The Rise of China and the Future of the West Foreign Affairs January/February 2008
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20080101faessay87102/g-john-ikenberry/the-rise-of-china-and-thefuture-of-the-west.html
The most important benefit of these features today is that they give the Western order
a remarkable capacity to accommodate rising powers. New entrants into the system have
ways of gaining status and authority and opportunities to play a role in governing the order. The
fact that the United States, China, and other great powers have nuclear
weapons also limits the ability of a rising power to overturn the existing order. In the age
of nuclear deterrence, great-power war is, thankfully, no longer a mechanism
of historical change. War-driven change has been abolished as a historical process.
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Nuke War Not Likely International System

The international system prevents wareconomic, military, and
ideological trends have changed.
Christopher Fettweiss, April prof security studies naval war college, Comparative
Strategy 22.2 April 2003 p 109-129
Mackinder can be forgiven for failing to anticipate the titanic changes in the fundamental nature of
the international system much more readily than can his successors. Indeed, Mackinder and his
contemporaries a century ago would hardly recognize the rules by which the world is run today
most significantly, unlike their era, ours is one in which the danger of major war has been
removed, where World War III is, in Michael Mandelbaums words, somewhere between impossible
and unlikely.25 Geopolitical and geo-strategic analysis has not yet come to terms with what may
be the central, most significant trend of international politics: great power war, major war of the
kind that pit the strongest states against each other, is now obsolete.26 John Mueller has
been the most visible, but by no means the only, analyst arguing that the chances of a World War III
emerging in the next century are next to nil.27 Mueller and his contemporaries cite three major
arguments supporting this revolutionary, and clearly controversial, claim.
First, and most obviously, modern military technology has made major war too expensive to
contemplate. As John Keegan has argued, it is hard to see how nuclear war could be considered
an extension of politics by other meansat the very least, nuclear weapons remove the
possibility of victory from the calculations of the would-be aggressor.28 Their value as leverage in
diplomacy has not been dramatic, at least in the last few decades, because nuclear threats are not
credible in the kind of disagreements that arise between modern great powers. It is unlikely that
a game of nuclear chicken would lead to the outbreak of a major war. Others have
argued that, while nuclear weapons surely make war an irrational exercise, the destructive power of
modern conventional weapons make todays great powers shy away from direct conflict.29 The
world wars dramatically reinforced Angells warnings, and today no one is eager to repeat those
experiences, especially now that the casualty levels among both soldiers and civilians would be
even higher. Second, the shift from the industrial to the information age that seems to be
gradually occurring in many advanced societies has been accompanied by a new
definition of power, and a new system of incentives which all but remove the possibility
that major war could ever be a cost-efficient exercise. The rapid economic evolution that is
sweeping much of the world, encapsulated in the globalization metaphor so fashionable in the
media and business communities, has been accompanied by an evolution in the way national
wealth is accumulated.30 For millennia, territory was the main object of war because it was directly
related to national prestige and power. As early as 1986 Richard Rosecrance recognized that two
worlds of international relations were emerging, divided over the question of the utility of territorial
conquest.31 The intervening years have served only to strengthen the argument that the major
industrial powers, quite unlike their less-developed neighbors, seem to have reached the
revolutionary conclusion that territory is not directly related to their national wealth and prestige.
For these states, wealth and power are more likely to derive from an increase in economic, rather
than military, reach. National wealth and prestige, and therefore power, are no longer directly
related to territorial control.32 The economic incentives for war are therefore not as clear as
they once may have been. Increasingly, it seems that the most powerful states pursue prosperity
rather than power. In Edward Luttwaks terminology, geopolitics is slowly being replaced by
geoeconomics, where the methods of commerce are displacing military methodswith
disposable capital in lieu of firepower, civilian innovation in lieu of militarytechnical advancement,
and market penetration in lieu of garrisons and bases.33 Just as advances in weaponry have
increased the
cost of fighting, a socioeconomic evolution has reduced the rewards that a major war could possibly
bring. Angells major error was one that has been repeated over and over again in the social
sciences ever sincehe overestimated the rationality of humanity. Angell recognized earlier than
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most that the industrialization of military technology and economic interdependence assured that
the costs of a European war would certainly outweigh any potential benefits, but he was not able to
convince his contemporaries who were not ready to give up the institution of war. The idea of war
was still appealingthe normativecost/benefit analysis still tilted in the favor of fighting, and that
proved to be the more important factor. Today, there is reason to believe that this normative
calculation may have changed. After the war, Angell noted that the only things that could have
prevented the war were surrendering of certain dominations, a recasting of patriotic ideals, a
revolution of ideas.34 The third and final argument of Angells successors is that today such a
revolution of ideas has occurred, that a normative evolution has caused a shift in the rules that
govern state interaction. The revolutionary potential of ideas should not be underestimated. Beliefs,
ideologies, and ideas are often, as Dahl notes, a major independent variable, which we ignore at
our peril.35 Ideas, added John Mueller, are very often forces themselves, not flotsam on the tide
of broader social or economic patterns . . . it does not seem wise in this area to ignore phenomena
that cannot be easily measured, treated with crisp precision, or probed with deductive panache.36
The heart of this argument is the moral progress that has brought a change in attitudes
about international war among the great powers of the world,37 creating for the first
time, an almost universal sense that the deliberate launching of a war can no longer be
justified.38 At times leaders of the past were compelled by the masses to defend the national
honor, but today popular pressures push for peaceful resolutions to disputes between industrialized
states. This normative shift has rendered war between great powers subrationally
unthinkable, removed from the set of options for policy makers, just as dueling is no longer a
part of the set of options for the same classes for which it was once central to the concept of
masculinity and honor. As Mueller explained, Dueling, a form of violence famed and fabled for
centuries, is avoided not merely because it has ceased to seem necessary, but because it has
sunk from thought as a viable, conscious possibility. You cant fight a duel if the idea of doing so
never occurs to you or your opponent.39 By extension, states cannot fight wars if doing so does not
occur to them or to their opponent. As Angell discovered, the fact that major war was futile was not
enough to bring about its endpeople had to believe that it was futile. Angells successors suggest
that such a belief now exists in the industrial (and postindustrial) states of the world, and this
autonomous power of ideas, to borrow Francis Fukuyamas term, has brought about the end of
major, great power war.40
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Nuke War Not Likely North Korea

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

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

Pyongyang use such weapons against either.
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Nuke War Not Likely Pakistan

Nuclear Power plants have excellent security
CTC Sentinel, The Combating Terrorism Center is an independent
educational and research institution based in the Department of Social
Sciences at the West Point, 2009
(CTC Sentinel, The Combating Terrorism Center is an independent educational and
research institution based in the Department of Social Sciences at the West Point, July
2009 http://www.ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/CTCSentinel-Vol2Iss7.pdf)
Pakistan has established a robust set of measures to assure the security of its
nuclear weapons. These have been based on copying U.S. practices, procedures
and technologies, and comprise : a) physical security; b) personnel reliability
programs; c) technical and procedural safeguards; and d) deception and secrecy.
These measures provide the Pakistan Armys Strategic Plans Division (SPD)which oversees nuclear
weapons operationsa high degree of confidence in the safety and security of the
countrys nuclear weapons.2 In terms of physical security, Pakistan operates a
layered concept of concentric tiers of armed forces personnel to guard nuclear
weapons facilities, the use of physical barriers and intrusion detectors to secure
nuclear weapons facilities, the physical separation of warhead cores from their
detonation components, and the storage of the components in protected
underground sites. With respect to personnel reliability, the Pakistan Army conducts a tight
selection process drawing almost exclusively on officers from Punjab Province who
are considered to have fewer links with religious extremism or with the Pashtun areas of Pakistan from which groups
such as the Pakistani Taliban mainly garner their support. Pakistan operates an analog to the U.S. Personnel Reliability
Program (PRP) that screens individuals for Islamist sympathies, personality problems, drug use, inappropriate
The army uses staff rotation and also operates a

two-person rule under which no action, decision, or activity involving a nuclear
weapon can be undertaken by fewer than two persons.4 The purpose of this policy is
to reduce the risk of collusion with terrorists and to prevent nuclear weapons
technology getting transferred to the black market. In total, between 8,000 and 10,000
external affiliations, and sexual deviancy. 3
individuals from the SPDs security division and from Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Military
Intelligence and Intelligence Bureau agencies are involved in the security clearance and monitoring of those with
nuclear weapons duties.5 Despite formal command authority structures that cede a role to Pakistans civilian
It imposes
its executive authority over the weapons through the use of an authenticating code
system down through the command chains that is intended to ensure that only
authorized nuclear weapons activities and operations occur. It operates a tightly controlled
leadership, in practice the Pakistan Army has complete control over the countrys nuclear weapons.
identification system to assure the identity of those involved in the nuclear chain of command, and it also uses a
This system
uses technology similar to the banking industrys chip and pin to ensure that
even if weapons fall into terrorist hands they cannot be detonated .6 Finally,
Pakistan makes extensive use of secrecy and deception. Significant elements of
Pakistans nuclear weapons infrastructure are kept a closely guarded secret. This
includes the precise location of some of the storage facilities for nuclear core and
detonation components, the location of preconfigured nuclear weapons crisis
deployment sites, aspects of the nuclear command and control arrangements ,7 and
rudimentary Permissive Action Link (PAL) type system to electronically lock its nuclear weapons.
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many aspects of the arrangements for nuclear safety and security (such as the numbers of those removed under
personnel reliability programs, the reasons for their removal, and how often authenticating and enabling (PAL-type)
codes are changed). In addition, Pakistan uses deceptionsuch as dummy missilesto complicate the calculus of
Taken together,
these measures provide confidence that the Pakistan Army can fully protect its
nuclear weapons against the internal terrorist threat, against its main adversary
India, and against the suggestion that its nuclear weapons could be either spirited
out of the country by a third party (posited to be the United States) or destroyed in the event
of a deteriorating situation or a state collapse in Pakistan.
adversaries and is likely to have extended this practice to its nuclear weapons infrastructure.
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No Nuclear Terror
Nuclear Power plants have excellent security
Heaberlin Head of the Nuclear Safety and Technology Applications
Product Line at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, managed by
Battelle 2004,
(Scott W. Heaberlin Head of the Nuclear Safety and Technology Applications Product
Line at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, managed by Battelle, A Case for
Nuclear-Generated Electricity,, Battelle Press, 2004)
But, of course, airline crashes are not the only way for a terrorist to attack a
nuclear power plant. Truck bombs and armed attacks are certainly something to
consider. It turns out that nuclear power plants are one of the few facilities in our
national infrastructure that does consider these things. Every U.S. nuclear power
plant has a trained armed security force who is authorized to use deadly force to
protect the plant. Not wanting to give any terrorists alternative ideas, but if I had a choice of going
after a facility either totally unprotected or protected with only a night watchman versus a facility
with a team of military capable troopers armed with automatic weapons, it would not be a tough
choice. That is not to say these wackos are afraid to die. Clearly, they have demonstrated that they
are not. However, one would assume that they do want to have a reasonable chance
of successfully completing their vile mission. In that regard, a nuclear power plant
would be a tough nut to crack.
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No Escalation - Nuclear Taboo Wont Be Broken (1/6)

The Nuclear Taboo is to strong to break, the longer we wait for a nuclear
war the less likely it becomes
Maryland, 2005
One often hears references to a taboo on the use of nuclear weapons, but people
usually have difficulty putting their finger on exactly what that means. A taboo
surely is more than simply something we want to avoid, something we disapprove
of, for we do not hear of taboos on bank robberies or on murder. A taboo, then,
refers to something that we are not willing even to think about doing, something
about which we do not weigh benefits and costs but that we simply reject. The best
example in ordinary life is the taboo on incest. If a six-year-old girl asks whether she could marry
her brother when they grow up, her parents typically do not reason with her, perhaps suggesting,
Your brother and you are always squabbling about your toys; surely you can find someone else
more compatible to marry.We instead respond simply,No one marries their brother or sister! The
child quickly enough picks up the signal that this is something that is simply not done. Another such
taboo is, of course, cannibalism. Air Force crews are briefed on hundreds of measures they can take
to survive after a crash, but one subject never touched upon is that of avoiding starvation by
consuming the body of a dead comrade. The entire question is just not thinkable . The taboo on
nuclear weapons use that seems to have settled into place over the nearly sixty
years sinceNagasaki may indeed have taken this form.We do not hear many
discussions of the costs and benefits of a nuclear escalation, but a somewhat
unthinking and unchallenged conclusion that such escalation is simply out of the
question. Related, though hardly identical, is speculation as to whether a customary international
law on the use of nuclear weapons may be said to have emerged, by which the battlefield
application of such weapons has become illegal without any international treaties being signed or
ratified, simply because they have gone so long unused.16 How such a custom or taboo is
developed and what happens to it when violated will play an important part in our
assessment of what the world would be like after a new nuclear attack. The fact
that the nuclear taboo is not violated decade after decade, that nuclear weapons
are not used again in anger, arguably strengthens the taboo, but there are also a few
ways in which that state of affairs may endanger it. The reinforcement comes simply from the
general sense that such an act must be unthinkable because no one has initiated one for so long; it
is in this sense that customary international lawis held to be settling into place by which the
abstinence of other states presses our own state to abstain. People did not begin speaking about a
nuclear taboo for a number of years after Nagasaki. It was only in the late 1950s, after more than
a decade had passed without repetition of the experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the
feeling arose that a barrier now existed to treating nuclear weapons as just another weapon.17
But in time there will be hardly anyone alive who was a victim of the 1945 attacks, hardly anyone
who remembers seeing the first photographs of their victims or who recalls the nuclear testing
programs of the 1950s and 1960s. Further, an unwelcome result of the bans on nuclear testing,
intended to shield the environment and discourage horizontal and vertical nuclear proliferation, is
that some of the perceived horror of such weapons may be fading, so that ordinary human beings
will be a little less primed to reject automatically the idea of such weapons being used again . The
only fair test of the long-term viability of the nuclear taboo would, of course, be for
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the world to manage to keep that taboo observed and intact. The net trend, the
net result, of a prolongation of non-use is most probably that such non-use will be
strengthened and renewed thereby, just as it seems to have been over the
decades of the Cold War and its aftermath. There have been parallel taboos in
other areas of warfare, taboos that have indeed been violated in the last several
decades. The world for many years sensed the development of such a taboo on chemical warfare;
the effective prohibition was reinforced by the Geneva Protocol but observed even by states that
had not yet ratified the protocol (the best example being the United States at its entry intoWorld
War II). A similar taboolike aversion was thought to apply to biological warfare.18 The long period
since naval forces have confronted each other on the high seas (broken only by the ArgentineBritish war over the Falklands) may have had some similar characteristics. The longer one goes
without engaging in some form of warfare, the stranger and less manageable that
kind of conflict will seem, and the more the public and others will regard it as
simply not to be contemplated.
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[Continues from previous page: No text omitted]
Similarly, the worlds resistance to the proliferation of nuclear weapons has at
times seemed to be mobilizing a widespread popular feeling that a taboo or
customary international lawwas developing on proliferation as well . Ordinary
people and even military professionals in many countries were coming to assume
that nuclear weapons were so horrible, and so different, that it simply made no
sense to think of even acquiring them..
If a nuclear weapon was use countries would rally against the nation
preventing retaliation
Maryland, 2005
This entire question might seem the more interesting at first to those who are
pessimistic about future risks and who might thus regard speculation about an end
to the nuclear taboo as overdue. Yet, to repeat, pessimism may not be necessary, since
analysis of the likely consequences of nuclear escalation might stimulate
governments and publics to head it off. The chances are as good as three out of
five that no nuclear event will occur in the period up to the year 2045 that there is a
better than even chance that the world will be commemorating a full century,
since Nagasaki, of the non-use of such weapons. But analysts and ordinary citizens
around the world to whom the author has put these odds typically dismiss themas too optimistic.
Indeed, the response has often been a bit bizarre, essentially that we have not
been thinking at all about the next use of nuclear weapons , but we think that you are
too optimistic about such use being avoided. Such responses in Israel, Sweden, Japan, or the
United States might support the worry that people around the world have simply been repressing
an unpleasant reality, refusing to think about a very real danger. Yet the possibility remains that the
relative inattention is not simply a repression of reality but rather a manifestation of the
unthinkableness of nuclear weapons use One could also introduce another wedge of hope, that any
such use of nuclear weapons between now and 2045 would be followed by
reactions and consequences that reinforced rather than eroded the taboo. That
would be the case if the world did not retreat in the face of such use but rallied to
punish it, and as a result the perpetrator did not advance its interests by such an
escalation but actually lost the battles and territories that were at issue.
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Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Programs at Brown
Unviersity, 2005
(Nina Tannenwald, Director of the International Relations Programs at Brown Unviersity,
2005,
Stigmatizing
the
Bomb,
International
Security
29.4
(2005)
5-49,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/international_security/v029/29.4tannenwald.html#authbio)
The nuclear taboo, however, also has an intersubjective or a phenomenological

aspect: it is a taboo because people believe it to be. Political and military leaders
themselves began using the term to refer to this normative perception starting in the early
1950s, even when, objectively, a tradition of nonuse hardly existed. If actors see the use of
nuclear weapons as if it were a taboo, as their rhetoric suggests, then this could
affect their choices and behavior. In the words of sociologists William and Dorothy Thomas,
"If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences ."18 This
subjective (and intersubjective) sense of "taboo-ness" is one of the factors that makes
the tradition of nuclear nonuse a taboo rather than simply a norm . Although one
might be skeptical that this is just empty rhetoric, this belief is not entirely
detached from reality. Evidence for the taboo lies in discourse, institutions, and behavior. The
most obvious evidence lies in discourse the way people talk and think about nuclear
weaponsand how this has changed since 1945. This includes public opinion, the
diplomatic statements of governments and leaders, the resolutions of international
organizations, and the private moral concerns of individual decisionmakers. The
discourse evidence is supplemented both by international law and agreements that
restrict freedomof action with respect to nuclear weapons, and by the changing
policies of states that downgrade the role of nuclear weapons (e.g., shifts in NATO
policy, he denuclearization of the army and marines, and the buildup of conventional alternatives).
As the inhibition on use has developed over time, it has taken on more taboo-like qualities
unthinkingness and taken-for-grantedness. As a systemic phenomenon, the taboo exists
at the collective level of the international community (represented especially by the
United Nations), but this need not mean that all countries have internalized it to the
same degree. As noted earlier, the taboo is a de facto, not a legal, norm. There is
no explicit international legal prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons such as
exists for, say, chemical weapons. Although resolutions passed in the UN General
Assembly and other international forums have repeatedly proclaimed the use of
nuclear weapons as illegal, the United States and other nuclear powers have
consistently voted against these. U.S. legal analyses have repeatedly defended the legality of
use of nuclear weapons as long as it was for defensive and not aggressive purposes, as required by
the UN charter.19 As the 1996 World Court advisory opinion on the issue confirmed, although
increasing agreement exists that many, if not most, uses of nuclear weapons are illegal under the
traditional laws of armed conflict, there is by no means agreement that all uses of nuclear weapons
are illegal.20
Nevertheless, legal use has been gradually chipped away through
incremental restrictionsan array of treaties and regimes that together

circumscribe the realm of legitimate nuclear use and restrict freedom of action
with respect to nuclear weapons. These agreements include nuclear weapons-free
zones, bilateral and multilateral arms control agreements, and negative security
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assurances (i.e., political declarations by the nuclear powers that they will not use nuclear
weapons against nonnuclear states that are members of the NPT). Together, these
agreements enhance the normative presumption against nuclear use. By
multiplying the number of forums where a decision to use nuclear weapons would
have to be defended, they substantially increase the burden of proof for any such
decision.21 Many of these legal constraints have been incorporated into U.S. domestic practice,
where they are reflected in constraints on deployments and targeting, proliferation, arms control,
and use.22 Thus, while the legality of nuclear weapons remains in dispute, the trend
line of decreasing legitimacy and circumscribed legality is clear.
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Nuclear weapons wont be used even if its in their best interest
Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director
of University of Montreal-McGill Research Group in International Security,
1995
(T.V. Paul, Professor of international relations at McGill University and Director of
University of Montreal-McGill Research Group in International Security, December 1995,
Nuclear Taboo and War Initiation in Regional Conflicts, JOURNAL OF CONFLICT
RESOLUTION, Vol. 39 No. 4)
These stringent definitions of social taboos may not be fully applicable in the nuclear context.
However, the tradition of nonuse has been characterized by many scholars as
equivalent to a taboo (e.g., Hoffmann 1966,99; Schelling 1980, 260). In this context, the term
taboo is used in its figurative and loose sense-as an unwritten and uncodified prohibitionary norm
against nuclear use. It is also used to the extent that both social and nuclear taboos
are based on the fear of consequences of a given course of action. The latter arose
as a response to a realization of the danger or the unforeseeable consequences
involved in nuclear war. The analysis in this article elaborates on the moral, normative, legal,
and rational constraints involved in the use of nuclear weapons and their possible role in the
formation and evolution of the taboo U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles initially used the
term taboo to describe the prohibition against the use of nuclear weapons. On October 7, 1953, he
was reported to have said: "Somehow or other we must manage to remove the taboo from the use
of these weapons" (quoted in Bundy 1988, 249). Dulles was in favor of developing usable nuclear
weapons to obtain the battlefield military objectives of the United States. Schelling popularized
the concept of a tradition of nonuse in his writings in the 1960s. In his words, what
makes atomic weapons different is a powerful tradition for their nonuse, "a jointly
recognized expectation that they may not be used in spite of declarations of
readiness to use them, even in spite of tactical advantages in their use " (Schelling
1980, 260). A tradition in this respect is based on a habit or disposition that prevents
the use of nuclear weapons as a serious option for consideration by decision
makers.3 As Schelling (1994, 110) argued, the main reason for the uniqueness of nuclear
weapons is the perception that they are unique and that once introduced into
combat, they could not be "contained, restrained, confined, or limited." Although
prolonged conventional war can also cause somewhat similar levels of destruction,
the difference is in the perception of the impact. The swiftness with which destruction can
take place is the distinguishing point in this respect.4 Clearly, the nuclear taboo has
developed largely as a function of the awesome destructive power of atomic
weapons. The potential for total destruction gives nuclear weapons an all-ornothing characteristic unlike any other weapon invented so far, which, in turn,
makes it imperative that the possessor will not use them against another state
except as a last-resort weapon. This means a nuclear state may not use its ultimate
capability unless a threshold is crossed (e.g., unless the survival of the state itself is threatened).
Decision makers and the public at large in most nuclear-weapon states believe that great danger is
involved in the use of nuclear weapons with respect to casualties and aftereffects, in both
psychological and physical terms. Breaking the taboo could bring the revulsion of generations to
come unless it were for an issue of extremely vital importance-a situation that thus far has failed to
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materialize.
Not surprisingly, nuclear states, even when they could have received
major tactical and strategic gains by using nuclear weapons, have desisted from
their use.
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Super Powers recognize the importance of not breaking the nuclear
taboo, even the cold war wasnt enough to prompt their use
1995
The taboo has been observed by all nuclear and opaque-nuclear states thus far.
Nations with different ideological and political systems and military traditions-the
United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, and Israel-have
found no occasion to use them, pointing toward the emergence of a global
"recognition that nuclear weapons are unusable across much of the range of
traditional military and political interests" (Russett 1989, 185). The American
unwillingness to use them in Korea and Vietnam to obtain military victory and the
Soviet refrain from using them to avert defeat in Afghanistan suggest the
entrenchment of the taboo among the superpowers even during the peak of the
cold war period.5 The Chinese aversion to using them against the Vietnamese to
obtain victory in the 1979 war also point out that other nuclear powers have observed
the taboo. In the United States, the taboo or the tradition of nonuse became well
entrenched despite many urgings by military and political leaders to break it
during times of intense crises. It was observed in the 1950s and 1960s when the
United States could have gained major tactical and strategic objectives against its
adversaries. Possibly, it began with the revulsion and the fear that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki
attacks engendered in the consciousness of the public and political leadership. Although the
fear of nuclear weapons had been somewhat removed by the end of the 1940s,
with the Soviet attainment of nuclear and missile capability in the early 1960s, a
sense of renewed vulnerability began to creep into the American public perception
(Malcolm- son 1990, 8, 35; Weart 1988 ). This sense of vulnerability, arising from the
awareness that effective defenses against a nuclear attack do not exist, may have
contributed to the development of the nuclear taboo. The Vietnam War saw the
entrenchment of the tradition of nonuse of nuclear weapons . In 1969, President Nixon
"could not make the nuclear threat in Vietnam that he believed he had seen Eisenhower use
successfully in Korea" (Bundy 1988, 587-8). Since then, each passing decade saw the
strengthening of this tradition, and the experience of over four decades "has more
firmly established a de facto norm of non-use" (Russett 1989, 185). The Cuban missile
crisis further showed the perils of a crisis spilling over to a possible nuclear war. The crisis
underlined the dangers of atomic posturing to the point of permanently discrediting this kind of
atomic diplomacy (Bundy 1984, 50).6
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A nuclear victory would have to many consequences for their use
1995
The taboo was also likely to have been strengthened by a rational calculation that
military victory following a nuclear attack may not be materially, politically, or
psychologically worth obtaining if it involves the destruction of all or a sizable
segment of an enemy's population and results in the contamination of a large
portion of the territory with radio-active debris . Thus the tradition must have
emerged largely from the realization by nuclear states that there are severe limits
to what a state can accomplish by actually using a nuclear weapon (Gaddis 1992, 21).
It also implies that after a certain point, the capacity to destroy may not be useful, as
the relation between the power to harm and the power to modify the behavior of
others is not linear (Jervis 1984, 23). Additionally, the effects of nuclear attack may be
beyond the local area of attack but could have wider effects, spatially and
temporally (Lee 1993, 18). There exists no guarantee that aftereffects such as the
spread of radioactive debris could be confined to the target state's territory.
Neighboring states that may be neutral or aligned with the nuclear state could be
the victims of a nuclear attack as well. The fear that, once unleashed, nuclear
terror could escape meaningful political and military control and physical limitation
may have influenced decision makers' choices in this regard .
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AT: Schell
Schells views on policy are flawed and impossible to achieve
Review: Freeze: The Literature of the Nuclear Weapons Debate
Author(s): Peter deLeon he Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp.
181-189
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/173847.pdf
Lastly, one turns to Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, probably the most
pretentious (witness its title) and flawed of these books . But it is also the most
important, for in many ways, it has served as the catalyst of the antinuclear movement. His
examples of a thermonuclear holocaust are no more graphic- although better written-than are
those of other authors, nor is his litany of secondary effects (e.g., the effects on the food chain and
the possible depletion of the earth's ozone layer) any more convincing. But these are just
preliminary groundwork to Schell's main thesis-that mankind's major obligation is to its future and
the "fact" that nuclear war literally destroys whatever future may exist. No cause, he argues, can
relieve us of that burden. Some (e.g., Kinsley, 1982) have claimed that Schell has no right to
impose his set of values on the body politic. Perhaps, but few should contest Schell's sincerity in
explicitly raising the profoundly moral issues that have too long been neglected in the ethically
sterile discussions that have characterized mainstream nuclear doctrine. Whether Schell is right or
wrong in assuming his high moral ground is the normative prerogative and judgment of the
individual reader; at the very worst, however, Schell forces the reader to confront these issues
directly. And this,
in spite of his grandiose style of writing, is why this book warrants careful attention. Schell
probably does not expect to have his thesis accepted uncritically; he admits his data are open to
wide variation and interpretation. But, given his "evidence" and logic, Schell has the courage of his
conviction to realize where his positions will take him. He admits that the nuclear weapons demon
cannot be put back in the bottle, that even with a nuclear disarmament treaty, the extant scientific
knowledge would always allow a nation to reconstruct this ultimate weapon. Similarly, to rely on
conventional weapons to preserve national sovereignty is to invite a nation to cheat, to build
clandestine nuclear weapons and thus begin the nuclear arms race towards extinction once again.
The fundamental culprit to Schell's way of thinking is not Zuckerman's dedicated nuclear
engineer nor Ivan the Targeteer, but the nation-state itself. He openly acknowledges that
"the task we face is to find a means of political action that will permit human
beings to pursue any end for the rest of time. We are asked to replace the
mechanism by which the political decisions, whatever they may be, are reached. In
sum, the task is nothing less than to reinvent politics" (p. 226). Schell's proposal,
past an immediate nuclear freeze, is some form of functioning world government,
that is, the abandonment of national sovereignty and perhaps individual liberties
as a means of retreating from the nuclear precipice, for any life, he avers, is better
than no life. Schell does not actually say "better red than dead," but he surely
could not disavow such a position.
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AT: Schell
Schells rationality argument contradicts with human nature
Nevin, University of New Hampshire, 82
JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR ON RESISTING EXTINCTION: A
REVIEW OF
JONATHAN SCHELL'S THE FATE OF THE EARTH' JOHN A. NEVIN
UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE1982, 38, 349-353 NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER)
Schell relies primarily on rational argument. A rational calculus suggests that although the
probability of nuclear extinction may be small, its value-the termination of life -is minus infinity, and
the product of any non- zero probability and minus infinity is minus infinity. In terms of relative
expected utility, then, the choice is clear (Schell, p. 95). The choice correctly posed and evaluated
by Schell is structurally identical to Pascal's wager on the existence of God, which has an expected
utility of plus infinity despite the possibly infinitesimal probability that belief in God is
necessary and sufficient for eternal life. But Pascal's rational argument never made converts-faith
appears to derive from certain immediate experiences, even in his own case. Likewise, I
fear that Schell's calculus will not make converts to disarmament-choice behavior
depends not on rational calculation but on experienced events .One significant event
that can be
experienced
by any reader is exposure to Schell's book itself. As a warning of
imminent disaster and a motivator of action, it is supremely
activating
effective in arousing concern and
behavior. The problem now is to identify events and contingencies that

will foster sustained commitment, by the species, to the second alternativesurvival. Laboratory work on commitment and self-control suggests that humans
and animals will usually choose the smaller but more immediate of two rewards, or
the larger but more delayed of two punishers, to their own long-term detriment .
Our current choice, as a species, of the first alternative-continuation of the arms
race-is therefore entirely consistent with laboratory data. Can knowledge from the
laboratory help us switch over to the second alternative? One way in which animals can be trained
to choose the larger, more delayed reward (or the lesser but more immediate punisher) is to adjust
the delay values gradually, while giving repeated exposure to both outcomes; but of course this
method is ruled out by the nature of the nuclear dilemma. Another method is to train the subjects
to make an early "commitment" response that precludes access to one of the choices later.
However, as Schell points out, we can never really preclude access to nuclear weapons, because
the methods for making them are well known and cannot be unlearned; the commitment response
must be continuous.
Perhaps the problem is best approached by invoking more immediate, smaller-scale, molecular
events. For example, we can try to get a large audience for Schell's book, which (as noted above) is
a strikingly potent stimulus.
We can also expose all people, everywhere, to stimuli correlated with nuclear
warfare such as pictures of the burned and dying and dead at Hiroshima, and films
showing the awesome power of nuclear test explosions, which bring at least some
of the future aspects of the first alternative into the present. But this is not
sufficient, because it might merely serve to generate numb passivity or avoidance
of the entire issue. We need, in addition, to instigate and maintain behavior that is compatible
with the second alternative, including open discussion, nonviolent protest, and political action that
opposes the momentum of the arms race and leads to disarmament. Clearly, we have witnessed
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some of the requisite behavior during this year, as hundreds of thousands of people in many
countries have rallied to demonstrate their opposition to the threat of nuclear war. Political
support for disarmament is on the rise. However, such behavior must be reinforced if it is to be
maintained through the protracted negotiations and rearrangements of international politics that
will be required; and it cannot be reinforced by the nonoccurrence of a nuclear holocaust, because
that nonevent will always be equally well correlated
with pursuit of the arms race until the holocaust occurs. Much more immediate and local
reinforcers such as societal approval, access to political office, and economic wellbeing will be necessary. of humankind is thereby placed in doubt. The entire
system of sovereign nation-states is therefore a dangerous relic of pre-nuclear
times and must be abandoned.
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AT: Schell
Society wont react to warning about nuclear war, disproving Schells
argument
Nevin 82
JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR ON RESISTING EXTINCTION: A
REVIEW OF
JONATHAN SCHELL'S THE FATE OF THE EARTH' JOHN A. NEVIN UNIVERSITY OF NEW
HAMPSHIRE1982, 38, 349-353 NUMBER 3 (NOVEMBER)
It is impossible not to acknowledge the power of Schell's presentation, but its very power
problems. First, his account of Armageddon generates strong

aversive emotional reactions, and we know from the study of negative
reinforcement that such stimuli strengthen behavior that removes them. The
orienting-response literature also suggests that organisms will orient away from
cues that signal aversive events. We are, therefore, likely to turn away from
warnings of nuclear warfare and engage in other activities. Second, the ultimate
horror that Schell portrays is widely regarded as inevitable. The arms race is often
said to possess a sort of impersonal momentum, like a massive object that rolls on
inexorably, regardless of our actions; and certainly the recent history of
negotiations to control the arms race, conducted by people who are well aware of
its potential ultimate outcome, does nothing to reassure us . In the laboratory,
may lead to two further
uncontrollable aversive events have been shown to produce a state of inactivity termed
helplessness. Taken together, the history of uncontrollability of the arms race, the
aversiveness of our reactions to warnings of nuclear warfare, and the lack of

correlation of such warnings with experienced events would seem to explain the
absence of effective privateaction (thinking) to analyze the problem or overt
behavior to effect disarmament. This combination of factors may be responsible for what
Robert Jay Lifton has termed "psychic numbing," a refusal to confront the threat of universal
death that hangs over our heads like an executioner's sword.
How can we approach the absence of relevant action-the refusal to look up at the sword and do
something to blunt it or prevent it from falling-from a behavioral perspective? Consider an analogy.
If we saw a person afflicted with a potentially fatal disease, taking daily doses of an addictive
drug that gave temporary relief from distress but in addition exacerbated the disease, we would
diagnose the behavior as maladaptive. Appealing to this person to exercise "self-control" would
not be likely to have much effect. If this person became our client, we would immediately
regulate access to the drug and take steps to eliminate its use, while at the same time arranging
a program of behavioral therapy to maintain abstinence when treatment ended. Schell suggests
that human society, living as it does under the constant threat of self-imposed
termination while using its economic resources to build more instruments of
universal death in the name of security, is like this client-"insane," in Schell's
words. Immediate therapy is essential. However, our society is both client and
therapist. Consequently, we are enmeshed in a problem, at the level of society and
species, that parallels the problem of "self-control" at the level of the individual.
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Schell poses the choice facing humanity in terms very close to the laboratory study
of selfcontrol:
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**IMPACT TAKEOUTS**
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AT: Giligan
Violence is too deeply entrenched into our society to end poverty, even
Gilligan concedes
Alvarez, Professor in the department of criminal justice at Northern
Arizona University and Bachman, Professor and Chair of the Sociology
and Criminal Justice Department at the University of Delware 2007
(Alex Alvarez, Professor in the department of criminal justice at Northern Arizona
University and Ronet Bachman, Professor and Chair of the Sociology and Criminal Justice
Department at the University of Delware, 2007 Violence: the enduring problem Chapter
1 ,Pg. 19-20, http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/17422_Chapter_1.pdf
We also worry about violence constantly, and change our behavior in response to
perceived threats of violence. We avoid certain parts of town, add security features
to our homes, and vote for get tough laws in order to protect ourselves from
violent offenders. At the time this chapter was written, Americans were fighting in Iraq and
Afghanistan and news reports were full of fallen soldiers, car bombings, torture of prisoners, and
beheadings of hostages. In short, whether domestically or internationally, violence is
part and parcel of American life. In fact, the sociologists Peter Iadicola and Anson Shupe
assert that violence is the overarching problem of our age and suggest that every
social problem is influenced by the problem of violence .47 James Gilligan, a medical
doctor who directed the Center for the Study of Violence at Harvard Medical School, put it this
way: The more I learn about other peoples lives, the more I realize that I have yet
to hear the history of any family in which there has not been at least one family
member who has been overtaken by fatal or life threatening violence , as the
perpetrator or the victimwhether the violence takes the form of suicide or homicide,
death in combat, death from a drunken or reckless driver, or any other of the many
nonnatural forms of death.48 So its safe to say that violence is not foreign to us, but
rather is something with which we rub shoulders constantly.We know violence

through our own lived experiences and the experiences of our family, friends, and
neighbors, as well as through the media images we view. At a deeper level, this
means that our identities as citizens, parents, children, spouses, lovers, friends,
teammates, and colleagues are often shaped by violence, at least in part. Who we
are as individuals and as human beings is shaped by the culture within which we
live.How we define ourselves, the ways in which we relate to others, and our
notions of what we stand for and what we believe in, are all determined in large
part by the influences and experiences of our lives or, as the great English Poet Alfred
Lord Tennyson once wrote, I am a part of all that I have met.49 In a similar vein, although a bit
less poetically, the sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann suggest, Identity is a
phenomenon that emerges from the dialectic between individual and society.50 In short, our life
experiences shape who we are. Therefore, if violence is a part of our reality, then it
plays a role in shaping us as human beings and influences how we understand the
world around us. To acknowledge this is to understand that violence is part of who
we are and central to knowing ourselves and the lives we lead. Because of this
prevalence and its impact on our lives, some have suggested that Americans have
created and embraced a culture of violence . Culture is a nebulous concept that includes
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values, beliefs, and rules for behavior. These qualities detail what is expected, what is valued, and
what is prohibited.51 Essentially, then, this argument contends that our history and experiences
have resulted in a system of values and beliefs that, to a greater extent than in some other
cultures, condones, tolerates, and even expects a violent response to various and specific
situations.52 Other scholars have further developed this theme by arguing that, instead of a culture
of violence in the United States, there are subcultures of violence specific to particular regions or
groups. First articulated by the criminologists Wolfgang and Ferracuti, this viewpoint suggests that
members of some groups are more likely to rely on violence. As they suggest Quick resort to
physical combat as a measure of daring, courage, or defense of status appears to be a cultural
expectation . . . When such a cultural response is elicited from an individual engaged in social
interplay with others who harbor the same response mechanism, physical assaults, altercations,
and violent domestic quarrels that result in homicide are likely to be relatively common.53 This
argument has been applied to various subcultural groups such as Southerners, young African
American males, and others.54 The South historically has had much higher rates of violence than
other regions of the country and many have suggested that it is a consequence of Southern notions
of honor that demand a violent response to certain provocations. The argument suggests that
Southern culture, in other words, is more violence prone than other regional cultures. Violence,
then, is something that appears to be embedded in our values and attitudes, which is why some
have suggested that violence is as American as apple pie.55
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Extinction Impossible
It is impossible to kill all humans.
Schilling 00
But others have pointed out that the human animal (as opposed to human
civilization) would be almost impossible to kill off at this point. People have become
too widespread and too capable, a few pockets of individuals would find ways to
survive almost any conceivable nuclear war or ecological collapse. These survivors
would be enough to fully repopulate the Earth in a few thousand years and
another technological civilization would be a precedent. Maybe this will happen
many times
A nuclear war would only kill hundreds of thousands of people. It is
defiantly survivable and the impact is not huge.
Brian Martin Formal training in physics, with a PhD from Sydney University, 2002
(Activism
after
nuclear
war,
http://www.transnational.org/SAJT/forum/meet/2002/Martin_ActivismNuclearWar.html)
In the event of nuclear war, as well as death and destruction there will be serious
political consequences. Social activists should be prepared. The confrontation
between Indian and Pakistani governments earlier this year showed that military
use of nuclear weapons is quite possible. There are other plausible scenarios. A US
military attack against Iraq could lead Saddam Hussein to release chemical or
biological weapons, providing a trigger for a US nuclear strike. Israeli nuclear
weapons might also be unleashed. Another possibility is accidental nuclear war.
Paul Rogers in his book Losing Control says that the risk of nuclear war has
increased due to proliferation, increased emphasis on nuclear war-fighting,
reduced commitment to arms control (especially by the US government) and
Russian reliance on nuclear arms as its conventional forces disintegrate. A major
nuclear war could kill hundreds of millions of people. But less catastrophic
outcomes are possible. A limited exchange might kill "only" tens or hundreds of
thousands of people. Use of nuclear "bunker-busters" might lead to an immediate
death toll in the thousands or less.
Humanity is resilient: extinction is highly unlikely.

Bruce Tonn, Futures Studies Department, Corvinus University of Budapest, 2005, Human
Extinction Scenarios, www.budapestfutures.org/ downloads/abstracts/Bruce% 20Tonn%20%20Abstract.pdf)
The human species faces numerous threats to its existence. These include global climate
change, collisions with near-earth objects, nuclear war, and pandemics. While these
threats are indeed serious, taken separately they fail to describe exactly how humans could
become extinct. For example, nuclear war by itself would most likely fail to kill everyone
on the planet, as strikes would probably be concentrated in the northern hemisphere and the
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Middle East, leaving populations in South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand some
hope of survival. It is highly unlikely that any uncontrollable nanotechnology could ever be
produced but even it if were, it is likely that humans could develop effective, if
costly, countermeasures, such as producing the technologies in space or destroying sites of
runaway nanotechnologies with nuclear weapons. Viruses could indeed kill many people but
effective quarantine of a healthy people could be accomplished to save large numbers of
people. Humans appear to be resilient to extinction with respect to single events.
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Nuclear War
The chance of a nuclear war is just as likely as it was a half century ago.
Daily Newscaster November 15, 2008
(World conflict brewing but nuclear war unlikely, http://74.125.47.132/search?
q=cache:SLntzFWp_iEJ:www.dailynewscaster.com/2008/11/15/world-conflict-brewing-but-nuclearwar-unlikely/
+"World+conflict+brewing+but+nuclear+war+unlikely"&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
In August, oilgeopolitical expert F.W. Engdahl wrote, The signing on August 14th of an agreement
between the governments of the United States and Poland to deploy on Polish soil US interceptor
missiles is the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba
Missile crisis. Now, I dont like being in a position where I have to contradict the
leading analyst of the New World Order, but there is no chance we are any closer
to a nuclear war than we were in the 1950s, 1962, or any time in the last 58 years .
I cant speak for Mr. Engdahl but most NWO conspiracy theorists expect a depopulation event to rid
the planet of 5 billion useless eaters. The Illuminati, they say, need only 500 million of us for slaves
when they take over the world. Dont get me wrong, I am not saying there couldnt be a
depopulation event before 2012 but a nuclear war is not in the cards. Nuclear World War III
would make too much of the planet uninhabitable and that would include the One
World governors as well as the 500 million humans they need for slaves. Think
about it: why havent we had a nuclear accident since the 50s ? Where is Dr.
Strangelove or some insane Air Force General Jack D. Ripper who orders a first strike nuclear attack
on the Soviet Union or how about just a plain f up? If things can go wrong, they will go
wrong and the U.S. government or any nuclear power are not exactly the sharpest
tools in the shed.
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Biological Attack Not Probable

Biological Warfare wouldnt cause widespread death
Ropeik & Gray, Writers, 02
David Ropeik, George M. Gray, A Practical Guide for Deciding Whats Really Safe and
Whats Really Dangerous in the World Around You, 2002, Pg. 186, Books.Google.com
Fortunately, carrying out an attack with biological agents which kills large numbers of
people is difficult. Distributing these pathogens in a way that exposes large numbers of
people is not simple. You dont just brew up some deadly germs in a lab and go
somewhere and shake them out of a jar. For most biological weapons to reach more than just a
few people, they have to be dispersed in the air. To accomplish that, the agent has to be dried, then
ground up or milled into tiny particles that can remain airborne for days, and in some cases
further treated to control clumping. These steps take time, money, special equipment, and
expertise. They also require sophisticated protective clothing, filters, and containment equipment
if the people who want to use them as weapons dont want to become their own first victims. The
Japanese terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, before its Tokyo subway attack with the nerve gas
sarin, attempted several attacks with botulinum toxin, anthrax, and other agents but
couldnt manage to cause a single death. And the 2001 mailborne anthrax attacks in the
United States demonstrated how difficult it is to use even potent weaponized agents
to kill more than a small number of people.
.
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Indo-Pak
Indo-Pak nuclear conflict unlikely.
The Michigan Daily 02
(Experts say nuclear war still unlikely, http://www.michigandaily.com/content/experts-say-nuclearwar-still-unlikely)
University political science Prof. Ashutosh Varshney becomes animated when asked about the
likelihood of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. "Odds are close to zero,"
Varshney said forcefully, standing up to pace a little bit in his office. " The assumption that
India and Pakistan cannot manage their nuclear arsenals as well as the U.S.S.R.
and U.S. or Russia and China concedes less to the intellect of leaders in both India
and Pakistan than would be warranted. " The world"s two youngest nuclear powers first
tested weapons in 1998, sparking fear of subcontinental nuclear war a fear Varshney finds
ridiculous. "The decision makers are aware of what nuclear weapons are, even if the
masses are not," he said. "Watching the evening news, CNN, I think they have
vastly overstated the threat of nuclear war," political science Prof. Paul Huth said.
Varshney added that there are numerous factors working against the possibility of
nuclear war. "India is committed to a no-first-strike policy, " Varshney said. "It is virtually
impossible for Pakistan to go for a first strike, because the retaliation would be gravely dangerous."
Political science Prof. Kenneth Lieberthal, a former special assistant to President
Clinton at the National Security Council, agreed. "Usually a country that is in the
position that Pakistan is in would not shift to a level that would ensure their total
destruction," Lieberthal said, making note of India"s considerably larger nuclear arsenal.
"American intervention is another reason not to expect nuclear war," Varshney said. " If anything
has happened since September 11, it is that the command control system has
strengthened. The trigger is in very safe hands." But the low probability of nuclear
war does not mean tensions between the two countries who have fought three
wars since they were created in 1947 will not erupt . "The possibility of conventional war
between the two is higher. Both sides are looking for ways out of the current tension," Lieberthal
said.
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Iran
The US wont have a have a nuclear war with Iran, too risky.
Defense experts say a military strike on Iran would be risky and complicated . U.S.
forces already are preoccupied with Iraq and Afghanistan, and an attack against Iran could
inflame U.S. problems in the Muslim world. The U.N. Security Council has
demanded Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program. But Iran has so far
refused to halt its nuclear activity, saying the small-scale enrichment project was
strictly for research and not for development of nuclear weapons . Bush has said Iran
may pose the greatest challenge to the United States of any other country in the world. And while
he has stressed that diplomacy is always preferable, he has defended his administration's strikefirst policy against terrorists and other enemies. "The threat from Iran is, of course, their
stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel," the president said last month in
Cleveland. "That's a threat, a serious threat. It's a threat to world peace; it's a
threat, in essence, to a strong alliance . I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will
use military might to protect our ally.'' Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros would not
comment Sunday on reports of military planning for Iran. "The U.S. military never comments on
contingency planning," he said. Stephen Cimbala, a Pennsylvania State University professor who
studies U.S. foreign policy, said it would be no surprise that the Pentagon has contingency plans for
a strike on Iran. But he suggested the hint of military strikes is more of a public show to Iran and the
public than a feasible option. "If you look at the military options, all of them are unattractive,"
Cimbala said. "Either because they won't work or because they have side effects where the cure is
worse than the disease.''
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**IMPACT CALCULUS**
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Impacts Exaggerated (1/2)

The threat of huge impacts is often exaggerated
Rescher, Prof. of Philosophy, 83
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk: A
Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management 1983
But while there is room for (perfectly legitimate) differences from person to person, it is clear that
when these go too far there also arises a significant prospect of impropriety and
exaggeration. People frequently tend to inflate extreme outcomes -- exaggerating the
badness of the bad and the goodness of the good. The tendency to overestimate the
dramatic comes into play with outcome-evaluation. Our psychological capacity for
imagination may run riot. We tend to overrate the positivity of imagination-projected boons
and negativity of imagination-projected hazards: anticipated tragedies often do not prove
to be all that awful. And such psychological tendencies as are involved with
familiarity, understanding, dread, etc. can all foster unrealism in appraising negativities.
The perceived value of an outcome may prove to be widely off the mark of any realistic estimate of
its actual value. Our perception of the magnitude of risks tends to be distorted by the
structure of our anxieties. Hazards involving threats that are particularly striking or
dramatic -- leading to death, say, rather than mere debility, or likely to take more rather then
fewer lives -- tend to be overestimated, while risks of a commonplace, undramatic
nature whose eventuations are no less serious tend to be underestimated. ~
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Impacts Exaggerated (2/2)

Low probability scenarios are often exaggerated as important high
probability scenarios are forgotten
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk:
In risk assessment one is often inclined -- or even constrained to resort to subjective probabilities.
These can sometimes be checked against the objectively measurable facts, and when this is done,
certain
common
fallacies
come
to
light. 38 In
particular,
people
tend to
overestimate systematically the relative probability of certain sorts of eventuations -- as
for example:
-- striking or dramatic or particularly dreaded outcomes (large gains or losses)
-- relatively rare events -- particularly those that have actually occurred in past
experience in some memorable way (the once bitten, twice shy syndrome'').39
-- probabilistically multiplicative events (i.e., those whose eventuation involves the complex
concatenation of many circumstances)
-- chance events that have failed to occur for a long time (the MQnte Carlo Fallacy)
The first of these phenomena is particularly significant. Even in the best of circumstances, it is
difficult to convince oneself that a particularly feared disaster may be extremely
unlikely. Then too there is the tendency to exaggerate the likelihood of wished-for consummations,
mocked by Adam Smith when he spoke of that majority activated by the absurd presumption in
their own good fortunes.''4
The other side of the coin is that people tend to underestimate systematically the relative
probability of
-- humdrum, undramatic (though often inherently important events)
-- relatively frequent or familiar events
-probabilistically additive events (i.e., those whose eventuation can be realized along various
different routes)
The operation of such principles means, among other things, that people incline to
underestimate the eventuation of high-probability events, and to overestimate the eventuation
of low-probability events.4'
Interesting misjudgments come to light through these data. For example, accidents were judged to
cause as many deaths as diseases, whereas diseases actually take about fifteen times as many
lives. Homicides were incorrectly thought to be more frequent than diabetes and stomach cancer.
Homicides were also judged to be about as frequent as stroke, although the latter actually claims
about 11 times as many lives. The incidence of death from botulism, tornadoes, and pregnancy
(including childbirth and abortion) was also greatly over-estimated. Indeed a systematic bias
emerges -- to overestimate the more unusual and dramatic low-frequency causes of death and to
underestimate the more commonplace. Any discussion or consideration of possible
disasters -- even reassuring statements by technical experts designed to establish their
improbability -- appears to have the effect of increasing their preceived likelihood by
enchancing the apprehension of their reality. This unrealism greatly hampers profitable discussion
of low-probability hazards.
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Prob. Evaluated First (1/2)

Probability should be evaluated before magnitude
Philosophical Introduction to the Theory of Risk Evaluation and Management
1983
A probability is a number between zero and one. Now numbers between zero and one can get to be very small
indeed: As N gets bigger, 1/N will grow very, very small. What, then, is one to do about extremely small
probabilities in the rational management of risks? On this issue there is a systemic disagreement
between probabilists working in mathematics or natural science and decision theorists who work on issues relating to
human affairs. The former take the line that small numbers are small numbers and must be taken into account as
such. The latter tend to take the view that small probabilities represent extremely remote
prospects and can be written off. (De minimis non curat lex, as the old precept has it: there is no
need to bother with trifles.) When something is about as probable as it is that a thousand fair dice when
tossed a thousand times will all come up sixes, then, so it is held, we can pretty well forget about it as worthy of
concern.
The "worst possible case fixation" is one of the most damaging modes of unrealism in
deliberations about risk in real-life situations. Preoccupation about what might happen "if worst comes to worst" is
counterproductive whenever we proceed without recognizing that, often as not, these worst possible
outcomes are wildly improbable (and sometimes do not deserve to be viewed as real
possibilities at all). The crux in risk deliberations is not the issue of loss "if worst comes to worst" but the
potential acceptability of this prospect within the wider framework of the risk situation, where we may well be
prepared "to take our chances," considering the possible advantages that beckon along this route. The worst threat is
certainly something to be borne in mind and taken into account, but it is emphatically not a satisfactory index of the
overall seriousness or gravity of a situation of hazard .
Any action could potentially have devastating impacts, but we dont

evaluate them because of the low probability
Stern, Fellow at CFR, 99
Jessica Stern, Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former National
Security Council Member The Ultimate Terrorists
1999 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/steult/excerpt.html
Poisons have always been seen as unacceptably cruel. Livy called poisonings of enemies "secret
crimes." Cicero referred to poisoning as "an atrocity." But why do poisons evoke such dread? This
question has long puzzled political scientists and historians. One answer is that people's
perceptions of risk often do not match reality: that what we dread most is often not what actually
threatens us most. When you got up this morning, you were exposed to serious risks at nearly
every stage of your progression from bed to the office. Even lying in bed exposed you to serious
hazards: 1 in 400 Americans is injured each year while doing nothing but lying in bed or sitting in a
chair--because the headboard collapses, the frame gives way, or another such failure occurs. Your
risk of suffering a lethal accident in your bathtub or shower was one in a million. Your breakfast
increased your risk of cancer, heart attack, obesity, or malnutrition, depending on what you ate.
Although both margarine and butter appear to contribute to heart disease, a new theory suggests
that low-fat diets make you fat. If you breakfasted on grains (even organic ones), you exposed
yourself to dangerous toxins: plants produce their own natural pesticides to fight off fungi and
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herbivores, and many of these are more harmful than synthetic pesticide residues. Your cereal with
milk may have been contaminated by mold toxins, including the deadly aflatoxin found in peanuts,
corn, and milk. And your eggs may have contained benzene, another known carcinogen. Your cup of
coffee included twenty-six compounds known to be mutagenic: if coffee were synthesized in the
laboratory, the FDA would probably ban it as a cancer-causing substance. Most people are more
worried about the risks of nuclear power plants than the risks of driving to work, and more alarmed
by the prospect of terrorists with chemical weapons than by swimming in a pool. Experts tend to
focus on probabilities and outcomes, but public perception of risk seems to depend on other
variables: there is little correlation between objective risk and public dread. Examining possible
reasons for this discrepancy will help us understand why the thought of terrorists with access to
nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons fills us with dread. People tend to exaggerate the
likelihood of events that are easy to imagine or recall. Disasters and catastrophes stay
disproportionately rooted in the public consciousness, and evoke disproportionate fear. A picture of
a mushroom cloud probably stays long in viewers' consciousness as an image of fear.
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Prob. Evaluated First (2/2)

Catering to minute risks based on higher magnitude creates policy
paralysis, making their impacts inevitable
The stakes are high, the potential benefits enormous. (And so are the costs - for instance
cancer research and, in particular, the multi-million dollar gamble on interferon.) But there is
no turning back the clock. The processes at issue are irreversible. Only through the shrewd
deployment of science and technology can we resolve the problems that science and
technology themselves have brought upon us. America seems to have backed off from its
traditional entrepreneurial spirit and become a risk-aversive, slow investing economy whose
(real-resource) support for technological and scientific innovation has been declining for some
time. In our yearning for the risk-free society we may well create a social system that
makes risk-taking innovation next to impossible. The critical thing is to have a policy that
strikes a proper balance between malfunctions and missed opportunities - a balance whose
"propriety" must be geared to a realistic appraisal of the hazards and opportunities at issue.
Man is a creature condemned to live in a twilight zone of risk and opportunity. And so we are
led back to Aaron Wildavski's thesis that flight from risk is the greatest risk of all,
"because a total avoidance of risks means that society will become paralyzed,
depleting its resources in preventive action, and denying future generations opportunities
and technologies needed for improving the quality of life. By all means let us calculate our
risks with painstaking care, and by all means let us manage them with prudent conservatism.
But in life as in warfare there is truth in H. H. Frost's maxim that "every mistake in war is
excusable except inactivity and refusal to take risks" (though, obviously, it is needful to
discriminate between a good risk and a bad one). The price of absolute security is
absolute stultification.
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Prob Before Mag Ext

Probability of a scenario is evaluated before all else, regardless of the
impact
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh Professor of Philosophy, Risk:
The rational management of risk calls for adherence to three cardinal rules: (I) Maximize
Expected Values! (II) Avoid Catastrophes! (III) Dismiss Extremely Remote (''Unrealistic'')
Possibilities! The first of these is a matter of using the expected-value of the various alternative
choices -- computed in the stardard way -- as index of their relative preferability. In particular, that
alternative whose expected value is maximal is thereby to be viewed as maxipreferable. Rule (II) is
to be applied subject to an insofar as possible condition. It can ordinarily be implemented by
setting the value of a catastrophe at -- in the context of expected-value calculation. This, of course,
will fail to resolve the matter if it should happen that every alternative leads to possible
catastrophe, in which case-- that of a dilemma -- special precautions will be necessary. (They are
described on pp. 87-88.) Rule (III) calls on us to implement the idea of ''effectively zero
probabilities by setting the probability of ''extremely remote possibilities at zero. It
calls on us to dismiss highly improbable possibilities as ''unrealistic.'' Note that rules (II) and (III)
enjoin us to view the choice-situation in a guise different from the actual facts. An element of as if is involved in both
cases. With (II) we are to identify a certain level of catastrophe and take the stance that a negativity whose magnitude
exceeds this level is to be seen as having value -- ~. Again, with (III) we are to identify a certain level of effective zerohood
for probabilities, treating as zero whatever probabilities fall short of this threshold value. Thus in assessing risks by way of
expected-value appraisals, we are in each case not to view the situation as it actually stands, but to replace the actual
situation by its policy transform through a change of the form V--~-- orp~0. The application of all three of these rules
calls for essentially judgmental, subjective inputs. With (I) we are involved in negativity-eval~uation. With (II) we must fix on
a threshold of ''catastrophe.'' With (III) we must decide at what level of improbability effective
zerohood sets in and possibilities cease to be real. None of these evaluative resolutions at issue is
dictated by the objective circumstances and imprinted in the nature of things. They are instruments of human devising
contrived for human purpose in the effective management of affairs. To begin with, note that rules (I) and (II) can clash, as
per Figure 1. Here the top alternative enjoys the greater expected value. Nevertheless, it is intuitively clear that the bottom
alter native is far preferable (and would continue to be so even if the 60C loss were increased to some other ordinary
negativity.) The clear lesson is that rule (II) takes priority over (I) in such cases where catastrophes loom. We are to ignore
the ruling of a straightforward calculation of expected values and insist on valuing catastrophes at --~, so as to avoid them
at any (ordinary) cost. (Recall the discussion of the rationale of insurance on pp. 79-80 above.) Moreover rules (I) and (III)
can also clash. This is shown by those cases where an expected-value calculation rules in favor of an alternative whose
probability is too small to qualify it as a real possibility. (Recall the Vacationer's Dilemma of p. 40.)
Unless we are prepared to dismiss extremely remote possibilities as having a probability

of effectively zero -- and thus not counting as real possibilities at all -- we shall find
our actions systematically stultified to a degree which we are unwilling to accept in
''real life situations. It is thus clear that rule (III) takes priority over (I). Finally, it is clear that
rules (II) and (III) can also conflict. For consider the situation of Figure 2. Note that a refusal to see
the situation in terms of a = 0 keeps the catastrophe in the picture, so As these deliberations
indicate, the three cardinal principles of risk management stand in a relation of
preferential rank-order so that: (Ill) takes precedence over (II), which in turn takes
precedence over (I). We have here a sequential priority-ordering of the several principles, which
fixes an automatic process for one's overriding another in those cases where their
rulings conflict. This precedence ordering entails certain limitations to the reach of classical
decision theory, which proceeds on the basis of the unmodified and unadulterated use of expectedvalue appraisals. A deployment of the concepts of catastrophe-avoidance and of
effectively zero'' probabilities modifies this policy in two directions. First, catastrophe
is seen to represent an unacceptable risk, when ''the game's not worth the candle'' because
the potential negative outcomes, unlikely though their realization may be, are simply too massive
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for the stakes otherwise at issue. But, secondly, this principle itself needs to be curtailed,
when it becomes too conservative in its operation and leads to a stultification of action.
Just this rationale motivates the recourse to ''effectively zero'' probabilities.
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Systemic Impacts First

Err on the side of systemic impacts its the biggest consequence in the
long term
Machan, Professor of Philosophy, 03
Tibor Machan, prof. emeritus of philosophy at Auburn University, 20 03 Passion for
Liberty
honesty is the best policy, even if at

times it does not achieve the desired good results; so is respect for every
individual's rights to life, liberty, and property. All in all, this is what will ensure
the best consequencesin the long run and as a rule . Therefore, one need not be
very concerned about the most recent estimate of the consequences of banning
or not banning guns, breaking up or not breaking up Microsoft, or any other
public policy, for that matter. It is enough to know that violating the rights of
individuals to bear arms is a bad idea, and that history and analysis support
our understanding of principle. To violate rights has always produced greater
damage than good, so let's not do it, even when we are terri bly tempted to do so,
Let's not do it precisely because to do so would violate the fundamental
requirements of human nature. It is those requirements that should be our guide, not some recent empirical data that have
All in all, then, I support the principled or rights-based approach. In normal contexts,
no staying power (according to their very own theoretical terms). Finally, you will ask, isn't this being dogmatic? Haven't we learned not to bank too much on
what we've learned so far, when we also know that learning can always be improved, modified, even revised? Isn't progress in the sciences and technology
We must go with
what we know but be open to change provided that the change is
warranted. Simply because some additional gun controls or regulations might
save lives (some lives, perhaps at the expense of other lives) and simply
because breaking up Microsoft might improve the satisfaction of con sumers
(some consumers, perhaps at the expense of the satisfaction of other
consumers) are no reasons to violate basic rights. Only if and when there are solid, demonstrable reasons
proof that past knowledge always gets overthrown a bit later? As in science and engineering, so in morality and politics:
. Any such reasons would have to speak

to the same level of fundamentally and relevance as that incor porated by the
theory of individual rights itself. Those defending consequentialism, like Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, have argued the
to do so should we throw out the old principles and bring on the new principles
opposite thesis: Unless one can prove, beyond a doubt, that violating rights in a particular instance is necessarily wrong in the eyes of a "rational and fair
man," the state may go ahead and "accept the natural outcome of dominant opinion" and violate those rights.1 Such is now the leading jurisprudence
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Probability Evaluation Key

The probability of each element of an argument chain must be evaluated
Alemi, Professor of Risk Analysis, 06
Farrokh Alemi, Ph.D in Decision Analysis, Professor of Risk at George Mason University,
Lecture on the Probability of Rare Events, October 4, 2006
http://gunston.gmu.edu/healthscience/riskanalysis/ProbabilityRareEvent.asp
The concept of fault trees and reliability trees has a long history in space and nuclear
industry. Several books (Krouwer, 2004) and papers describe this tool (Marx and Slonim, 2003).
The first step in conducting fault trees is to identify the sentinel adverse event that should
be analyzed. Then all possible ways in which the sentinel event may occur is listed. It is
possible that several events must co-occur before the sentinel event may occur. For
example, in assessing the probability of an employee providing information to outsiders, several
events must co-occur. First the employee must be disgruntled. Second, information must be
available to the employee. Third, outsiders must have contact with the employee. Fourth, the
employee must have a method of transferring the data. All of these events must co-occur
before hospital data is sold to an outside party. None of these events are sufficient to cause
the sentinel event. In a fault tree, when several events must co-occur, we use an "And" gate to
show it. Each of these events can, in part, depend on other factors. For example, there may be
several ways to transfer the data: on paper, electronically by email, or electronically on disk. Any
one of these events can lead to transfer of data. In fault tree when any one of a series of events
may be sufficient by themselves to cause the next event to occur, we show this by an "Or" gate.
Fault tree is a collection of events connected to each other by "and" and "Or" gates. Each event
depends on a series of other related events, providing for a complex web of relationships. A
fault tree suggests a robust work process when several events must co-occur before the
catastrophic failure occurs. The more "And" gates are in the tree structure, the more robust the
work process modeled. In contrast, it is also possible for several events by themselves to lead to
catastrophic failure. The more "Or" gates in the path to failure, the less robust the work
process. The second step is to estimate probabilities for the fault tree. Since the
catastrophic failure is rare, it is difficult to asses this probability directly. Instead, the
probability of various events leading to this failure are assessed. For example, the
probability of a finding a disgruntled employee can be assessed. The probability of an employee
having access to large data sets can be assessed by counting employees who have such access
during the course of their work. The probability of an employee being approached by someone to
sell data can be assessed by providing an expert data on frequency of reported crimes and asking
him/her to estimate the additional unreported rate. In short, through objective data or subjective
opinions of experts various probabilities in the fault tree can be assessed. The fault tree can
then be used to assess the probability of the catastrophic and rare event using the
following formula:
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AT: Rescher
Reschers theories are flawed- using predictions for data is key
Eggleston 02
Ben Eggleston January 12, 2002 Department of Philosophy University of Kansa
Practical Equilibrium: A New Approach to Moral Theory Selection
http://web.ku.edu/~utile/unpub/pe.pdf
The language of data to be accounted for recurs even more frequently in papers published in the
wake of Rawlss book. Singer writes that The reflective equilibrium conception of moral
philosophy . . . lead[s] us to think of our particular moral judgmentsas data against which moral
theories are to be tested (1974, p. 517; cf. 1998, p. vi), and Nicholas Rescher writes that our
intuitions are the data . . . which the theoretician must weave into a smooth fabric
and that The process is closely analogous with the systematization of the data of
various levels in natural science (1979, p. 155). Others
have offered similar
characterizations.13 So the notion of accounting for the data is often regarded as providing support
for reflective equilibrium. I wish to argue, though, that the notion of accounting for the data
can be seen to provide such support only when clouded by a pair of misunderstandings,
and that when these two misunderstandings are removed, the notion of accounting for
the data actually lends support to practical equilibrium. The two misunderstandings
concern what the data to be accounted for actually are, and how a moral theory
accounts for whatever data it accounts for.
First, consider what the data actually are. When it comes to our moral intuitions, we might think
that our data are that acts of certain kinds, such as acts of punishing the innocent, are never
justified. But actually this overstates our data: in fact our data are just our observations of
our own intuitions, such as our observation that it seems to us that punishing the
innocent is never justified. It is a further claim, not among the data to be accounted for, that
these intuitions that we are aware of having are correct. The data do not include that certain acts
are wrong; the data include only our regarding certain acts as wrongfor this latter phenomenon,
our own judgment of the matter, is all that we can really detect in any instance of moral
appraisal.14 So the first error in reflective equilibriums use of the notion of accounting for the data
lies in its holding theories responsible for accounting for things that are not actually among the
data. It says that a moral theory must explain the truth of the intuitions that we have, when actually
the only data there are are that we have those intuitions.
Now at this point it may appear that I am arguing that what the notion of accounting for the data
means in the case of a moral theory is not that the theory explains the truth of the intuitions that
we have, but that the theory explains the fact that we have those intuitions. For this interpretation
of accounting for the data would accommodate the interpretation of what the data actually are that
I have just been arguing for. But Imaintain that we need to make a second adjustment in order to
arrive at a sound interpretation of the notion of accounting for the data in the case of a moral
theory.
Whereas the first adjustment had to do with what the data are, this one has to do with
what it means for a moral theory to account for data. What I have in mind is that we need
to say that what a moral theory is supposed to do, as far as its accounting for anything
is concerned, is not to explain our having certain intuitions, but to endorse our having
those intuitions.
The reason for this adjustment is simple: moral theories differ from scientific ones in
that they are not in the business of predicting or explaining anything: they are in the
business of prescribing, or giving instructions. Normally, the instructions were interested in
are those that concern specific situations in which we might engage in some conduct or regard to
the intuitions we should have
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Predictions Bad - Policymaking

Ejecting low probability internal link chains is key to rational
policymaking - accumulated experience proves that appeals to the
possibility of catastrophic causal chains should not influence decisionmaking
Hansson, Department of Philosophy and the History of Technology, 05
Sven Ove Hansson ["The Epistemology of Technological Risk," Techne: research in
philosophy
and
Technology,
Volume
9,
Number
2,
Winter
2005
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ ejournals/SPT/v9n2/hansson. html]
However, it would not be feasible to take such possibilities into account in all decisions that we
make. In a sense, any decision may have catastrophic unforeseen consequences. If
far-reaching indirect effects are taken into account, then given the unpredictable
nature of actual causation almost any decision may lead to a disaster. In order to be able to
decide and act, we therefore have to disregard many of the more remote possibilities .
Cases can also easily be found in which it was an advantage that far-fetched dangers were not
taken seriously. One case in point is the false alarm on so-called polywater, an alleged polymeric
form of water. In 1969, the prestigious scientific journal Nature printed a letter that warned against
producing polywater. The substance might "grow at the expense of normal water under any
conditions found in the environment," thus replacing all natural water on earth and destroying all
life on this planet. (Donahoe 1969 ) Soon afterwards, it was shown that polywater is a non-existent
entity. If the warning had been heeded, then no attempts would had been made to replicate the
polywater experiments, and we might still not have known that polywater does not exist. In cases
like this, appeals to the possibility of unknown dangers may stop investigations and thus prevent
scientific and technological progress. We therefore need criteria to determine when the
possibility of unknown dangers should be taken seriously and when it can be

neglected. This problem cannot be solved with probability calculus or other exact
mathematical methods. The best that we can hope for is a set of informal criteria
that can be used to support intuitive judgement . The following list of four criteria has been
proposed for this purpose. (Hansson 1996) Asymmetry of uncertainty: Possibly, a decision to build a
second bridge between Sweden and Denmark will lead through some unforeseeable causal chain to
a nuclear war. Possibly, it is the other way around so that a decision not to build such a bridge will
lead to a nuclear war. We have no reason why one or the other of these two causal chains should be
more probable, or otherwise more worthy of our attention, than the other. On the other hand, the
introduction of a new species of earthworm is connected with much more uncertainty than the
option not to introduce the new species. Such asymmetry is a necessary but insufficient condition
for taking the issue of unknown dangers into serious consideration. 2. Novelty: Unknown dangers
come mainly from new and untested phenomena. The emission of a new substance into the
stratosphere constitutes a qualitative novelty, whereas the construction of a new bridge does not.
An interesting example of the novelty factor can be found in particle physics. Before new and more
powerful particle accelerators have been built, physicists have sometimes feared that the new
levels of energy might generate a new phase of matter that accretes every atom of the earth. The
decision to regard these and similar fears as groundless has been based on observations showing
that the earth is already under constant bombardment from outer space of particles with the same
or higher energies. (Ruthen 1993) 3. Spatial and temporal limitations: If the effects of a proposed
measure are known to be limited in space or time, then these limitations reduce the urgency of the
possible unknown effects associated with the measure. The absence of such limitations contributes
to the severity of many ecological problems, such as global emissions and the spread of chemically
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stable pesticides. 4. Interference with complex systems in balance: Complex systems such as
ecosystems and the atmospheric system are known to have reached some type of balance, which
may be impossible to restore after a major disturbance. Due to this irreversibility, uncontrolled
interference with such systems is connected with a high degree of uncertainty. (Arguably, the same
can be said of uncontrolled interference with economic systems; this is an argument for piecemeal
rather than drastic economic reforms.) It might be argued that we do not know that these systems
can resist even minor perturbations. If causation is chaotic, then for all that we know, a
minor modification of the liturgy of the Church of England may trigger a major
ecological disaster in Africa. If we assume that all cause-effect relationships are
chaotic, then the very idea of planning and taking precautions seems to lose its
meaning. However, such a world-view would leave us entirely without guidance,
even in situations when we consider ourselves well-informed . Fortunately,
experience does not bear out this pessimistic worldview. Accumulated experience
and theoretical reflection strongly indicate that certain types of influences on
ecological systems can be withstood, whereas others cannot. The same applies to
technological, economic, social, and political systems, although our knowledge
about their resilience towards various disturbances has not been sufficiently
systematized.
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Predictions Bad Background Beliefs

Risk assessment irrationally exaggerates low probability impacts.
Objective risk analysis is impossible because our decisions are always
tainted by our background beliefs- vote affirmative in the face of the
undeniable impact of detention
Teuber, Professor of Philosophyat Brandeis University, 1990,
Andreas Teuber"JUSTIFYING RISK," Daedalus, Volume 119 Number 4, Fall, 1990
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/paperrisk.html
Even if the practical difficulties of obtaining people's consent could be overcome, it

is widely reported that people are notoriously poor judges of risks. People's
perceptions frequently fail to match up with the actual dangers risks pose and few
people have a "feel" for what a chance of dying, say a chance of one in a million, really
means. Research by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman has shown that we are
regularly led astray in our assessments of probabilities by rules of thumb. Faced with a
judgment that requires even a minimal familiarity with statistics, we frequently

avoid the statistical information and rely instead on a description or heuristic which
feels less strange. 8 We tend to overemphasize low probabilities and underestimate large ones.
We have to struggle to resist the gambler's fallacy: the belief that after a series of losses the odds
must favor a win. We are also poor judges of outcomes. We appear to be more concerned to
avoid a loss than to receive an equivalent gain, and this asymmetry can be
exploited in the way choices are presented.9 Retailers, for example, know enough about
our suceptibility to the way options are framed to represent a surcharge for credit card customers
as a discount to those who are willing to pay cash.10 The influence of framing on judgments about
risk is systematic and pervasive, and shows up at all levels of education. Health care professionals
are no less susceptible to the effects of framing than their patients who have less experience and
lack their expertise. The following hypothetical case was put to a group of physicians: Imagine that
you have operable lung cancer and must choose between two treatments: surgery and radiation
therapy. Of 100 people having surgery, 10 die during the operation, 32 are dead after one year, and
66 after five years. Of 100 people having radiation therapy, none die during treatment, 23 are
deadafter one year, and 78 after five years. Which treatment do you prefer?11 Given these options,
fifty percent of the physicians said they preferred radiation treatment. However when the same
options were presented in terms of survival rates rather than mortality rates, 84% said they would
prefer surgery. It is perhaps not completely surprising to learn that people are poor judges of
probabilities, but "we want to give [people] credit for at least knowing their own minds," as one
report puts it, "when it comes to assigning values to the outcomes of their choices."12 Apparently,
very little credit is due, as experiment after experiment reveals: Imagine that the United States is
preparing for the outbreak of an unusual flu epidemic which is expected to kill 600 people, unless
action is taken. Two alternative programs to combat the disease are proposed If program A is
adopted, 200 people will be saved. If program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that 600 will
be saved and a 2/3 probability that no one will be saved When the alternatives were posed in these
terms in a test survey, 72 percent of the respondents opted for program A, only 28 percent for
program B. A second group was given the same options, but re-described (re-framed) in this way: If
program A is adopted, 400 people will die; if program B is adopted, there is a 1/3 probability that
nobody will die, and a 2/3 probability that 600 people will die This time only 22 percent opted for
the first program, while 78 percent opted for the second.13 It is generally believed that
consistency in judgments is a minimal condition of rationality. Since our judgments

about risk are apparently inconsistent, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that
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our attitudes towards risk are also irrational. These findings have disturbing
implications for public policy, especially in a society like our own which relies on a
democratic process. If we are irrational in our judgments about risk, the policies we
enact will reflect a similar bias. Given our untrustworthy attitudes, a consent-based
approach to legitimating risk-imposing activities can only lead to irrational public
policies.
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Predictions Bad Irresponsibility

The production of risk enacts a system of organized irresponsibility that
relies on obsolete political ideologies. The aff challenges the current
epistemology of risk- its not sufficient to respond to risk as a purely
material event.
Elliott, Foundation Director of the Centre for Critical Theory at the
University of the West of England, 2002
Anthony Elliot Becks sociology of Risk: A Critical Assessment, Sociology, Sociology,
Vol. 36, No. 2, 2002
It is the autonomous, compulsive dynamic of advanced or reflexive modernization

that, according to Beck, propels modern men and women into self-confrontation
with the consequences of risk that cannot adequately be addressed, measured,
controlled or overcome, at least according to the standards of industrial society.
Modernitys blindness to the risks and dangers produced by modernization all of which happens
automatically and unreflectingly, according to
Beck leads to societal self-confrontation: that is, the questioning of division between centres of
political activity and the decision-making capacity of society itself. Society, in effect, seeks to
reclaim the political from its modernist relegation to the institutional sphere, and this, says Beck, is
achieved primarily through sub-political means that is, locating the politics of risk at the heart of
forms of social and cultural life. Within the horizon of the opposition between old routine and new
awareness of consequences and dangers, writes Beck, society becomes self-critical (1999b: 81).
The prospects for arresting the dark sides of industrial progress and advanced
modernization through reflexivity are routinely short-circuited, according to Beck,
by the insidious influence of organized irresponsibility. Irresponsibility, as Beck
uses the term, refers to a political contradiction of the self-jeopardization and selfendangerment of risk society. This is a contradiction between an emerging public awareness
of risks produced by and within the
social-institutional system on the one hand, and the lack of attribution of systemic risks to this
system on the other. There is, in Becks reckoning, a constant denial of the suicidal
tendency of risk society the system of organized irresponsibility which

manifests itself in, say, technically orientated legal procedures designed to satisfy
rigorous causal proof of individual liability and guilt.
This self-created dead end, in which culpability is passed off on to individuals and
thus collectively denied, is maintained through political ideologies of industrial
fatalism: faith in progress, dependence on rationality and the rule of expert
opinion.
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Predictions Bad - Monkeys

Expert predictions are less accurate than dart throwing monkeys
Menand, Harvard Professor, 05
Louis Menand 2005 PhD Colombia and Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and
American Literature and Language at Harvard University., The New Yorker, 12-052005, http://www.newyorker.com/critics/con...205crbo_books1
It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlocks new book, Expert Political Judgment:
How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton; $35), that people who make prediction
their businesspeople who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper
articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtablesare no
better than the rest of us. When theyre wrong, theyre rarely held accountable,
and they rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided
by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons. They have the same
repertoire of self-justifications that everyone has, and are no more inclined than anyone
else to revise their beliefs about the way the world works, or ought to work, just
because they made a mistake. No one is paying you for your gratuitous opinions about
other people, but the experts are being paid, and Tetlock claims that the better known and
more frequently quoted they are, the less reliable their guesses about the future are
likely to be. The accuracy of an experts predictions actually has an inverse
relationship to his or her self-confidence, renown, and, beyond a certain point, depth of
knowledge. People who follow current events by reading the papers and newsmagazines
regularly can guess what is likely to happen about as accurately as the specialists whom the
papers quote. Our system of expertise is completely inside out: it rewards bad judgments over
good ones.
Expert Political Judgment is not a work of media criticism. Tetlock is a psychologisthe
teaches at Berkeleyand his conclusions are based on a long-term study that he
began twenty years ago. He picked two hundred and eighty-four people who made their
living commenting or offering advice on political and economic trends, and he started
asking them to assess the probability that various things would or would not come to pass,
both in the areas of the world in which they specialized and in areas about which they were
not expert. Would there be a nonviolent end to apartheid in South Africa? Would Gorbachev
be ousted in a coup? Would the United States go to war in the Persian Gulf? Would Canada
disintegrate? (Many experts believed that it would, on the ground that Quebec would succeed
in seceding.) And so on. By the end of the study, in 2003, the experts had made 82,361
forecasts. Tetlock also asked questions designed to determine how they reached their
judgments, how they reacted when their predictions proved to be wrong, how they evaluated
new information that did not support their views, and how they assessed the probability that
rival theories and predictions were accurate.
Tetlock got a statistical handle on his task by putting most of the forecasting questions into a
three possible futures form. The respondents were asked to rate the probability of three
alternative outcomes: the persistence of the status quo, more of something (political freedom,
economic growth), or less of something (repression, recession). And he measured his experts
on two dimensions: how good they were at guessing probabilities (did all the things they said
had an x per cent chance of happening happen x per cent of the time?), and how accurate
they were at predicting specific outcomes. The results were unimpressive. On the first
scale, the experts performed worse than they would have if they had simply
assigned an equal probability to all three outcomesif they had given each possible
future a thirty-three-per-cent chance of occurring. Human beings who spend their lives
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studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dartthrowing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.
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Predictions Bad Decisionmaking Spillover

Refusing their method is critical to move away from this bad form of risk rejection within the laboratory of debate spills over to policy making
Herbeck, Prof at Boston College, 92
Dale A. Herbeck, Professor of Communication and Director of the Fulton Debating
Society at Boston College, and John P. Katsulas, Debate Coach at Boston College, "The
Use and Abuse of Risk Analysis in Polcy Debate," Paper Presented at the 78th Annual
meeting of the Speech Communication Association (Chicago, IL), October 29thNovember 1st 1992, Available Online via ERIC Number ED354559, p. 10-12
It is sometimes argued that debate is a laboratory for testing argumentation. Critics of the
laboratory metaphor have argued that we have failed as scientists, for we have produced little of
consequence in our lab. Perhaps our experience with risk analysis in debate can inform
our understanding of the crisis rhetoric which we confront on an almost daily basis.
The best check on such preposterous claims, it seems to us, is an appreciation of
nature of risk analysis and how it functions in argumentation. If we understand this
tool, we will be well-armed in our battle with the bogeyman of our age
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AT: Monkeys
Menand bases his claims off flawed principals in Expert Political
Judgement
Davies, staff for STMI Consulting, 07
Adrian Davies, 15 July 2007. St Andrews Management Institute, Book Review:
Expert Politial Judgement. http://www.samiconsulting.co.uk/4bookrev26.html
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy. This was
Hamlets admission that he was confused by complexity and had difficulty in coming to judgment.
Hamlets solution was inexpert and created a new set of political problems.
Expert Political Judgment is an attempt to identify the characteristics of

individuals who have the ability to analyse situations in depth and with accurate
foresight so that their decisions are informed by expert political judgment . The
author is a psychologist but has worked for many years with a range of specialists in different
disciplines in order to distil the quintessence of expert political judgment, not only for the
immediate need but sustainable into the longer term. The main focus of the book is on forecasting
outcomes of particular situations and on identifying the specific techniques and mental attitudes
which do so most successfully. Luck is recognised as a factor but is set aside as exogenous. The
quest is for the mindset and toolkit which will optimise forecasting by quantifying the
unquantifiable. For the mindset contrasts are drawn between radical sceptics, who expect
nothing and meliorists who are open to seeking improved outcomes. Another facet of mindset is
Isiah Berlins contrast between hedgehogs who know one big thing and foxes who know
many little things. In the context of the book hedgehogs emerge as having fixed views, seeing
issues as black or white and supremely self-confident. By contrast foxes are open-minded,
flexible and self-critical. One key finding of the book is that foxes emerge as winners of most of
the tests, yet hedgehogs are more focussed and willing to make tough decisions. In times of
increasing uncertainty it would seem that fox-like characteristics are at a premium over those of
hedgehogs in evaluation, though hedgehog confidence is needed to take action.
The book draws to a conclusion with a challenge: Are we open-minded enough to acknowledge
the limits of open-mindedness? This chapter is a critique of scenario planning which the
author sees as advising only that anything is possible. Too often those involved
are over absorbed in inward looking details to build their stories, while an outside
view is needed to provide a reality check. Tetlock fails to realise that scenario
planning should be used as a means of guiding action not engendering endless
debate.
Judgment seems to involve a metacognitive trade off between theory driven and
imagination driven modes of thinking. Theory offers certainty and imagination
helps to cope with uncertainty. The author sees the best long term predictor of
good judgment to be a Socratic commitment by protagonists to thinking about how
they think.
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Predictions Good (1/3)

We should make predictions even if they arent perfect
Fuyuki Kurasawa, Associate Professor of Sociology at York University, 4 (Constellations, Vol.
11, No. 4)
When engaging in the labor of preventive foresight, the first obstacle that one is likely to encounter from some
intellectual circles is a deep-seated skepticism about the very value of the exercise. A radically postmodern line of
thinking, for instance, would lead us to believe that it is pointless, perhaps even harmful, to strive for
farsightedness in light of the aforementioned crisis of conventional paradigms of historical analysis. If, contra
teleological models, history has no intrinsic meaning, direction, or endpoint to be discovered through human reason, and if,
contra scientistic futurism, prospective trends cannot be predicted without error, then the abyss of chronological
inscrutability supposedly opens up at our feet. The future appears to be unknowable, an outcome of chance. Therefore,
rather than embarking upon grandiose speculation about what may occur, we should adopt a pragmatism that abandons
itself to the twists and turns of history; let us be content to formulate ad hoc responses to emergencies as they arise. While
this argument has the merit of underscoring the fallibilistic nature of all predictive schemes, it conflates the necessary
recognition of the contingency of history with unwarranted assertions about the latters total opacity and indeterminacy.
Acknowledging the fact that the future cannot be known with absolute certainty does not imply
abandoning the task of trying to understand what is brewing on the horizon and to prepare for
crises already coming into their own. In fact, the incorporation of the principle of fallibility into the
work of prevention means that we must be ever more vigilant for warning signs of disaster and for
responses that provoke unintended or unexpected consequences (a point to which I will return in the final
section of this paper). In addition, from a normative point of view, the acceptance of historical contingency and of the selflimiting character of farsightedness places the duty of preventing catastrophe squarely on the shoulders of present
generations. The future no longer appears to be a metaphysical creature of destiny or of the cunning of reason, nor can it be
sloughed off to pure randomness. It becomes, instead, a result of human action shaped by decisions in the present
including, of course, trying to anticipate and prepare for possible and avoidable sources of harm to our successors.
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Their Menand evidence doesnt apply it doesnt say that all predictions
are bad, just that predictions without evidence are bad
Menand, Harvard Professor, 05
Louis Menand 2005 PhD Colombia and Robert M. and Anne T. Bass Professor of English and
American Literature and Language at Harvard University The New Yorker, 10/5/2005, lexis
It was no news to Tetlock, therefore, that experts got beaten by formulas. But he does believe that he discovered something
about why some people make better forecasters than other people . It has to do not with what the experts
believe but with the way they think. Tetlock uses Isaiah Berlin's metaphor from Archilochus, from his essay on Tolstoy, "The
Hedgehog and the Fox," to illustrate the difference. He says: Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who
"know one big thing," aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly
impatience with those who "do not get it," and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient
forecasters, at least in the long term . High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things
(tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather
as exercises in flexible "ad hocery" that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident
about their own forecasting prowess. A hedgehog is a person who sees international affairs to be ultimately determined by a
single bottom-line force: balance-of-power considerations, or the clash of civilizations, or globalization and the spread of free
markets. A hedgehog is the kind of person who holds a great-man theory of history, according to which the Cold War does
not end if there is no Ronald Reagan. Or he or she might adhere to the "actor-dispensability thesis," according to which
Soviet Communism was doomed no matter what. Whatever it is, the big idea, and that idea alone, dictates the probable
outcome of events. For the hedgehog, therefore, predictions that fail are only "off on timing," or are "almost right," derailed
by an unforeseeable accident. There are always little swerves in the short run, but the long run irons them out. Foxes, on the
other hand, don't see a single determining explanation in history. They tend, Tetlock says, "to see the world as a shifting
mixture of self-fulfilling and self-negating prophecies: self-fulfilling ones in which success breeds success, and failure, failure
but only up to a point, and then self-negating prophecies kick in as people recognize that things have gone too far." Tetlock
did not find, in his sample, any significant correlation between how experts think and what their politics are. His hedgehogs
were liberal as well as conservative, and the same with his foxes. (Hedgehogs were, of course, more likely to be extreme
politically, whether rightist or leftist.) He also did not find that his foxes scored higher because they were more cautious-that
their appreciation of complexity made them less likely to offer firm predictions. Unlike hedgehogs, who actually performed
worse in areas in which they specialized, foxes enjoyed a modest benefit from expertise. Hedgehogs routinely
over-predicted: twenty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs claimed were impossible or nearly impossible came to pass,
versus ten per cent for the foxes. More than thirty per cent of the outcomes that hedgehogs thought were sure or near-sure
did not, against twenty per cent for foxes. The upside of being a hedgehog, though, is that when you're right you can be
really and spectacularly right. Great scientists, for example, are often hedgehogs. They value parsimony, the simpler
solution over the more complex. In world affairs, parsimony may be a liability-but, even there, there can be traps in the kind
of highly integrative thinking that is characteristic of foxes. Elsewhere, Tetlock has published an analysis of the political
reasoning of Winston Churchill. Churchill was not a man who let contradictory information interfere with his idees fixes. This
led him to make the wrong prediction about Indian independence, which he opposed. But it led him to be right about Hitler.
He was never distracted by the contingencies that might combine to make the elimination of Hitler unnecessary. Tetlock
also has an unscientific point to make, which is that "we as a society would be better off if
participants in policy debates stated their beliefs in testable forms"-that is, as
probabilities-"monitored their forecasting performance, and honored their reputational bets." He thinks that
we're suffering from our primitive attraction to deterministic, overconfident hedgehogs. It's true that the only thing the
electronic media like better than a hedgehog is two hedgehogs who don't agree. Tetlock notes, sadly, a point that Richard
Posner has made about these kinds of public intellectuals, which is that most of them are dealing in "solidarity"
goods, not "credence" goods. Their analyses and predictions are tailored to make their ideological
brethren feel good-more white swans for the white-swan camp. A prediction, in this context, is just an exclamation point
added to an analysis. Liberals want to hear that whatever conservatives are up to is bound to go badly; when the argument
gets more nuanced, they change the channel. On radio and television and the editorial page, the line between expertise and
advocacy is very blurry, and pundits behave exactly the way Tetlock says they will. Bush Administration loyalists say that
their predictions about postwar Iraq were correct, just a little off on timing; pro-invasion liberals who are now trying to
dissociate themselves from an adventure gone bad insist that though they may have sounded a false alarm, they erred "in
the right direction"-not really a mistake at all.
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The study Menand cites is out of context it just says that we need to
examine the evidence behind predictions.
Tetlock, psychologist, 05
Philip
Tetlock
(psychologist)
2005
http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s7959.html)
Expert
Political
Judgement,
Chapters 2 and 3 explore correspondence indicators. Drawing on the literature on judgmental accuracy, I divide the guiding
hypotheses into two categories: those rooted in radical skepticism, which equates good political judgment with good luck,
and those rooted in meliorism, which maintains that the quest for predictors of good judgment, and ways to improve
ourselves, is not quixotic and there are better and worse ways of thinking that translate into better and worse judgments.
Chapter 2 introduces us to the radical skeptics and their varied reasons for embracing their counterintuitive creed. Their
guiding precept is that, although we often talk ourselves into believing we live in a predictable world, we delude ourselves:
history is ultimately one damned thing after another, a random walk with upward and downward blips but devoid of thematic
continuity. Politics is no more predictable than other games of chance. On any given spin of the roulette wheel of history,
crackpots will claim vindication for superstitious schemes that posit patterns in randomness. But these schemes will fail in
cross-validation. What works today will disappoint tomorrow.34 Here is a doctrine that runs against the grain of human
nature, our shared need to believe that we live in a comprehensible world that we can master if we apply ourselves.35
Undiluted radical skepticism requires us to believe, really believe, that when the time comes to
choose among controversial policy options--to support Chinese entry into the World Trade
Organization or to bomb Baghdad or Belgrade or to build a ballistic missile defense--we could do as
well by tossing coins as by consulting experts.36 Chapter 2 presents evidence from regional forecasting
exercises consistent with this debunking perspective. It tracks the accuracy of hundreds of experts for dozens of countries on
topics as disparate as transitions to democracy and capitalism, economic growth, interstate violence, and nuclear
proliferation. When we pit experts against minimalist performance benchmarks--dilettantes, dart-throwing chimps, and
assorted extrapolation algorithms--we find few signs that expertise translates into greater ability to make either "wellcalibrated" or "discriminating" forecasts. Radical skeptics welcomed these results, but they start squirming
when we start finding patterns of consistency in who got what right. Radical skepticism tells us to expect
nothing (with the caveat that if we toss enough coins, expect some streakiness). But the data revealed more consistency in
forecasters' track records than could be ascribed to chance. Meliorists seize on these findings to argue that crude humanversus-chimp comparisons mask systematic individual differences in good judgment. Although
meliorists agree that skeptics go too far in portraying good judgment as illusory, they agree on little else. Cognitive-content
meliorists identify good judgment with a particular outlook but squabble over which points of view represent movement
toward or away from the truth. Cognitive-style meliorists identify good judgment not with what one thinks, but with how one
thinks. But they squabble over which styles of reasoning--quick and decisive versus balanced and thoughtful--enhance or
degrade judgment. Chapter 3 tests a multitude of meliorist hypotheses--most of which bite the dust. Who experts were-professional background, status, and so on--made scarcely an iota of difference to accuracy. Nor did what experts thought-whether they were liberals or conservatives, realists or institutionalists, optimists or pessimists. But the search bore fruit.
How experts thought--their style of reasoning--did matter. Chapter 3 demonstrates the usefulness
of classifying experts along a rough cognitive-style continuum anchored at one end by Isaiah
Berlin's prototypical hedgehog and at the other by his prototypical fox.37 The intellectually
aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand
the explanatory power of that big thing to "cover" new cases ; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things
and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
Treating the regional
forecasting studies as a decathlon between rival strategies of making sense of the world, the foxes consistently edge
out the hedgehogs but enjoy their most decisive victories in long-term exercises inside their
domains of expertise. Analysis of explanations for their predictions sheds light on how foxes pulled off this cognitivestylistic coup. The foxes' self-critical, point-counterpoint style of thinking prevented them from building
up the sorts of excessive enthusiasm for their predictions that hedgehogs, especially well-informed ones,
displayed for theirs. Foxes were more sensitive to how contradictory forces can yield stable equilibria and, as a result,
"overpredicted" fewer departures, good or bad, from the status quo. But foxes did not mindlessly predict the past. They
recognized the precariousness of many equilibria and hedged their bets by rarely ruling out anything as "impossible." These
results favor meliorism over skepticism--and they favor the pro-complexity branch of meliorism, which proclaims the
adaptive superiority of the tentative, balanced modes of thinking favored by foxes,38 over the pro-simplicity branch, which
proclaims the superiority of the confident, decisive modes of thinking favored by hedgehogs.39 These results also
domesticate radical skepticism, with its wild-eyed implication that experts have nothing useful to tell us about the future
beyond what we could have learned from tossing coins or inspecting goat entrails . This tamer brand of skepticism--
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skeptical meliorism--still warns of the dangers of hubris, but it allows for how a self-critical,
dialectical style of reasoning can spare experts the big mistakes that hammer down the accuracy of
their more intellectually exuberant colleagues.
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Mag. Evaluated First (1/3)

Nuclear war and extinction outweighs all impacts a fraction of infinity is
still infinity
Schell, Visiting Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, 82
Jonathan Schell, Fate of the Earth, pp. 93-96 1982
On the other hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the
knowledge that the species may be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When the
existence of nuclear weapons was made known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized
that if the great powers entered into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later
face the possibility of extinction. They also realized that in the absence of international agreements
preventing it an arms race would probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was
a dead end for mankind. The discovery of the energy in mass of "the basic power of the universe"
and of a means by which man could release that energy altered the relationship between man
and the source of his life, the earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the
life of the human species doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the
political agenda of the world ever since the first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no
need for the world to build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At
just what point the species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the
technical knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at
any second, is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand
megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have
entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere
risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and
immeasurably greater than that of any other risk and as we make our decisions we have
to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within the
framework of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the defeat of some
purpose but an abyss in which all human purpose would be drowned for all time. We
have no right to place the possibility of this limitless, eternal defeat on the same footing as risk that
we run in the ordinary conduct of our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To
employ a mathematician's analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be
fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still
infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we have
no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone
else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the
difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and
the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue
of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end
to our species. In weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a
mystery, and in tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our
ignorance should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should
inspire us to reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without
delay to withdraw the threat we now post to the world and to ourselves.
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National leaders dont have the Luxury of ignoring large impacts
Zeihan, IR expert for Stratfor, 08
Peter Zeihan, expert on international relations and Asian Politics, Vice President of
global analysis for Stratfor April 23, 2008
Fear is a powerful motivator, even getting results when the threat is exceedingly
remote. It makes us cross at crosswalks even when traffic is thin, pay more over time for fire
insurance than our homes are worth, and shy away from snakes even when signs clearly inform us
they are not poisonous. Humans instinctively take steps to prevent negative outcomes, oftentimes
regardless of how likely or more to the point, unlikely those unpleasant outcomes are.
As with individuals, the same is true for countries. Anyone can blithely say Cuba
or Serbia would not dare ignore the will of their more powerful neighbors,or that Brazils
or Egypts nuclear programs are so inconsequential as not to impact the international
balance of power. But such opinions even if they truly are near-certainties cannot
form the foundation of state power. National leaders do not have the
luxury of ignoring the plethora of coulds, mights and maybes that pepper their radar scr
eens every day. An analyst can dismiss a dark possibility as dubious, but a national leader
cannot gamble with the lives of his countrymen and the existence of his state. They
must evaluate even improbable threats against the potential damage
to their respective national interests.
Many of the standing policies we take for granted have grown from such evaluations.
While the likelihood of Israel bombing the Aswan High Dam is rather remote, Egypt cannot afford to
risk the possibility, which contributed to Cairos burying-of-the-hatchet with Israel. Worrying about
continental European countries sublimating their national differences, uniting into a federated super
state and invading the United Kingdom may seem to flirt with lunacy, but within that lingering
concern lies the root of the Anglo-American alliance. Similarly, worrying about China
using the archipelagos of Southeast Asia as a staging point for an invasion of Australia may seem
ludicrous, but that fear dominates military planning in Canberra.
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Some impacts warrant extra attention.
Nicholas Rescher (Department of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh)
Philosophical Introduction to the theory of risk evaluation, p. 67
1983
Risk: A
Certain hazards are simply

unacceptable because they involve a relatively unacceptable threatthings may go wrong so badly
that, relative to the alternatives , its just not worthwhile to run the risk, even in the face of a favorable
balance of probabilities. The rational man is not willing to trade off against one another by juggling probabilities such
In such situations we are dealing with hazards that are just not in the same league.
outcomes as the loss of one hair and the loss of his health or his freedom. The imbalance or disparity between risks is just
too great to be restored by probablistic readjustments. They are (probablistically) incommersuable: confronted with
such incomparable hazards, we do not bother to weigh this balance of probabilities at all, but
simply dismiss one alternative as involving risks that are, in the circumstances, unacceptable.
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Role of Ballot = Magnitude

The ballot should prefer the advocacy that avoids the fastest and most probable internal
link to extinction
Bostrom Prof at Oxford, 02

Nick Bostrom, PhD and Professor at Oxford University, March, 2002 [Journal of Evolution
and Technology, vol 9] http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
Previous sections have argued that the combined probability of the existential risks
is very substantial. Although there is still a fairly broad range of differing estimates that
responsible thinkers could make, it is nonetheless arguable that because the negative utility
of an existential disaster is so enormous, the objective of reducing existential risks
should be a dominant consideration when acting out of concern for humankind as a
whole. It may be useful to adopt the following rule of thumb for moral action; we can call
it Maxipok: Maximize the probability of an okay outcome, where an okay outcome is any outcome
that avoids existential disaster. At best, this is a rule of thumb, a prima facie suggestion, rather
than a principle of absolute validity, since there clearly are other moral objectives than preventing
terminal global disaster. Its usefulness consists in helping us to get our priorities
straight. Moral action is always at risk to diffuse its efficacy on feel-good

projects[24] rather on serious work that has the best chance of fixing the worst ills.
The cleft between the feel-good projects and what really has the greatest potential
for good is likely to be especially great in regard to existential risk. Since the goal is
somewhat abstract and since existential risks dont currently cause suffering in any living
creature[25], there is less of a feel-good dividend to be derived from efforts that seek to reduce
them. This suggests an offshoot moral project, namely to reshape the popular moral
perception so as to give more credit and social approbation to those who devote
their time and resources to benefiting humankind via global safety compared to
other philanthropies. Maxipok, a kind of satisficing rule, is different from Maximin (Choose the
action that has the best worst-case outcome.)[26]. Since we cannot completely eliminate
existential risks (at any moment we could be sent into the dustbin of cosmic history by the
advancing front of a vacuum phase transition triggered in a remote galaxy a billion years ago) using
maximin in the present context has the consequence that we should choose the act that has the
greatest benefits under the assumption of impending extinction. In other words, maximin implies
that we should all start partying as if there were no tomorrow. While that option is indisputably
attractive, it seems best to acknowledge that there just might be a tomorrow, especially if we play
our cards right.
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Extinction Evaluated First

Even a regional nuclear war would destroy all life on Earth ozone loss
and UV rays prove
Gache, Science News Editor, 08
Gabriel Gache, Science News Editor for Softpedia, an online science and technology
news resource 8th of April 2008 http://news.softpedia.com/news/Regional-Nuclear-WarWould-Destroy-the-World-82760.shtml
Global or not, a nuclear war would kill us all. And if nuclear weapons didn't do the job, then the Sun
would. According to recent studies, a regional global war would cause the ozone layer of the Earth
to be destroyed in as little as a decade, all living beings being at the mercy of the Sun's ultraviolet
rays. Ultraviolet light has the ability to alter the human DNA, but other organisms may be at risk as
well. 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would be enough to determine substantial changes in Earth's
atmosphere. Take India and Pakistan for example; both have a nuclear arsenal of about 50 nuclear warheads
bearing 15 kilotons of explosive material. In case the disagreements between the two countries reach very
high levels as to make use of their entire nuclear arsenal, global disaster is soon to follow.
"The figure of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs compares pretty accurately to the approximately 110 warheads that
both states reportedly possess between them," says professor of non-proliferation and international security
in the War Studies Group at King's College, Wyn Bowen.
Michael Mills of the University of Colorado at Boulder, US, and colleagues used computer models to study how
100 Hiroshima-sized bombs would affect the atmosphere. Michael Mills from the University of Colorado
reckons that such a nuclear war in South Asia would decay about 40 percent of the ozone layer in
the middle latitudes and 70 percent in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
"The models show this magnitude of ozone loss would persist for five years, and we would see
substantial losses continuing for at least another five years," says Mills.
Mills extracted his results from computer models. Previous models were created during the 1980s, however
those investigations revealed that impact of the nuclear detonations would be much more moderate. This
might be because the old models do not take into consideration the columns of soot rising at altitudes of 80
kilometers into Earth's atmosphere, as Mills considers.
Once the soot is released into the upper atmosphere, it would block and absorb most of the solar energy, thus
determining a heating of the surrounding atmosphere, process that facilitates the reaction between nitrogen
oxides and ozone. Ultraviolet rays influx, caused by the decay of the ozone layer, would increase by
213 percent, causing DNA damage, skin cancers and cataract in most - if not all - living beings.
Alternatively, plants would suffer damage twice, as the current due to ultraviolet light.
"By adopting the Montreal Protocol in 1987, society demonstrated it was unwilling to tolerate a
small percentage of ozone loss because of serious health risks. But ozone loss from a limited
nuclear exchange would be more than an order of magnitude larger than ozone loss from the
release of gases like CFCs," says co-author of the study Brian Toon. "This study is very conservative
in its estimates. It should ring alarm bells to remind us all that nuclear war can destroy our world far
faster than carbon dioxide emissions," says Dan Plesch, of the Centre for International Studies and
Diplomacy at theSchool of Oriental and African Studies, UK, although he notes that no one knows
how likely a nuclear exchange is.
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**PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**
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Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Avoidance

Precautionary Principle essential to avoid unquantifiable risks
Myers, director of science and health, 04
Nancy Myers is communications director for the Science and Environmental Health
Network. multinational
monitor
September
2004,
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2004/09012004/september04corp1.html
But serious, evident effects such as these can seldom be linked decisively to a single
cause. Scientific standards of certainty (or "proof") about cause and effect are high. These
standards may never be satisfied when many different factors are working together, producing
many different results. Sometimes the period of time between particular causes and
particular results is so long, with so many intervening factors, that it is impossible to
make a definitive link. Sometimes the timing of exposure is crucial -- a trace of the wrong
chemical at the wrong time in pregnancy, for example, may trigger problems in the child's brain or
endocrine system, but the child's mother might never know she was exposed.
In the real world, there is no way of knowing for sure how much healthier people might
be if they did not live in the modern chemical stew, because the chemicals are everywhere -- in
babies' first bowel movement, in the blood of U.S. teenagers and in the breastmilk of Inuit mothers.
No unexposed "control" population exists. But clearly, significant numbers of birth defects,
cancers and learning disabilities are preventable.
Scientific uncertainty is a fact of life even when it comes to the most obvious
environmental problems, such as the disappearance of species, and the most potentially
devastating trends, such as climate change. Scientists seldom know for sure what will
happen until it happens, and seldom have all the answers about causes until well after
the fact, if ever. Nevertheless, scientific knowledge, as incomplete as it may be, provides
important clues to all of these conditions and what to do about them.
The essence of the Precautionary Principle is that when lives and the future of the planet
are at stake, people must act on these clues and prevent as much harm as possible,
despite imperfect knowledge and even ignorance.
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Precautionary Principle Good- Risk Fails

Risk Assessment paradigms fail
monitor
September
2004,
Ironically, one tool that has proved highly effective in the battle against environmental
regulations was one that was meant to strengthen the enforcement of such laws: quantitative
risk assessment. Risk assessment was developed in the 1970s and 1980s as a systematic
way to evaluate the degree and likelihood of harmful side effects from products and
technologies. With precise, quantitative risk assessments in hand, regulators could more
convincingly demonstrate the need for action. Risk assessments would stand up in court. Risk
assessments could "prove" that a product was dangerous, would cause a certain number of deaths
per million, and should be taken off the market.
Or not. Quantitative risk assessment, which became standard practice in the United States in
the mid-1980s and was institutionalized in the global trade agreements of the 1990s, turned out
to be most useful in "proving" that a product or technology was not inordinately
dangerous. More precisely, risk assessments presented sets of numbers that purported to state
definitively how much harm might occur. The next question for policymakers then became: How
much harm is acceptable? Quantitative risk assessment not only provided the answers; it
dictated the questions.
As quantitative risk assessment became the norm, commercial and industrial interests
were increasingly able to insist that harm must be proven "scientifically" -- in the form of a
quantitative risk assessment demonstrating harm in excess of acceptable limits -- before action
was taken to stop a process or product. These exercises were often linked with cost-benefit
assessments that heavily weighted the immediate monetary costs of regulations and gave little, if
any, weight to costs to the environment or future generations.
Although risk assessments tried to account for uncertainties, those projections were
necessarily subject to assumptions and simplifications. Quantitative risk assessments
usually addressed a limited number of potential harms, often missing social, cultural or
broader environmental factors. These risk assessments have consumed enormous resources in
strapped regulatory agencies and have slowed the regulatory process. They have diverted attention
from questions that could be answered: Do better alternatives exist? Can harm be prevented?
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Precautionary Principle Good Risk Fails

Precautionary Principle preferable to Risk assessment
monitor
September
2004,
Risk assessment is the prevalent tool used to justify decisions about technologies and
products. Its proponents argue that because conservative assumptions are built into these
assessments, they are sufficiently precautionary.
Too often, however, risk assessment has been used to delay precautionary action:
decision-makers wait to get enough information and then attempt to "manage" rather
than prevent risks. Risk assessment is not necessarily inconsistent with the Precautionary
Principle, but because it omits certain basic requirements of the decision-making process,
the current type of risk assessment is only helpful at a narrow stage of the process,
when the product, technology or activity and alternatives have been well developed and tested and
a great deal of information has already been gathered about them. Standard risk assessment, in
other words, is only useful in conditions of relatively high certainty, and generally only
to help evaluate alternatives to damaging technologies.
Under the Precautionary Principle, uncertainty is also given due weight. The
Precautionary Principle calls for the examination of a wider range of harms -- including
social and economic ones -- than traditional risk analysis provides. It points to the need to examine
not only single, linear risks but also complex interactions among multiple factors, and the broadest
possible range of harmful effects.
This broad, probing consideration of harm -- including the identification of uncertainty -- should
begin as early as possible in the conception of a technology and should continue through its release
and use. That is, a precautionary approach should begin before the regulatory phase of decisionmaking and should be built into the research agenda.
What is not consistent with the Precautionary Principle is the misleading certainty often
implied by quantitative risk assessments -- that precise numbers can be assigned to the
possibility of harm or level of safety, that these numbers are usually a sufficient basis for deciding
whether the substance or technology is "safe," and that lack of numbers means there is no reason
to take action. The assumptions behind risk assessments -- what "risks" are evaluated and
how comparisons are made -- are easily manipulated by those with a stake in their
outcome.
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Precautionary Principle Good- AT Innovation Stultification

The Precautionary Principle improves innovation
monitor
September
2004,
Precautionary action usually means adopting safer alternatives. A broad precautionary approach
will encourage the development of better technologies. Using this approach, society will say "yes"
to some technologies while it says "no" to others. Making uncertainty explicit, considering
alternatives, and increasing transparency and the responsibility of proponents and manufacturers
to demonstrate safety should lead to cleaner products and production methods. It can also mean
imposing a moratorium while further research is conducted, calling for monitoring of technologies
and products already in use, and so forth
The Precautionary Principle encourages better technologies

monitor
September
2004,
This is not true. Precaution suggests two approaches to new technology:
Greater vigilance about possible harmful side effects of all innovations. Alternatives
to harmful technologies (such as genetic modification to reduce pesticide use) must be
scrutinized as carefully as the technologies they replace. It does not make sense to replace
one set of harms with another. Brand-new technologies must receive much greater
scrutiny than they have in the past.
Redirection of research and ingenuity toward inherently safer, more harmonious,
more sustainable technologies, products, and processes.
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Precautionary Principle Good- AT Zero Risk

Precautionary Principle doesnt demand zero risk, just an attempt to
reduce harm
monitor
September
2004,
Any debate over the possibility of "zero risk" is pointless. Our real goal must be to impose
far less risk and harm on the environment and on human health than we have in the past. We
must harness human ingenuity to reduce the harmful effects of our activities.
The real question is who or what gets the benefit of the doubt. The Precautionary Principle is
based on the assumption that people have the right to know as much as possible about
risks they are taking on, in exchange for what benefits, and to make choices accordingly. With
food and other products, such choices are often played out in the marketplace. Increasingly,
manufacturers are choosing to reduce risk themselves by substituting safer alternatives in response
to consumer uneasiness, the threat of liability and market pressures.
A key to making those choices is transparency -- about what products contain, and about the
testing and monitoring of those ingredients. Another is support, by government and industry,
for the exploration of -- and rigorous research on -- alternatives.
Market and voluntary action is not enough, especially on issues that go beyond individual and
corporate choice. It is the responsibility of communities, governments, and international bodies to
make far-reaching decisions that greatly reduce the risks we now impose on the earth and all its
inhabitants.
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Precautionary Principle Good- AT Cost

A2 very expensive
monitor
September
2004,
If a cost-benefit analysis indicates that a precautionary approach is too expensive, that analysis is
probably incomplete. Does it consider long-term costs? The costs to society? The costs of harmful
side effects -- monetary and nonmonetary? The costs spread over a product's entire lifecycle -including disposal? The pricetags of most products and developments do not reflect their real costs.
Like precautionary science, precautionary economics operates in the real world, in which
connections, costs and benefits are complex and surrounded by uncertainty -- but they cannot be
ignored. Tallying the "cost" of precaution requires making true value judgments, which can only
partially be expressed by money. But in the 21st Century, precaution is essential to a healthy,
sustainable economy.
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Precautionary Principle Good- AT Bad Science

The Precautionary Principle encourages scientific evaluation in addition
to societal action
monitor
September
2004,
On the contrary, the Precautionary Principle calls for more and better science, especially
investigations of complex interactions over longer periods of time and development of
more harmonious technologies. It calls for scientific monitoring after the approval of
products. The assertion that the principle is "anti-science" is based on any or all of the
following faulty assumptions:
1) Those who advocate precaution urge action on the basis of vague fears, regardless of whether
there is scientific evidence to support their fears.
Most statements of the Precautionary Principle say it applies when there is reason to believe serious
or irreversible harm may occur. Those reasons are based on scientific evidence of various kinds:
studies, observations, precedents, experience, professional judgment. They are based on what we
know about how processes work and might be affected by a technology.
However, precautionary decisions also take into account what we know we do not know.
The more we know, scientifically, the greater will be our ability to prevent disasters based on
ignorance. But we must be much more cautious than we have been in the past about
moving forward in ignorance.
2) Taking action in advance of scientific certainty undermines science.
Scientific standards of certainty are high in experimental science or for accepting or refuting a
hypothesis, and well they should be. Waiting to take action before a substance or
technology is proven harmful, or even until plausible cause-and-effect relationships can
be established, may mean allowing irreversible harm to occur -- deaths, extinctions,
poisoning, and the like. Humans and the environment become the unwitting testing grounds for
these technologies. This is no longer acceptable. Moreover, science should serve society, not
vice versa. Any decision to take action -- before or after scientific proof -- is a decision of society,
not science.
3) Quantitative risk assessment is more scientific than other kinds of evaluation.
Risk assessment is only one evaluation method and provides only partial answers. It does not take
into account many unknowns and seldom accounts for complex interactions -- nor does it raise our
sights to better alternatives.
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**AT PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE**
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Precautionary Principle Bad- Paralysis (1/3)

The precautionary principle is paralyzing and destroys the possibility for
any action
Sunstein professor at the University of Chicago Law School 2005,
Cass R Sunstein. prominent law professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle p3-4 2005
My larger point, the central claim of this chapter, is conceptual. The real problem with the
Precautionary Principle in its strongest forms is that it is incoherent; it purports to give
guidance, but it fails to do so, because it condemns the very steps that it requires. The
regulation that the principle requires always gives rise to risks of its own and hence
the principle bans what it simultaneously mandates. I therefore aim to challenge the
Precautionary Principle not because it leads in bad directions, but because read for all its worth, it
leads in no direction at all. The principle threatens to be paralyzing, forbidding regulation,
inaction, and every step in between. It provides help only if we blind ourselves to many
aspects of risk-related situations and focus on a narrow subset of what is at stake. That
kind of self-blinding is what makes the principle seem to give guidance; and I shall have a fair bit to
say about why people and societies are selective in their fears.
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The precautionary principle is flawed it totalizes risk assessment to the
point of nihilism and stifles calculated risk-taking that solves extinction
Scruton professor of philosophy 2004,
Roger Scruton former professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College in London, founder of
the Claridge Press and author of more than 20 published books on philosophy and
theory, Summer 2004[National Interest]
The Precautionary Principle clearly presents an obstacle to innovation and experiment.
But there are deeper reasons for being troubled by it , reasons that bear on the very essence
of human life and on our ability to solve practical problems. First, there is the tendency of the
principle to disaggregate risks in ways that defeat the possibility of reasonable
solutions. Risks are never single, nor do they come to us only from one direction or from
one point in time. By not taking the risk of angering my child, I take the risk of dealing, at some
later stage, with a spoiled and self-centered adolescent. All practical reasoning involves
weighing risks against one another, calculating probabilities, ring-fencing uncertainties,
taking account of relative benefits and costs. This mode of reasoning is instinctive to us and
has ensured our extraordinary success as a species. There is a branch of mathematicsdecision theory-devoted to formalizing it, and there is nothing in decision theory that looks like the
Precautionary Principle. For the effect of this principle is to isolate each risk as though it
were entirely independent of every other. Risks, according to the principle, come singlewrapped, and each demands the same response-namely-Don't! If, in obeying this
command, you find yourself taking another risk, then the answer again is "Don't!" The principle
is therefore logically on a par with the command given by an American president to his
senior civil servant: "Don't just do something, stand there!" But, as the president realized,
standing there is not something that civil servants are very good at. Bureaucrats have an inveterate
need to be seen to be doing something. The effect of the principle therefore is to forbid the
one identified risk, while removing all others from the equation. What this means can be
vividly seen from a recent instance. A European directive, responding to the slight risk that
diseased animals might enter the human food chain, insists that all slaughter should now
take place in the presence of a qualified vet, who must inspect each animal as it arrives at
the abattoir. There is no evidence that veterinary examination in these circumstances is
either necessary or (in the rare cases when infected animals come to the
abattoir) effective. Nevertheless, the Precautionary Principle delivered its usual result,
and the edict was imposed. Small abattoirs all over Britain were forced to close down,
since their profit margins are as narrow as those of the farmers whom they serve, and qualified
vets require fees that reflect their qualifications. The effect of this on husbandry,on the social
and economic life of farming communities, and on the viability of small pasture farms has
been devastating, the effect on animal welfare equally so. Instead of travelling a quarter of an hour
to the local abattoir, our herds must now travel three or four hours to one of the great processing plants that enjoy the
presence of a permanent vet. Farmers who have taken pride in their animals and cared for them through two or more
winters are distressed to part with them on such terms, and the animals themselves suffer greatly. This damage done
to the relation be-tween farmer and herd has further adverse effects on the
landscape. Unable to take full responsibility for the life and the death of his animals, a farmer
ceases to see the pointof his unprofitable trade. The small pasture farms that created the
landscape of England are now rapidly disappearing, to be replaced by faceless agrobusinesses or equestrian leisure centers. This damages our landscape, and in doing so
damages our sense of nationhood, of which the landscape has been the most potent symbol. As if those
long-term costs were not bad enough, we have also had to endure the short-term cost of hoof-and-mouth disease, which in
the past would usually be contained in the locality where it broke out. In its latest occurrence, the disease was immediately
carried all over the country by animals on their way to some distant abattoir. The result was the temporary, but total,
ruination of our livestock farming. Now, a responsible politician would have taken into account,
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not only the small risk addressed by the directive, but also the huge risks posed to the
farming community by the destruction of local abattoirs, the risks posed to animals by long
journeys, the benefits of localized food production and local markets for meat, and so on. And he
would have a motive for considering all those things, namely, his desire to be re-elected, when the
consequences of his decision had been felt. As a rational being, he [or she] would recognize
that risks do not come in atomic particles, but are parts of complex organisms, shaped
by the flow of events. And he would know in his heart that there is no more risky practice than that of
disaggregating risks, so as one by one to forbid them. Even bureaucrats, in their own private lives, will take the same line.
They too are rational beings and know that risks must constantly be taken and constantly weighed against each other.
However, when a bureaucrat legislates for others and suffers no cost should he get things wrong, he will inevitably look for a
single and specific problem and seize on a single and absolute principle in order to solve it. The result is the Precautionary
Principle and all the follies that are now issuing from the unconscionable use of it . This suggests another and
deeper irrationality in the principle. It is right that legislators should take risks into account,
but not that they should automatically forbid them, even when they can make a show of isolating
them from all other relevant factors. For there is an even greater risk attached to the habit
of avoiding risks-namely, that we will produce a society that has no ability to survive a
real emergency when risk-taking is the only recourse. It is not absurd to think that this is a
real danger. How many a soporific Empire, secure in its long-standing abundance, has been swept
away by barbarian hordes, simply because the basileus or caliph had spent his life in risk-free
palaces? History is replete with warnings against the habit of heeding every warning. Yet this is the
habit that the Precautionary Principle furthers. By laying an absolute edict against risk, it is
courting the greatest risk of all, namely, that we shall face our next collective
emergency without the only thing that would enable us to survive it.

The Precautionary principle causes complete stultification, everything
has some risk of an impact
Hathcock, Council for Responsible Nutrition, 00
J.N.
Hathcock,
(2000).
The
precautionary
products. AgBioForum, 3(4), 255-258
principleAn
Impossible
burden
of
proof
for
new
The zero-risk impetus of the precautionary principle fails to recognize that although
science can provide a high level of confidence, it can never provide certainty. Absolute
proof of safety is not achievable because it would require the proof of a negative, a
proof that something (risk) does not exist. The precautionary principle always tells us not
to proceed because there is some threat of harm that cannot be conclusively ruled out.
Thus, "the precautionary principle will block the development of any technology if there
is the slightest theoretical possibility of harm." (Holm & Harris, 1999, p. 398). With a separate
precautionary principle as a component of risk management, such an assertion by regulatory
decision-makers could completely negate the role of science in food safety decisions.
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Precautionary Principle Bad- Innovation (1/3)

The precautionary principle stifles innovation and essential technologies
Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 01
Dr. Henry I. Miller, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Gregory Conko, Director
of
Food
Safety
Policy
at
the Competitive
Enterprise
Institute,
June,2001 http://www.policyreview.org/jun01/miller print.html
In both the United States and Europe, public health and environmental regulations usually
require a risk assessment to determine the extent of potential hazards and of exposure to
them, followed by judgments about how to regulate. The precautionary principle can distort
this process by introducing a systematic bias into decision making. Regulators face an
asymmetrical incentive structure in which they are compelled to address the potential
harms from new products, but are free to discount the hidden risk-reducing properties of
unused or underused ones. The result is a lopsided process that is inherently biased
against change and therefore against innovation. To see why, one must understand that there
are two basic kinds of mistaken decisions that a regulator can make: First, a harmful product can be
approved for marketing called a Type I error in the parlance of risk analysis. Second, a useful
product can be rejected or delayed, can fail to achieve approval at all, or can be inappropriately
withdrawn from the market a Type II error. In other words, a regulator commits a Type I error
by permitting something harmful to happen and a Type II error by preventing something
beneficial from becoming available. Both situations have negative consequences for the public,
but the outcomes for the regulator are very different. Examples of this Type I-Type II error dichotomy
in both the U.S. and Europe abound, but it is perhaps illustrated most clearly in the FDAs approval
process for new drugs. A classic example is the FDAs approval in 1976 of the swine flu vaccine
generally perceived as a Type I error because while the vaccine was effective at preventing
influenza, it had a major side effect that was unknown at the time of approval: A small number of
patients suffered temporary paralysis from Guillain-Barr Syndrome. This kind of mistake is highly
visible and has immediate consequences: The media pounce and the public and Congress are
roused, and Congress takes up the matter. Both the developers of the product and the regulators
who allowed it to be marketed are excoriated and punished in such modern-day pillories as
congressional hearings, television newsmagazines, and newspaper editorials. Because a
regulatory officials career might be damaged irreparably by his [or her] good-faith
but mistaken approval of a high-profile product, decisions are often made defensively
in other words, above all to avoid Type I errors. Former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt
aptly summarized the regulators dilemma: In all our FDA history, we are unable to find a single
instance where a Congressional committee investigated the failure of FDA to approve a new drug.
But, the times when hearings have been held to criticize our approval of a new drug have been so
frequent that we have not been able to count them. The message to FDA staff could not be clearer.
Whenever a controversy over a new drug is resolved by approval of the drug, the agency and the
individuals involved likely will be investigated. Whenever such a drug is disapproved, no inquiry will
be made. The Congressional pressure for negative action is, therefore, intense. And it
seems to be ever increasing. Type II errors in the form of excessive governmental requirements
and unreasonable decisions can cause a new product to be disapproved, in Schmidts phrase, or
to have its approval delayed. Unnecessary or capricious delays are anathema to innovators,
and they lessen competition and inflate the ultimate price of the product. Consider the FDAs
precipitate response to the 1999 death of a patient in a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy trial for a genetic disease.
The cause of the incident had not been identified and the product class (a preparation of the needed gene, encased in an
enfeebled adenovirus that would then be administered to the patient) had been used in a large number of patients, with no
fatalities and serious side effects in only a small percentage of patients. But given the high profile of the incident, regulators
acted disproportionately. They not only stopped the trial in which the fatality occurred and all the other gene-therapy studies
at the same university, but also halted similar studies at other universities, as well as experiments using adenovirus being
conducted by the drug company Schering-Plough one for the treatment of liver cancer, the other for colorectal cancer that
had metastasized to the liver. By these actions, and by publicly excoriating and humiliating the researchers involved (and
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halting experiments of theirs that did not even involve adenovirus), the FDA cast a pall over the entire field of gene therapy,
setting it back perhaps as much as a decade . Although they can dramatically compromise public
health, Type II errors caused by a regulators bad judgment, timidity, or anxiety seldom
gain public attention. It may be only the employees of the company that makes the product and a few stock market
analysts and investors who are knowledgeable about unnecessary delays. And if the regulators mistake precipitates a
corporate decision to abandon the product, cause and effect are seldom connected in the public mind. Naturally, the
companies themselves are loath to complain publicly about a mistaken FDA judgment, because the agency has so much
discretionary control over their ability to test and market products. As a consequence, there may be no direct evidence of, or
publicity about, the lost societal benefits, to say nothing of the culpability of regulatory officials. Exceptions exist, of course.
A few activists, such as the AIDS advocacy groups that closely monitor the FDA, scrutinize agency review of certain products
and aggressively publicize Type II errors. In addition, congressional oversight should provide a check on regulators
performance, but as noted above by former FDA Commissioner Schmidt, only rarely does oversight focus on their Type II
errors. Type I errors make for more dramatic hearings, after all, including injured patients and their family members. And
even when such mistakes are exposed, regulators frequently defend Type II errors as erring on the side of caution in
effect, invoking the precautionary principle as they did in the wake of the University of Pennsylvania gene therapy case.
Too often this euphemism is accepted uncritically by legislators, the media, and the public, and our system of
pharmaceutical oversight becomes progressively less responsive to the public interest. The FDA is not unique in this regard,
of course. All regulatory agencies are subject to the same sorts of social and political pressures that cause them to be
castigated when dangerous products accidentally make it to market (even if, as is often the case, those products produce
net benefits) but to escape blame when they keep beneficial products out of the hands of consumers.Adding the
precautionary principles bias against new products into the public policy mix further
encourages regulators to commit Type II errors in their frenzy to avoid Type I errors.
This is hardly conducive to enhancing overall public safety.

Innovation key to life saving medical tech
of
Food
Safety
Policy
at
the Competitive
Enterprise
Institute,
June,2001 http://www.policyreview.org/jun01/miller print.html
Activists have since extended their antichlorine campaign to so-called endocrine
disrupters, or modulators, asserting that certain primarily man-made chemicals mimic or
interfere with human hormones (especially estrogens) in the body and thereby cause a range of
abnormalities and diseases related to the endocrine system. The American Council on Science and
Health has explored the endocrine disrupter hypothesis and found that while high doses of certain
environmental contaminants produce toxic effects in laboratory test animals in some cases
involving the endocrine system humans actual exposure to these suspected endocrine
modulators is many orders of magnitude lower. It is well documented that while a chemical
administered at high doses may cause cancer in certain laboratory animals, it does not necessarily
cause cancer in humans both because of different susceptibilities and because humans are
subjected to far lower exposures to synthetic environmental chemicals. No consistent, convincing
association has been demonstrated between real-world exposures to synthetic chemicals in the
environment and increased cancer in hormonally sensitive human tissues. Moreover, humans are
routinely exposed through their diet to many estrogenic substances (substances having an effect
similar to that of the human hormone estrogen) found in many plants. Dietary exposures to these
plant estrogens, or phytoestrogens, are far greater than exposures to supposed synthetic endocrine
modulators, and no adverse health effects have been associated with the overwhelming majority of
these dietary exposures. Furthermore, there is currently a trend toward lower concentrations of
many contaminants in air, water, and soil including several that are suspected of being endocrine
disrupters. Some of the key research findings that stimulated the endocrine disrupter hypothesis
originally have been retracted or are not reproducible. The available human epidemiological
data do not show anyconsistent, convincing evidence of negative health effects related to
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industrial chemicals that are suspected of disrupting the endocrine system. In spite of that,
activists and many government regulators continue to invoke the need for
precautionary (over-) regulation of various products, and even outright bans. Antichlorine
campaigners more recently have turned their attacks to phthalates, liquid organic compounds
added to certain plastics to make them softer. These soft plastics are used for important
medical devices, particularly fluid containers, blood bags, tubing, and gloves; childrens
toyssuch as teething rings and rattles; and household and industrial items such as wire
coating and flooring. Waving the banner of the precautionary principle, activists claim
that phthalates might have numerous adverse health effects even in the face of
significant scientific evidence to the contrary. Governments have taken these
unsupported claims seriously, and several formal and informal bans have been
implemented around the world. As a result, consumers have been denied product choices,
and doctors and their patients deprived of life-saving tools.
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The Precautionary Principle forces society away from technological
advancement
Hathcock, Council for Responsible Nutrition, 00
J.N. Hathcock, (2000). The precautionary
products. AgBioForum, 3(4), 255-258
principleAn
Impossible
burden
of
proof
for
new
The problem with the precautionary principle is two-fold, one logical and the other
perceptual. First, the logical faultthe precautionary principle was originally developed to provide
risk managers with a tool for decision-making on environmental threats from processes or
substances that had not undergone safety evaluation or regulatory approval. The precautionary
principle was not defined or developed for application to the intentional components of foods that
require or depend on a conclusion of safety. Application of this principle could create an impossible
burden of proof for new food products or ingredients. Second, the perceptual faultthe term
"precautionary principle" is seductively attractive because it sounds like something that
everyone should want and no one could oppose.
Upon initial consideration, it might seem that the only alternative to precaution is recklessness but,
in fact, excessive precaution leads to paralysis of actions resulting from unjustified fear.
In many cases, the slight but non-zero risk associated with a product or process is far
safer than the alternative of doing nothing. Excellent examples include the outbreak of
cholera resulting from fear of chlorinated water (Anderson, 1991) and the reluctance to
permit food fortification with folic acid to reduce the incidence of specific birth defects for fear of
masking vitamin B-12 deficiency (United States Food and Drug Administration [US FDA], 1996).
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Precautionary Principle Bad- Pandemic

The Precautionary principle enables mass pandemics
of
Food
Safety
Policy
at
the Competitive
Enterprise
Institute,
June, 2001 http://www.policyreview.org/jun01/miller print.html
The danger in the precautionary principle is that it distracts consumers and policymakers
from known, significant threats to human health and diverts limited public
health resources from those genuine and far greater risks. Consider, for example, the
environmental movements campaign to rid society of chlorinated compounds. By the late 1980s,
environmental activists were attempting to convince water authorities around the world of
the possibility that carcinogenic byproducts from chlorination of drinking water posed a
potential cancer risk. Peruvian officials, caught in a budget crisis,used this supposed threat
to public health as a justification to stop chlorinating much of the countrys drinking
water. That decision contributed to the acceleration and spread of Latin Americas 199196 cholera epidemic, which afflicted more than 1.3 million people and killed at least
11,000.
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Precautionary Principle Bad- Militarism

The precautionary principle is used to legitimize military
interventionism
Sunstein professor at the University of Chicago Law School 2005,
Cass R Sunstein. prominent law professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle p3-4 2005
My point of departure is the Precautionary Principle, which is a focal point for thinking about health,
safety, and the environment throughout Europe. In fact the Precautionary Principle is receiving
increasing worldwide attention, having become the basis for countless international
debates about how to think about risk, health, and the environment. The principle has even
entered into debates about how to handle terrorism, about preemptive war, and about
the relationship between liberty and security. In defending the 2003 war in Iraq, President
George W Bush invoked a kind of Precautionary Principle, arguing that action was
justified in the face of uncertainty. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will
have waited too long. He also said, I believe it is essential that when we see a threat, we deal
with those threats before they become imminent. Its too late if they become imminent. What is
especially noteworthy is that this way of thinking is essentially the same as that of
environmentalists concerned about global warming, genetic modification of food, and pesticides.
For these problems, it is commonly argued that regulation, rather than inaction, is the appropriate
course in the face of doubt.
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**UTIL**
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Util O/W Rights

Utilitarianism precludes any claim of moral rights rights not quantifiable.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy, 1984

HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pgs
121-122.
In spite of this, Bentham's clear apprehension of utilitarianism's commitment to rejecting the view
that there are certain basic natural human moral rights that hold of human beings as human
beings, very many utilitarians today seek to reconcile their utilitarianism with theories of human
moral rights, with theories of natural moral rights of persons of the kinds set out in the UN
Declarations, according to which we are claimed to possess various basic, fundamental moral rights
simply by virtue of being human beings, or human persons, and not by virtue of the utility of a
belief in and action on the basis of respect for such rights. Utilitarianism denies, and is committed
to denying, that there are natural moral rights that hold of persons as persons, of human beings
qua human beings. If its ethic is to be expressed in the language of moral rights, it might be said
to hold that it is the greatest good or the greatest /pleasure that has a moral right to exist, that
individual persons and animals have no moral right to a specific share in or of the greatest good, I
their roles being those of being instruments for achieving or vehicles for bringing into being and
sustaining the greatest good, they having a moral right to contribute to the common good as
vehicles or instruments thereof. Of course, strictly speaking, an abstraction such as the greatest
good cannot in any literal sense of 'moral right,' possess moral rights, whilst the rights individuals
may possess as vehicles or instruments of the greatest good would be a mixed bunch, including
such rights as the rights to live or to be killed, to be free or to be constrained, to be helped or to be
harmed or used-the rights varying from person to person, situation to situation, from time to lime.
Thus, if the greatest good could be realized by promoting the pleasure of only one or other of two
distinct groups of one hundred persons, then, in terms of utilitarianism, it would morally be
indifferent which group was chosen, and no member of either group would have a moral right
to the pleasure. Similarly, if, in a war, the greatest good could be achieved only be sending a
particular platoon on a suicide mission, the officer in charge would have the moral right to order the
platoon to go on the mission, and the members of the platoon would have the moral right to be
killed for the sake of the greatest good. This is a very different way of thinking about moral rights
from that in terms of there being certain basic human moral rights.
No legitimate reason to include rights discussion under util f/w

HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. R. G. Frey. Utility and Rights. Pg
124.
A utilitarian might seek to accommodate talk about human moral rights within the utilitarian
framework by arguing that there are good utilitarian reasons for attributing human rights to persons
who do not possess moral rights, just as there may be good utilitarian reasons for ascribing
responsibility to persons who are not morally responsible for their actions. This might be urged in
terms of act-utilitarianism as a tactical move for maximizing good. Alternatively, it could be
developed as an element of a rule-utilitarianism. Clearly it would be difficult to find plausible
act-utilitarian reasons for propagating such a falsehood. On the other hand, whilst a ruleutilitarianism that incorporated such a human moral rights component would normatively be more
attractive than many versions of rule-utilitarianism, it would remain exposed to the basic criticisms
of rule-utilitarianism set out by JJ. C. Smart, myself, and others.'
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Utilitarianism is the only calculus that takes into account human

response
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.735, professor of law
at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law Journal. The Utilitarian Imperative: Autonomy, Reciprocity,
and Evolution HeinOnline)
Because evolutionary utilitarianism is concerned with human survival and depends

on human response, its goal is necessarily fulfillment of human needs and wants.
Utilitarian choices are made by existing humans. The decisions of every human are
derived from the experience, and reflect the desires, of that human. Humans may
be concerned with the needs and wants of animals or of future generations, but
that concern is inescapably a product of existing human needs and wants.
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Util Good K2 Policymaking

Utilitarianism key to policy making
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.731-2, professor of
law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law Journal.
Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)
The
Utilitarian
Imperative:
Autonomy,
Evolutionary progression toward majoritarian decision-making follows from the utilitarian function of
social organization to enhance human need/want fulli1lment. Because the need/want
preference of community members are best known to them, resource allocations

and behavior constraints that significantly reflect their in- put best implement
those preferences. The need/want fulfillment of such members expands with their
approval of community decision-making institutions. Such approval lowers the
costs of dissenter disruption while increasing psychological security and productive
efficiency. The utilitarian enhanced-fulfillment goal is most effectively implemented
by communities that optimize (not maximize) individual participation in policy
formulation. Optimal participation involves the selection of capable officials who make
independent community fulfillment decisions but remain subject to effective community
supervision. Self-constrained majoritarianism thus appears to be the evolving political counterpart
of utilitarianism, a continuity suggested by the progression of western nations from autocracy
toward representative democracy, the enhanced need/want fulfillment that has accompanied the
progression, and the inability of totalitarian governments to match that fulfillment.
Policymakers should adapt utilitarian calculus applicable throughout

society.
Goodin90
[RobertE.
Goodin
The
Utilitarian
Response.
Ed
p.
140-1
http://books.google.com/books?id=l3ZBwjK_1_QC&pg=PA61&lpg=PA61&dq=%22That,+I+submit,
+is+a+fallacy
%22+goodin&source=bl&ots=9hUQGnLTzV&sig=URHUw3uamFPyVmKwTyG1onBQvZI&hl=en&ei=z
KxmSsfVMpCEtgfLvP3yDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1]
The distinction I shall here propose works along a dimension orthogonal to that one. Instead of
differentiating utilitarianisms on the basis of what they are used to choose, I suggest doing so on
the basis of who is supposed to use the utilirarian calculus to make choices, Implicitly,
contemporary discussions of varieties of utilitatianism are all standardly addresses, first and
foremost, to individuals acting in their personal capacities and making choices which, while they
may affect others as well, principally affect the choosers own lives, Implicitly, public officials
choices of general social policy. A different menu of options in some respects greater, in others,
less, but in any case different- is available to public and private users. That, I submit, is a fallacy. It
does not matter who is using the utilitarian calculus, in what circumstances and for what purposes.
Using the felicific calculus for micro-level purposes of guiding individuals choices of personal
conduct is altogether different from using it for macro-level purposes of guiding public officials
shoices of general social policy. A different menu of options in some respects greater, in others,
less, but in any case different is available to public and private choosers. Those differences are
such as to neutralize in the public sphere, most of the objections standardly lodged against
utilitarianism in the private sphere. True through such complaints may be as applied to
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utilitarianism as a standard of personal conduct, they are irrelevant (or anyway much less
problematic) as applied to utilitarianism as a standard of public policy. Or so I shall argue.
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Util Good - K2 Determine Rights

Utilitarian calculus is the only way to determine rights relative
importance.
Brandt, professor of philosophy @ U Mich. 1992
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg 199.
Before turning to possible " deeper" difficulties, let me make just one point favorable to the
utilitarian view, that it tells us, in principle, how to find out what are a person's rights, and how
stringent they are, relative to each other, which is much more than can be said of most other
theories, unless reliance on intuitions is supposed to be a definite way of telling what a person's
rights are. How does one do this, on the utilitarian theory? The idea, of course, is that we have to
determine whether it would maximize long-range expectable utility to include recognition of certain
rights in the moral code of a society, or to include a certain right with a certain degree of stringency
as compared with other rights. (For instance, it might be optimistic to include a right to life with
more stringency than a right to liberty and this with more stringency than the right to pursue
happiness.) Suppose, for instance, one wants to know what should be the scope of the " right to
life." Then it would be proper to inquire whether the utility-maximizing moral system would require
people to retrain from taking the life of other adults, more positively to support life by providing
adequate medical care, to abstain from life-termination for seriously defective infants or to refrain
from abortion, to require abstaining from assisting a person with terminal illness in ending his own
life if he requests it, to refrain from assisting in the discharge of a sentence of capital punishment,
or to refrain from killing combatants in war time and so on. If one wants to know whether the right
to life is stronger than the right of free speech on political subjects, it is proper to inquire whether
the utility maximizing moral code would prefer free speech to the cost of lives (and in what
circumstances).
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Util Good Best Interest

Utilitarianism necessitates public policy that requires that leaders take
the action which is in the best interest of people
Shaw Philosophy Professor 1999 (William H. Shaw, 1999, Philosophy and Chair of
the Philosophy at SJSU, contemporary ethics: taking account of utilitarianism p 171-2)
Utilitarianism ties right and wrong to the promotion of well-being, but it is not only n personal ethic
or a guide to individual conduct. lt is also a "public philosophy" - that is, a normative basis for
public policy and the structuring of our social, legal, and political institutions. Indeed, it was just this
aspect of utilitarianism that primarily engaged Bentham, john Stuart Mill, his father James, and their
friends and votaries. For them utilitarianism was, first and foremost, a social and political
philosophy and only secondarily a private or personal moral code. In particular, they saw
utilitarianism as providing the yardstick by which to measure, assess, and, where necessary, reform
government social and economic policy and the judicial institutions of their day. In the public realm ,
utilitarianism is especially compelling. Because of its consequentialist character, a

utilitarian approach to public policy requires officials to base their actions,
procedures, and programs on the most accurate and detailed understanding they
can obtain of the circumstances in which they are operating and the likely results
of the alternatives open to them . Realism and empiricism are the hallmarks of a utilitarian
orientation, not customary practice, unverified abstractions, or wishful Promotion of the well being
of all seems to be the appropriate, indeed the only sensible, touchstone for assessing public policies
and institutions, and the standard objections to utilitarianism as a personal morality
carry little or no weight against it when viewed as a public philosophy . Consider, for
instance, the criticisms that utilitarianism is too impersonal and ignores one's individual
attachments and personal commitments, that it is coldly calculating and concerned only with
maximizing, that it demands too much of moral agents and that it permits one to violate certain
basic moral restraints on the treatment of others. The previous two chapters addressed sorne of
these criticisms; others will be dealt with in Chapter 8. The point here, though, is that far from
undermining utilitarianism as a public philosophy, these criticisms highlight its
strengths. We want public officials to be neutral, impersonal. and detached and to
proceed with their eyes firmly on the effects of the policies they pursue and the
institutions that their decisions shape. Policy making requires public officials to
address general issues, typical conditions. and common circumstances. Inevitably,
they must do this through general rules, not on a case by case basis. As explained later in this
chapter, this fact precludes public officials from violating the rights of individuals as
a matter of policy. Moreover, by organizing the efforts of countless individuals and compelling
each of us to play our part in collective endeavors to enhance welfare, public officials can make it
less likely that utilitarianism will demand too much of any one individual because others are doing
too little. Utilitarians will seek to direct and coordinate people's actions through
effective public policy and to reshape, in utility-enhancing ways, the institutions

that structure the choices people face. By doing so, utilitarians can usually
accomplish more good than they can through isolated individual action, however
dedicated and well intentioned. For this reason, they will strive to Easter institutions that false
over from individuals much of the task of promoting the general welfare of society. General
welfare is a broad goal, of course, and sensible policies and institutions will
typically focus on more specific desiderata - such as promoting productivity,
increasing individual freedom and opportunity, improving peoples physical health,
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guaranteeing their personal security, and so on that contribute significantly to

people's well-being. Implementing even there goals can prove difficult. Furthermore, many of
the problems facing society have no simple answers because they are tangled up with contested
issues of fact and controversial questions of psychology, sociology, and economics. To the extent
that utilitarians disagree among themselves over these matters, their policy recommendations will
diverge. Nevertheless, by clarifying what is at stake and continually orienting discussion toward the
promotion of well-being, a. utilitarian approach provides the necessary framework for addressing
questions of institutional design and for fashioning effective public policy. The present chapter
explicates the utilitarian approach to three matters that have long engaged social and political
philosophers and that concern.
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Util Good Concrete Decisionmaking

Only Utilitarianism makes justifications based on the end result rather
then ambiguous language
Ratner, professor of law at USC, 1984 (Leonard G. Ratner p.758-9, professor of
law at USC, 1984 Hofstra Law Journal.
Reciprocity, and Evolution HeinOnline)
The
Utilitarian
Imperative:
Autonomy,
Disregarding the significance of evolutionary survival, nonutilitarian intuitionists deny that

utilitarianism provides a "moral" basis for choice between competing need/want fulfillments. They
seek instead to identify the intuitive "preexisting rights that must, they insist, underlie such
choice.' But they disclose no nonrnystical. source of the rights,*' which are, in fact, derived from
the search for increased per capita need/want fulfillment. Although frequently accorded a
transcendental immutability, rights identify the resource and behavior allocations that are
perceived by the community as enhancing such fulfillment. Indeed, revelation of various a
priori rights or moral standards is often accompanied by disparagement of other

such rights or standards as crypto-nti1itarian. A priori rights divorced from
need/want fulfillment depend on the magic power of language. When not
determined by social consequences, the morality of behavior tends to be resolved
by definition of the words used to characterize the behavior. Necessarily
ambiguous generalizations, evolved to describe and correlate heterogeneous
events, acquire a controlling normative role . Definition, of course, reflects human
experience. But the equivocal significance of that experience may be replaced with the illusory
security of fixed meaning. Ethical connotations are then drawn not from the underlying empirical
lessons that provide a context for meaning, but from inflexible linguistic "principles and their
emotional overtones. Derivation of meaning from the social purposes that engender the
terminology leads to a utilitarian appraisal of need] want fulfillment. The preexisting rights of
nonutilitarian morality are usually identified as components of "liberty," "equality,

and autonomy,"' labels that suggest a concern with individual need/want
fulfillment and its social constraints. Liberty is perceived as freedom for behavior
that improves the quality of existence, such as speech, religion, and other "civil
rights activity; equality as rejection of disparate individual worth and
"discriminatory" treatment; autonomy as the individual choice implied by liberty
and equality.
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Util Good Prevents Nuke War

Utilitarianism prevents nuclear war
Without effective reciprocity, self-defense is the only survival remedy. Passive resistance to a Hitler
has survival costs that are acceptable to few communities. Rejection of those costs is perhaps being
accommodated with the intolerable survival costs of nuclear warfare by payment of more
immediate nuclear-deterrence costs. Negotiations to reduce the nuclear-deterrence costs confront
the participants with a predicament like the "prisone1s dilemma"' if nuclear weapons can escape
detection: although both participants would benefit from a reduction, each is impelled to increase
its nuclear weapons as protection against an undetected increase by the other. But each may also
be impelled to refrain from their
use. If that accommodation fails, so may the evolutionary
process. While the accommodation holds, nonnuclear self defense remains the
survival remedy pending a reciprocity solution. The survival costs of nonnuclear

warfare of course continue to be high, but when the survival costs of capitulation
are perceived as exceeding them, compensation for combatants commensurate
with risk would provide a kind of market accommodation for those induced thereby
to volunteer and would reduce the disproportionate wartime-con-scription
assessment.
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Util Inevitable
Utilitarianism inevitable
utilitarianism reconciles autonomy and reciprocity, surmounts the strident intuitionist attack, and
exposes the utilitarian underpinning of a priori rights." In the context of the information provided by
biology, anthropology, economics, and other disciplines, a functional description of evolutionary
utilitarianism identities enhanced per capita need/want fulfillment as the long-term

utilitarian-majoritarian goal, illuminates the critical relationship of self interest to that goal,
and discloses the trial-and-error process of accommodation and priority assignment that
implements it. The description confirms that process as arbiter of the tension
between individual welfare and group welfare (i.e., between autonomy and
reciprocity)* and suggests a utilitarian imperative: that utilitarianism is
unavoidable, that morality rests ultimately on utilitarian self interest, that in the
final analysis all of us are personal utilitarians and most of us are social utilitarians.
Utilitarianism is inevitable - people are inherently utilitarians
Gino et al 2008 [Francesca Gino Kenan-Flagler Business School, University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, Don Moore Tepper Business School, Carnegie Mellon University,
Max H. Bozman Harvard Business School, Harvard University No harm, no foul: The
outcome bias in ethical judgments http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-080.pdf]
A home seller neglects to inform the buyer about the homes occasional problems with
flooding in the basement: The seller intentionally omits it from the houses legally required
disclosure document, and fails to reveal it in the negotiation. A few months after the closing, the
basement is flooded and destroyed, and the buyer spends $20,000 in repairs. Most people would
agree that the sellers unethical behavior deserves to be punished. Now consider the same
behavior on the part of a second seller, except that it is followed by a long drought, so the buyer
never faces a flooded basement. Both sellers were similarly unethical, yet their behavior
produced different results. In this paper, we seek to answer the question: Do people judge the
ethicality of the two sellers differently, despite the fact that their behavior was the
same? And if
so, under what conditions are peoples judgments of ethicality influenced by outcome
information? Past research has shown some of the ways that people tend
to take
outcome information into account in a manner that is not logically justified (Baron &
Hershey, 1988; Allison, Mackie,
& Messick, 1996). Baron and Hershey (1988) labeled this tendency as the outcome bias.
Extending prior work on the effect of outcome severity on judgments (Berg-Cross, 1975;
Lipshitz, 1989; Mitchell & Kalb, 1981; Stokes & Leary, 1984), their research found that people
judge the wisdom and competence of decision makers based on the nature of the
outcomes they
obtain. For instance, in one study participants were presented with a hypothetical
scenario of a
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surgeon deciding whether or not to perform a risky operation (Baron & Hershey,
1988). The
surgeon knew the probability of success. After reading about identical decision
processes,
participants learned either that the patient lived or died, and were asked to rate
the quality of the
No Foul 4 surgeons decision to operate. When the patient died, participants
decided it was a mistake to
have operated in the first place.
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Survival Instinct Good Extinction

Multiple Inevitable Scenarios for extinction make it necessary to act on
our survival instinct
Mathney, Consultant to the Center for Biosecurity, 07
Jason G. Mathney, 07 (MBA is a Consultant to the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC. Sommer
Scholar s at Johns Hopkins' ) http://www.upmc-biosecurity.org/se/util/display_mod.cfm?
MODULE=/se-server/mod/modules/semod
_printpage/mod_default.cfm&PageURL=/website/resources/publications/2007_orig-articles/200710-15reducingrisk.html&VersionObject=A09EDA45D011A282BA7021E754D0B39C&Template=79799&
PageStyleSheet=81604
We already invest in some extinction countermeasures. NASA spends $4 million per year
monitoring near-Earth asteroids and comets (Leary, 2007) and there has been some
research on how to deflect these objects using existing technologies (Gritzner & Kahle,
2004; NASA, 2007). $1.7 billion is spent researching climate change and there are many strategies
to reduce carbon emissions (Posner, 2004, p. 181). There are policies to reduce nuclear
threats, such as the Non- Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, as
well as efforts to secure expertise by employing former nuclear scientists. Of current
extinction risks, the most severe may be bioterrorism. The knowledge needed to
engineer a virus is modest compared to that needed to build a nuclear weapon; the
necessary equipment and materials are increasingly accessible and because biological
agents are self-replicating, a weapon can have an exponential effect on a population
(Warrick, 2006; Williams, 2006).5 Current U.S. biodefense efforts are funded at $5 billion per
year to develop and stockpile new drugs and vaccines, monitor biological agents and
emerging diseases, and strengthen the capacities of local health systems to respond to
pandemics (Lam, Franco, & Shuler, 2006).
There is currently no independent body assessing the risks of high-energy physics experiments.
Posner (2004) has recommended withdrawing federal support for such experiments because the
benefits do not seem to be worth the risks.
As for astronomical risks, to escape our suns death, humanity will eventually need to
relocate. If we survive the next century, we are likely to build self-sufficient colonies in space. We
would be motivated by self-interest to do so, as asteroids, moons, and planets have valuable
resources to mine, and the technological requirements for colonization are not beyond imagination
(Kargel, 1994; Lewis, 1996).
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Consequentialism Good
Consequentialism is best, short term impacts are key even when the
longterm impacts are uncertain.
Cowen 2004 [Tyler Cowen, Department of Economics George Mason University The
epistemic
Problem
does
not
refute
consequentialismNovember2,2004
http://docs.google.com/gview?
a=v&q=cache:JYKgDUM8xOcJ:www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/Epistemic2.pdf+
%22nuclear+attack+on+Manhattan%22+cowen&hl=en&gl=us]
Let us start with a simple example, namely a suicide bomber who seeks to detonate a nuclear
device in midtown Manhattan. Obviously we would seek to stop the bomber, or If we stop the
bomber, we know that in the short run we will save millions of lives, avoid a massive tragedy, and
protect the long-term strength, prosperity, and freedom of the United States. Reasonable moral
people, regardless of the details of their meta-ethical stances, should not argue against stopping
the bomber. No matter how hard we try to stop the bomber, we are not, a priori, committed to a
very definite view of how effective prevention will turn out in the long run. After all, stopping the
bomber will reshuffle future genetic identities, and may imply the birth of a future Hitler. Even
trying to stop the bomber, with no guarantee of success, will remix the future in similar fashion.Still,
we can see a significant net welfare improvement in the short run, while facing radical generic
uncertainty about the future in any case. Furthermore, if we can stop the bomber, our long-run
welfare estimates will likely show some improvement. The bomb going off could lead to subsequent
attacks on other major cities, the emboldening of terrorists, or perhaps broader panics. There would
be a new and very real doorway toward general collapse of the world. While the more distant future
is remixed radically, we should not rationally believe that some new positive option has been
created to counterbalance the current destruction and the new possible negatives. To put it simply,
it is difficult to see the violent destruction of Manhattan as on net, in ex ante terms, favoring either
the short-term or long-term prospects of the world. We can of course imagine possible scenarios
where such destruction works out for the better ex post; perhaps, for instance, the explosion leads
to a subsequent disarmament or anti-proliferation advances. But we would not breathe a sigh of
relief on hearing the news of the destruction for the first time. Even if the long-run expected value
is impossible to estimate, we need only some probability that the relevant time horizon is indeed
short (perhaps a destructive asteroid will strike the earth). This will tip the consequentialist balance
against a nuclear attack on Manhattan.
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Consequentialism Fails
Consequentialism, by very nature, will fail in public policy to improve the
well-being of others
Scheffler, prof philosophy, Princeton, 94
(Samuel Scheffler, prof philosophy, Princeton, 11/24/94, The Rejection of Consequentialism, p. 1416, http://books.google.com/books?
hl=en&lr=&id=M95w6e9pzZsC&oi=fnd&pg=PA14&dq=reject+consequentialism&ots=hbQFBohbTL
&sig=VgDh7pP6sAhJ1IKGaBA3BW7hi1Y)
I will maintain shortly that a hybrid theory which departed from consequentialism only to the extent
of incorporating an agent-centred prerogative could accommodate the objection dealing with
personal integrity. But first it is necessary to give fuller characterization of a plausible prerogative
of this kind. To avoid confusion, it is important to make a sharp distinction at the outset between an
agent-centred prerogative and a consequentialist dispensation to devote more attention
to ones own happiness and well-being than to the happiness and well-being of
others. Consequentialists often argue that a differential attention to ones own
concerns will in most actual circumstances have the best overall results, and that
such differential treatment of oneself is therefore required on consequentialist grounds.
Two sorts of considerations are typically appealed to in support of this view. First, it is said that one
is in a better position to promote ones own welfare and the welfare of those one is closest to than
to promote the welfare of other people. So an agent produces maximum good per unit of
activity by focusing his efforts on those he is closest to, including himself. Second, it
is said that human nature being what it is, people cannot function effectively at all unless they
devote somewhat more energy to promoting their own well-being than to promoting the well-being
of other people. Here the appeal is no longer to the immediate consequantialist advantages of
promoting ones own well-being, but rather to the long-term advantages of having psychologically
healthy agents who are efficient producers of the good. We find an example of the first type of
argument in Sidgwicks remark that each man is better able to provide for his own happiness than
for that of other persons, from his more intimate knowledge of his own desires and needs, and his
greater opportunities of gratifying them. Mill, in the same vein, writes that the occasions on which
any person (except one in a thousand) has it in his powerto be a public benefactor are but
exceptional; and on these occasions alone is he called on to consider public utility; in every other
case, private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.
Sidgwick suggests an argument of the second type when he says that because it is under the
stimulus of self-interest that the active energies of most men are most easily and thoroughly drawn
out, it would not under actual circumstances promote the universal happiness if each man were to
concern himself with the happiness of others as much as with his own.
Consequentialism is based on the greater good, not on self-interests

Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, 84
(Philosophy and Public Affairs, Kagan, prof social thoughts and ethics, Yale, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Summer,
1984), pp. 239-254 http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2265413.pdf)
Consequentialism claims that an act is morally permissible if and only if it has better
consequences than those of any available alternative act. This means that agents are
morally required to make their largest possible contribution to the overall good- no matter what
the sacrifice to themselves might involve (remembering only that their own well-being counts
too). There is no limit to the sacrifices that morality can require; and agents are
never permitted to favor their own interests at the expense of the greater good.
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Consequentialism Fails
There is a limit to what morality can require for us, which
consequentialism fails to incorporate
Our ordinary moral intuitions rebel at this picture. We want to claim that there is a limit to what
morality can require of us. Some sacrifices for the sake of others are meritorious,
but not required; they are supererogatory . Common morality grants the agent some room
to pursue his own projects, even though other actions might have better consequences: we are
permitted to promote the good, but we are not required to do so. The objection that
consequentialism demands too much is accepted uncritically by almost all of us; most moral
philosophers introduce permission to perform nonoptimal acts without even a word in its defense.
But the mere fact that our intuitions support some moral feature hardly constitutes in itself
adequate philosophical justification. If we are to go beyond mere intuition mongering, we
must search for deeper foundations. We must display the reasons for limiting the
requirement to pursue the good.
Consequentialism can result in sacrifices on some for the sake of others

Furthermore, discussions of the claim that consequentialism demands too much are often
undermined by failure to distinguish this claim from the widely discussed objection that
consequentialism permits too much- improperly permitting sacrifices to be

imposed on some for the sake of others. Some theories include deontological
restrictions, forbidding certain kinds of acts even when the consequences would be
good. I will not consider here the merits of such restrictions. It is important to note, however, that
even a theory which included such restrictions might still lack more general permission to act
nonoptimally-requiring agents to promote the good within the pennissible means. It is only the
grounds for rejecting such a general requirement to promote the overall good that we will examine
here.
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**AT UTIL**
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Util Bad No Equality/Justice

Utilitarianism cant address the issues of equity and distributive justice
Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of
Pennsylvania, writes 2000 [Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods and
practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])
Its quantifications techniques are far from

being simple, straightforward, and objective . Indeed, they are often too complicated to be
However, its strengths are also its weaknesses.
practical. They are also to flexible and subject to manipulation. They are impersonal and lack
compassion. More importantly, they fail to deal the issue of equity and distributive
justice. Seemingly, you cannot get fairer than this. In calculating benefits and costs, each person
is counted as one and only one. IN other words, people are treated equally. For Mill, justice arises
from the principle of utility. Utilitarianism in concerted only the aggregate effect, no
matter how the aggregate is distributed. For almost all policies, there is an uneven
distribution of benefits and costs. Some people win, while others lose. The Pareto
optimality would is almost nonexistent. A policys outcome is Pareto optimal if nobody loses and at
least one person gains.
Utilitarianism policies result in inequality

Liu PHD University of Pennsylvania 2000 (Dr. Liu, PHD @ University of
Pennsylvania, writes 2000 [Environmental Justice Analysis: theories, methods and
practice, 2000 ISBN:1566704030, p.20-21])
Besides these ridiculous policy implications in the United States and in the world, the logic
underlying Summers proposal represents cultural imperialism, the capitalist mode of production
and consumption, and a particular kind of political-economic power and its discriminatory
practices (Harvey 1996:368). Except for its beautiful guise of economic logic, the proposal is
nothing new to those familiar with the history. The capitalistic powerhouses in Europe practiced
material and cultural imperialism against countries in Africa, America, and Asia for years. They did
it by raising the banner of trade and welfare enhancement. They did it through guns and powder. Of
course, they had their logic for exporting opium to Canton (Guangzhou) in China through force.
Now, we see a new logic. This time, it is economic logic and globalization. This time, the end is the
same, but the means is not through guns and powder. Instead, it is political-economic power. This
example illustrates clearly the danger of using the utilitarian perspective as the only means for
policy analysis. Fundamentally, the utilitarian disregards the distributive justice issue
altogether and espouses the current mode of production and consumption and the
political-economic structure, without any attention to the inequity and inequality in
the current system. Even worse and more subtly, it delivers the philosophy of it
exists, therefore its good. However, just because it sells, doesnt mean we have to worship
it (Peirce 1991).
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Util Bad Mass Murder

Utilitarian thinking results in mass murder
Cleveland Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002
(Cleveland 2002 Paul A., Professor of Business Administration and Economics at BirminghamSouthern College, The Failure of Utilitarian Ethics in Political Economy, The Journal of Private
Enterprise, http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1602)
A final problem with utilitarianism that ought to be mentioned is that it is subject to being criticized
because of a potential fallacy of composition. The common good is not necessarily the sum of the
interests of individuals. In their book, A History of Economic Theory and Method, Ekelund and
Hebert provide a well-conceived example to demonstrate this problem. They write: It is presumably
in the general interest of American society to have every automobile in the United States equipped
with all possible safety devices. However, a majority of individual car buyers may not be willing to
pay the cost of such equipment in the form of higher auto prices. In this case, the collective
interest does not coincide with the sum of the individual interests. The result is a
legislative and economic dilemma. Indeed, individuals prone to political action, and
held under the sway of utilitarian ethics, will likely be willing to decide in favor of
the supposed collective interest over and against that of the individual. But then,
what happens to individual human rights? Are they not sacrificed and set aside as
unimportant? In fact, this is precisely what has happened. In democratic countries the
destruction of human liberty that has taken place in the past hundred years has occurred primarily
for this reason. In addition, such thinking largely served as the justification for the mass
murders of millions of innocent people in communist countries where the leaders

sought to establish the workers paradise. To put the matter simply, utilitarianism
offers no cohesive way to discern between the various factions competing against
one another in political debates and thus fails to provide an adequate guide for
ethical human action. The failure of utilitarianism at this point is extremely important for a
whole host of policy issues. Among them, the issue of the governments provision of public goods is
worth our consideration.
Utilitarianism is used to justify mass murder by governments

Cleveland, Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002
Indeed, the widespread confusion over this point is one of the primary reasons why western market economies have
continued to drift towards the ready acceptance of socialist policies. Edmund Opitz has rightly observed that utilitarianism
with its greatest happiness principle completely neglects the spiritual dimension of human life. Rather, it simply asserts
that men are bound together in societies solely on the basis of a rational calculation of the private advantage to be gained
by social cooperation under the division of labor. [2] But, as Opitz shows, this perspective gives rise to a serious problem.
the utilitarian principle will tend to lead to the

collective use of government power so as to redistribute income in order to gain
the greatest happiness in society. Regrettably, the rent seeking behavior that is
spawned as a result of this mind set will prove detrimental to the economy .
Since theft is the first labor saving device ,
Nevertheless, this kind of action will be justified as that which is most socially expedient in order to
reach the assumed ethical end. Utilitarianism, in short, has no logical stopping place
short of collectivism.[3] If morality is ultimately had by making the individuals
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happiness subservient to the organic whole of society , which is what Benthams

utilitarianism asserts, then the human rights of the individual may be violated . That
means property rights may be violated if it is assumed to promote the utilitarian end. However,
property rights are essential in securing a free market order. As a result , utilitarianism can then
be used to justify some heinous government actions. For instance, the murder of
millions of human beings can be justified in the minds of reformers if it is thought
to move us closer to paradise on earth. This is precisely the view that was taken by
communist revolutionaries as they implemented their grand schemes of remaking
society. All of this is not to say that matters of utility are unimportant in policy decisions, but
merely to assert that utilitarian ethics will have the tendency of promoting collectivist policies.
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Util Bad Annihilation

Medical utilitarian calculus ensures human dehumanization and
annihilation.
Smith 2002 (Michael G Smith 2002, Leadership University, The Public Policy of Casey
V. Planned Parenthood http://www.leaderu.com/humanities/casey/ch3.html)
Furthermore, abandoning the principle of human equality could lead to eugenics
because eugenics is founded on the same philosophy that some people are of lesser value than
others. Eugenics is founded on the utilitarian philosophy of German philosopher Hegel.
Utilitarianism, also known as pragmatism, holds that "the end justifies the means." If a
means provides a solution to a practical problem, it is morally justifiable.{86} The

Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany saw a problem in the existence of Jews, Gypsies,
and mentally and physically handicapped people, was founded on Hegels
pragmatic philosophy.{87} C.G. Campbell,{88} President of the American Eugenics Society
Inc. in 1931{89} has written:
"Adolf Hitler ... guided by the nation's anthropologists, eugenicists
and social philosophers, has been able to construct a comprehensive racial policy of population
development and improvement ... it sets a pattern ... these ideas have met stout opposition in the
Rousseauian social philosophy ... which bases ... its whole social and political theory upon the
patent fallacy of human equality ... racial consanguinity occurs only through endogamous mating or
interbreeding within racial stock ... conditions under which racial groups of distinctly superior
hereditary qualities ... have emerged." (Emphasis added).{90} Mr. Campbell, a leader in the
eugenics movement,{91} has clearly rejected the idea of human equality. This
rejection helped pave the way toward intellectual acceptance of Nazi Germanys
"Final Solution." and has helped pave the way toward Americas final solution to problem
pregnancy. "Nazi Germany used the findings of eugenicists as the basis for the killing of people of
inferior genetic stock."{92} Another leader in the eugenics movement, Madison Grant,{93}
connected the purported inequality of the unborn to the goals of the eugenics movement.
"...Indiscriminate efforts to preserve babies among the lower classes often results in serious injury
to the race ... Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and sentimental belief in the
sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization
of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community" (Emphasis added).{94} As
recently as six years ago, two medical ethicists, Kuhse and Singer, have argued that no human
being has any right to life.{95} Using a utilitarian approach, they have concluded that
"mentally defective" people, unborn people, and even children before their first
birthday, have no right to life because these people are not in full possession of
their faculties.{96} These utilitarian authors are fully consistent with other
utilitarians in that they first reject the principle that are humans have equal moral
status, then, using subjective criteria that appeals to themselves personally, they
identify certain humans they find expendable. While Kuhse and Singer may be personally
comfortable with their conclusions, this approach leaves all of us less than secure from being
dehumanized. If newborn infants can be found to lack equal moral status, then surely there are
other innocent and vulnerable member of society who can be similarly found to lack equal moral
status. The Nazis left few people in Germany safe from the gas chambers, and any other society
that uses utilitarianism in medical ethics also leaves great portions of society at risk of death at the
convenience of society at large. Clearly, the equal moral status of all humans must be recognized
by the law.
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Util Bad VTL

Utilitarianism takes away all value to live
Cleveland Professor of Business Administration and Economics 2002
utilitarianism is that it has a very narrow conception of what it

means to be a human being. Within Benthams view, human beings are essentially
understood to be passive creatures who respond to the environment in a purely
mechanical fashion. As such, there are no bad motives, only bad calculations. In these
terms, no person is responsible for his or her own behavior. In effect, the idea being
promoted is that human action is essentially the same as that of a machine in
operation. This notion reduces a human thought to nothing more than a series of bio-chemical
reactions. Yet, if this is true, then there is no meaning to human thought or human
action and all human reason is reduced to the point of being meaningless.[6]
Another problem with
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Util Excludes Rights

Rights incompatible with utilitarianism.
The first thing to notice is that utilitarianism is a general normative theory either about what is
desirable, or about what conduct is morally right, but in the first instance not a theory of rights
at all, except by implication. A philosopher can be a utilitarian without offering any definition of "a
right" and indeed without having thought about the matter. It is true that some definitions of "a
right" are so manifestly incompatible with the normative theses of utilitarianism that it is clear that
a utilitarian could not admit that there are rights in that sense. For instance, if someone says that to
have a right (life, liberty) is for some sort of thing to be secured to one absolutely, though the
heavens fall, and that this is a self-evident truth, then it is pretty clear that a utilitarian will have no
place for rights in his sense. Again, if one follows Hobbes and says, "Neither by the word right is
anything else signified, than that liberty which every man hath to make use of his natural faculties
according to right reason," one is not going to be able to accept a utilitarian normative theory , for a
utilitarian is not going to underwrite a man's absolute liberty to pursue his own good according to
his own judgment.
Util ignores fundamental rights and creates a slippery slope until rights
lose all significance
Bentley 2k [ Kristina A. Bentley graduate of the Department of government at
the University of Manchester. Suggesting A Separate Approach To Utility and
Rights: Deontological Specification and Teleogical Enforcement of Human Rights,
September. http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf]
Utilitarian theories usually present the view that they are capable of accommodating the idea of
legal rights, as well as providing a normative theory about such rights, which Lyons calls the legal
rights inclusion thesis (Lyons, 1994: 150). On the other hand however, utilitarian theorists are
sceptical of the idea of moral rights unsupported by legal institutions, as such rights would then in
certain circumstances preclude the pursuit of the most utile course of action owing to their moral
force, or normative force (Lyons, 1994: 150). Conversely, legal rights are seen as being compatible
with utilitarian goals as they are normatively neutral, being morally defensible (which entails the
idea of a moral presumption in favour of respecting them) only in so a far as they contribute to
overall utility (Lyons, 1994: 150). The problem then, as conceived by Lyons, is whether or not
utilitarians can account for the moral force of legal rights (which people are commonly regarded as
having by rights theorists and utilitarians alike), as: although there are often utilitarian reasons for
respecting justified legal rights, these reasons are not equivalent to the moral force of such rights,
because they do not exclude direct utilitarian arguments against exercising such rights or for
interfering with them (Lyons, 1994: 150). This being the case, the utilitarian finds herself in the
uncomfortable position of having to explain why rights ought to be bothered with at all, as if they
may be violated on an ad hoc basis to satisfy the demands of maximal utility, then they seem as
confusing on this scheme as natural or moral rights are claimed to be. This then raises the question
as to whether or not utilitarianism can accommodate any rights at all, even legal rights as its
exponents claim it is able to do, in its rule formulation at least. However, leaving this debate aside
as it exceeds the scope of this paper, an alternative approach, that of government house
utilitarianism (see Goodin, 1995: 27) is worth considering as a possible means to a solution.
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Survival Instinct Bad Destroys Humanity

The quest for survival destroys humanity
Callahan, director of The Hastings Institute, 73

Daniel Callahan, Co-founder and former director of The Hastings Institute, PhD in
philosophy from Harvard University,
The Tyranny of Survival 1973, p 91-93
There seems to be no imaginable evil which some group is not willing to inflict on
another for the sake of survival, no rights, liberties or dignities which it is not ready to suppress.
It is easy, of course, to recognize the danger when survival is falsely and manipulatively invoked.
Dictators never talk about their aggressions, but only about the need to defend the fatherland, to
save it from destruction at the hands of its enemies. But my point goes deeper than that. It is
directed even at a legitimate concern for survival, when that concern is allowed to reach
an intensity which would ignore, suppress, or destroy other fundamental human rights
and values. The potential tyranny of survival as a value is that it is capable, if not treated
sanely, of wiping out all other values, Survival can become an obsession and a disease,
provoking a destructive singlemindedness that will stop at nothing. We come here to the
fundamental moral dilemma. If, both biologically and psychologically, the need for survival is basic
to man, and if survival is the precondition for any and all human achievements, and if no other
rights make much sense without the premise of a right to life- then how will it be possible to honor
and act upon the need for survival, without in the process, destroying everything in human beings
which makes them worthy of survival? To put it more strongly, if the price of survival is human
degradation, then there is no moral reason why an effort should be made to ensure that
survival. It would be the Pyrrhic victory to end all Pyrrhic victories Yet it would be the
defeat of all defeats if, because human beings could not properly manage their need to survive,
they succeeded in not doing so.
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**RIGHTS/DEONTOLOGY**
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Must Evaluate Human Rights (1/2)

Violations of freedom and justice must be evaluated before every other impact
Petro Professor of Law 74.
Sylvester Petro, Prof of Law @ Wake Forest U, University of Toledo Law Review, pg. 4801)
However, one may still insist, echoing Ernest Hemingway - "I believe in only one thing: liberty." And
it is always well to bear in mind David Hume's observation: " It is seldom that liberty of any kind is
lost all at once." Thus, it is unacceptable to say that the invasion of one aspect of freedom
is of no import because there have been invasions of so many other aspects . That road
leads to chaos, tyranny, despotism, and the end of all human aspiration . Ask
Solzhenitsyn. Ask Milovan Djilas. In sum, if one believes in freedom as a supreme value and the
Proper ordering; principle for any society aiming to maximize spiritual and material welfare, then
every invasion of freedom must be emphatically identified and resisted with undying
spirit.
Dehumanization outweighs every other impact

Montagu and Matson, scientist and professor 83
Ashley Montagu, Esteemed Scientist and Writer; and Floyd Matson, Professor of American
Studies at University of Hawaii The dehumanization of man, http://64.233.187.104/search?
q=cache:hnDfqSFkJJwJ:www.cross-x.com/vb/archive/index.php/t-939595.html+montagu+matson+dehumanization&hl=en
The contagion is unknown to science and unrecognized by medicine (psychiatry aside); yet its
wasting symptoms are plain for all to see and its lethal effects are everywhere on display . It
neither kills outright nor inflicts apparent physical harm, yet the extent of its destructive toll is
already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natual calamity on record -- and
its potential damage to the quality of human life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond
calculation. For that reason, this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth
Hourseman of the Apocalypse. Its more conventional name, of course, is dehumanization.
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Must Evaluate Human Rights (2/2)

Human rights abuses must be evaluated
Copelon, Professor of Law, 98
Rhonda Copelon, Professor of Law and Director of the International Women's Human
Rights Law Clinic at the City University of New York School of Law, New York City Law
Review, 1998/99, 3 N.Y. City L. Rev. 59
The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S.
machinations to truncate it in the international arena. The framework is there to shatter the
myth of the superiority of the U.S. version of rights, to rebuild popular expectations, and to
help develop a culture and jurisprudence of indivisible human rights. Indeed, in the face of
systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by official and private actors, globalization
of the market economy, and military and environmental depredation, the human rights
framework is gaining new force and new dimensions. It is being broadened today by the
movements of people in different parts of the world, particularly in the Southern
Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection of human rights
as a matter of individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also
emerging is a notion of third-generation rights, encompassing collective rights that cannot be
solved on a state-by-state basis and that call for new mechanisms of accountability,
particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights include human-centered
sustainable development, environmental protection, peace, and security. Given the
poverty and inequality in the United States as well as our role in the world, it is
imperative that we bring the human rights framework to bear on both domestic
and foreign policy.
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Deontology O/W Util

Deontology precludes util- the values of deontology come first
Mcnaughton and Rawling 98 [David McNaughton and Piers Rawling are professors of
philosophy at Keele University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ratio, On Defending
Deontology, issue 11, p. 48-49 Ebsco]
Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules
can only be defended by showing that their adoption brings about some good that
could not otherwise be realized, and then seeks to show that deontology is such a
system. The claim is not, of course, that agent-relative reasons rest directly on considerations of
value in a manner obviously susceptible to the CVC; rather, the grounding is indirect the notion is
that worlds in which there are agent-relative reasons are better than worlds in which there are not.
Nagel argues that an agent relative morality, qua moral system, is intrinsically
valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker (1994), then, pace Howard-Snyder (1993), that rule
consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights (the obverse of constraints) have
value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of moral theory . A right is an
agent-relative, not an agent-neutral, value, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is precisely because
it is supposed to resist the CVC (one is forbidden to violate a right even to

minimize the total number of such violations). So Nagel faces the Scheffler
problem: How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater harm to
others? How are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human
inviolability, which makes this consequence morally intelligible? (p.89, our emphasis note the
presumption inherent in the question). The answer focuses on the status conferred on
all
human beings by the design of a morality which includes agent-relative

constraints (p.89). That status is one of being inviolable (which is not, of course, to
say that one will not be violated, but that one may not be violated even to minimize the
total number of such violations). A system of morality that includes inviolability
encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture. For, not only is it an evil for a
person to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm the
person in those ways is an additional and independent evil (p.91). So there is a sense
in which we are better off if there are rights (they are a kind of generally disseminated intrinsic
good (p.93)). Hence there are rights. In short, we are inviolable because
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Deontology O/W Util

Deontology comes first, the means must justify themselves
utilitarianism justifies the Holocaust.
Anderson, 2004 (Kerby Anderson is the National Director of Probe Ministries
International, , Probe Ministries Utilitarianism:
The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number http://www.probe.org/theology-andphilosophy/worldview--philosophy/utilitarianism-the-greatest-good-for-thegreatestnumber.html)
One problem with utilitarianism is that it leads to an "end justifies the means"
mentality. If any worthwhile end can justify the means to attain it, a true ethical
foundation is lost. But we all know that the end does not justify the means. If that were so, then
Hitler could justify the Holocaust because the end was to purify the human race.
Stalin could justify his slaughter of millions because he was trying to achieve a
communist utopia. The end never justifies the means. The means must justify
themselves. A particular act cannot be judged as good simply because it may lead to a good
consequence. The means must be judged by some objective and consistent standard
of morality. Second, utilitarianism cannot protect the rights of minorities if the goal is
the greatest good for the greatest number. Americans in the eighteenth century
could justify slavery on the basis that it provided a good consequence for a
majority of Americans. Certainly the majority benefited from cheap slave labor even though the
lives of black slaves were much worse. A third problem with utilitarianism is predicting the
consequences. If morality is based on results, then we would have to have
omniscience in order to accurately predict the consequence of any action. But at

best we can only guess at the future, and often these educated guesses are wrong.
A fourth problem with utilitarianism is that consequences themselves must be
judged. When results occur, we must still ask whether they are good or bad results.
Utilitarianism provides no objective and consistent foundation to judge results
because results are the mechanism used to judge the action itself. inviolability is
intrinsically valuable.
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Deontology O/W Util

Deontology precludes util- the values of deontology come first
Mcnaughton and Rawling 98 [David McNaughton and Piers Rawling are professors of
philosophy at Keele University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Ratio, On Defending
Deontology, issue 11, p. 48-49 Ebsco]
Nagel effectively accepts the consequentialist view that a system of moral rules
can only be defended by showing that their adoption brings about some good that
could not otherwise be realized, and then seeks to show that deontology is such a
system. The claim is not, of course, that agent-relative reasons rest directly on considerations of
value in a manner obviously susceptible to the CVC; rather, the grounding is indirect the notion is
that worlds in which there are agent-relative reasons are better than worlds in which there are not.
Nagel argues that an agent relative morality, qua moral system, is intrinsically
valuable. Thus we concur with Hooker (1994), then, pace Howard-Snyder (1993), that rule
consequentialism is not a 'rubber duck'. Thus rights (the obverse of constraints) have
value, and are, therefore, part of the basic structure of moral theory . A right is an
agent-relative, not an agent-neutral, value, says Nagel (1995, p.88). This is precisely because
it is supposed to resist the CVC (one is forbidden to violate a right even to

minimize the total number of such violations). So Nagel faces the Scheffler
problem: How could it be wrong to harm one person to prevent greater harm to
others? How are we to understand the value that rights assign to certain kinds of human
inviolability, which makes this consequence morally intelligible? (p.89, our emphasis note the
presumption inherent in the question). The answer focuses on the status conferred on
all
human beings by the design of a morality which includes agent-relative
constraints (p.89). That status is one of being inviolable (which is not, of course, to
say that one will not be violated, but that one may not be violated even to minimize the
total number of such violations). A system of morality that includes inviolability
encapsulates a good that its rivals cannot capture. For, not only is it an evil for a
person to be harmed in certain ways, but for it to be permissible to harm the
person in those ways is an additional and independent evil (p.91). So there is a sense
in which we are better off if there are rights (they are a kind of generally disseminated intrinsic
good (p.93)). Hence there are rights. In short, we are inviolable because
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Deontology O/W Util

Deontology comes before util- utilitarianism can be a last resort to
preserve fundamental rights
Kateb 1992 [George Kateb is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics, Emeritus,
at Princeton University The Inner Ocean http://books.google.com/books?
id=MtGJdmzqLZoC&dq=kateb+%22what+does+a+theory%22&source=gbs_navlinks_s]
What does a theory of rights leave undecided? Many issues of public policy do not affect individual
rights, despite frequent ingeniuous efforts to claim that they do. Such issues pertain to the
promotion of a better life, whether for the disadvantaged or for everyone, or involve the clash of
interests. So long as rights are not in play, advocates of rights can rightly allow a loose
utilitarianism as the proper guide to public policy, though they should always be eager to keep the
states energy under suspicion. One can even think, against utilitarianism, that any
substantive outcome acheived by morally proper procedure is morally right and

hence acceptable (so long as rights are not in play ). The main point, however, is that
utilitarianism has a necessary place in any democratic countrys normal political
deliberations. But its advocates must know its place, which ordinarily is only to
help to decide what theory of rights leave alone . When may rights be overridden by the
government? I have two sorts of cases in mind: overriding a particular right of some persons for the
sake of preserving the same right of others, and overriding the same right of everyone for the sake
of what I will clumsily call civilization values. An advocate of rights could countenance, perhaps
must countenance, the states overriding of rights for these two reasons. The subject is painful and
liable to dispute every step of the way. For the state to override-that is, sacrifice- a right
of some so theat others may keep it, the situations must be desperate. I havein mind,
say, circumstances in which the choice is between sacrificing a right of some and
letting a right of all be lost. The state (or some other agent) may kill some or allow
them to be killed), if the only alternative is letting everyone die. It is the right to life
which most prominently figures in thinking about desperate situations. I cannot see any resolution
but to heed the precept that numbers count. Just as one may prefer saving ones own life to saving
that of another when both cannot be saved, so a third party-let us say, the state- can (perhaps
must) choose to save the greater number of lives and at the cost of the lesser number, when there
is otherwise no hope for either group. That choice does not mean that those to be sacrificed are
immoral if they resist being sacrificed. It follows, of course, that if a third party is right to risk
or sacrifice the lives of the lesser for the lives of the greater number when the
lesser would otherwise live, the lesser are also not wrong if they resist being
sacrificed. To accept utilitarianism (in some loose sense) as a necessary
supplement. It thus should function innocently, or when all hope of innocence is
gone. I emphasize, above all, however, that every care must be taken to ensure that the
precept that numbers of lives count does not become a license for vaguely
conjectural decisions about inflicting death and saving life and that desperation be
as strictly and narrowly understood as possible. (But total numbers killed do not
count if members of one group have to kill members of another group to save
themselves from threatened massacre of enslavement or utter degradation or
misery; they may kill their attackers in an attempt to end the threat.)
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Deontology preserves fundamental rights and still accesses the ultimate
good, accessing the same things as util
Bentley No Date [ Kristina A. Bentley graduate of the Department of government
at the University of Manchester. Suggesting A Separate Approach To Utility and
Rights: Deontological Specification and Teleogical Enforcement of Human Rights
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/pir/postgrad/vol1_issue3/issue3_article1.pdf]
The second area of departure between utilitarianism and rights-based theories is that
utilitarians advocate a simple maximising strategy as the aim is to maximise social
utility and a society is justified in doing whatever enhances its aggregate utility (Jones,
1994: 52). Conversely, the opponents of this view hold that rights constitute an area which
is beyond the reach of such calculations, as it would be pointless if rights could be set
aside in a mere calculus of competing preferences (Jones, 1994: 53). This is because
rights are regarded as being considerations which are special in the sense that they
protect individuals from the potential excesses of such calculations. Consequently, to refer
back to Gewirths example, according to the rights-based account, it would always be
morally wrong to torture an innocent person, even if this would result in a large increase in
aggregate utility in such a society, while a utilitarian approach would weigh up the
evidence, such that if thousands of lives would be saved by the torture, then it ought to be
done. This roughly reflects Dworkins notion of Rights as Trumps which override, or
supersede ordinary notions of well-being. The difference however is that Dworkins theory
occupies some middle ground, as it does not rule out rights being overridden by such
considerations when other fundamental rights are threatened (Jones, 1994: 53). So while
Dworkin would probably argue that to torture someone to give others in society pleasure
at the sight would be trumped by the right not to be tortured, he would perhaps concede
that to torture an individual to prevent the detonation of a nuclear bomb, as is the case in
Gewirths example, may be justified, as the right to life of all others in society may, in this
instance, trump the right of an individual not to be tortured. Dworkins formulation again
places the domain of rights beyond the reach of ordinary considerations of utility, but he
does make provision for rights to be balanced against one another (to trump one
another) in cases of extreme gravity for rights themselves. Consequently, theories of
rights quite simply consider respect for rights to be the primary consideration in the
course of social deliberation, while utilitarians consider the ultimate good or utility on
the balance to be the correct goal to pursue, even if this potentially infringes on individual
rights. However, assertions that these conceptions of justice are incompatible are not
always acknowledged by exponents of consequentialism. As Richard B. Brandt states:
There is a fundamental incompatibility between utilitarianism and human rights. Most
utilitarians of course have not thought there is such an incompatibility (Brandt, 1992:
196).
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Deontology Good K2 Policy

Evaluating the deontological aspects of a
making
policy is critical to policy
Pinstrup-Andersen, 2005. [Ethics and economic policy for the food system. General
Sessions, 01DEC-05, American Journal of Agricultural Economics Ebsco Host.]
Economists seldom address ethical questions as they infringe on economic theory or economic
behavior. They (and I) find this subject complex and elusive in comparison with the relative
precision and
objectivity of economic analysis. However, if ethics is influencing our analyses but ignored, is the
precision and objectivity just an illusion? Are we in fact being normative when we claim to be
positive or are we, as suggested by Gilbert
(p. xvi), ignoring social ethics and, as a consequence, contributing to a situation in which we know
"the
price of everything and the value of nothing?" The economists' focus on efficiency and the
Pareto
Principle has made us less relevant to policy makers, whose main concerns are
who gains, who
loses, by how much, and can or should the losers be compensated. By focusing on
the
distribution of gains and losses and replacing the Pareto Principle with estimates of
whether a big
enough economic surplus could be generated so that gainers could compensate
losers, the socalled
new welfare economics (which is no longer new) was a step toward more relevancy
for policy
makers (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz). Another major step toward relevancy was made by the more
recent
emphasis on political economy and institutional economics. But are we trading off scientific validity
for
relevancy? Robbins (p. 9) seems to think so, when he states that "claims of welfare economics to be
scientific are highly dubious." But if Aristotle saw economics as a branch of ethics and Adam Smith
was a moral philosopher, when did we, as implied by Stigler, replace ethics with precision and
objectivity? Or, when did we as economists move away from philosophy toward statistics and
engineering and are we on our way back to a more
comprehensive political economy approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative variables are
taken
into account? I believe we are. Does that make us less scientific, as argued by Robbins?
I am not questioning whether the quantification of economic relationships is

important. It is. In the case of food policy analysis, it is critically important that the
causal relationship between policy options and expected impact on the population
groups of interest is quantitatively estimated. But not at the expense of reality,
context, and ethical considerations, much of which can be described only in
qualitative terms. Economic analyses that ignore everything that cannot be
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quantified and included in our models are not likely to advance our understanding
of economic and policy relationships. Neither
will they be relevant for solving real world problems. The predictive ability is likely
to be low and,
if the results are used by policy makers, the outcome may be different from what
was expecte.
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Deontology Good K2 VTL

Deontology key to giving human life value.
Kamm 92 [ FM Kamm is Littauer Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy, Kennedy School Nonconsequentialism, the person as an end-in-itself, and the significance of status., Philosophy and
Public Affairs, p. 390 JSTOR]
If we are inviolable in a certain way, we are more important creatures than violable
ones; such a
higher status is itself a benefit to us . Indeed, we are creatures whose interests as
recipients of such
ordinary benefits as welfare are more worth serving. The world is, in a sense, a
better place, as it has
more important creatures in it.3' In this sense the inviolable status (against being harmed in a
certain way) of any potential victim can be taken to be an agent-neutral value. This is a
nonconsequential
value. It does not follow (causally or noncausally) upon any act, but is already
present in
the status that persons have. Ensuring it provides the background against which
we may then seek
their welfare or pursue other values. It is not our duty to bring about the agentneutral value, but only
to respect the constraints that express its presence . Kagan claims that the only
sense in which we can
show disrespect for people is by using them in an unjustified way. Hence,
if it is justified to kill one to save five, we will not be showing disrespect for the one
if we so use him. But there is another
sense of disrespect tied to the fact that we owe people more respect than animals, even though we
also should not treat animals in an unjustified way. And this other sense of disrespect is, I believe,
tied to the failure to heed the greater inviolability of persons.
Deontology does not dismiss consequences, categorical imperative

means deont still maximizes happiness
Donaldson 95 (Thomas Donaldson is Professor of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics
and International Affairs,International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg.
147-154)
When discussing nuclear deterrence or intervention it is common to exaggerate
nonconsequential nature
of Kantianism. It is a false but all-too common myth that Kant believed
the
that
consequences were
irrelevant to the evaluation of moral action . In his practical writings Kant explicitly states
that each of us
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has a duty to maximize the happiness of other individuals, a statement that echoes Mills famous
principle of
utility. But Kants duty to promote beneficial consequences is understood to be
derived from an even

higher order principle, namely, the categorical imperative that requires all of us to
act in a way that
respects the intrinsic value of other rational beings. Kant does not dismiss
consequences. He simply wants them in their proper place.
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Callahan (1/2)
Callahan embraces reason and says it must be used in combination with a
moral obligation to make decisions
Callahan, fmr. Director of the Hastings Institute, 75
DANIEL CALLAHAN, Fmr. Director of the Hastings Institute, author of The Tyranny of
Survival & Senior Fellow at Yale, February 1975,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3560956
correspondent, after praising the position I took in opposition to Garrett Hardin's "Lifeboat Ethic" ("Doing Good by Doing Well," Dec. 1974), ended her letter with a complaint. I had, she
implied, fallen into a fatal trap by trying to argue with Hardins thesis on "rationalistic rounds. The
issue at stake is "humanitarianism" and the future of altruism, neither of which will be saved if they
must be defended on the narrow base of reason and logic. Indeed, she seemed to be saying,
there is an inherent conflict between humanitarianism and rationalism. As an
unreconstructed rationalist, I balk at admitting such a dualism, just as I rebel at the general
black-balling of reason and logic which seems to many to offer the only antidote to the
generally insane, depressing state of the world. One can well understand how rationality has come
to have a bad name. We have in the twentieth century been subjected to endless wars, ills and
disasters carried out in the name of somebody or other's impeccable logic and assertedly rational
deliberations. One can also understand the sense of distaste any feel in the face of articulate
proponents of "triage" in our dealings with poor countries and a "lifeboat ethic" in deter-mining our
own moral responsibilities toward the starving, particularly when such positions are advanced in the
name of no-nonsense rational calculation. For all that, I am far more fearful of a deliberate
abandonment of reason than of the evils which can be done in its name. The fault with
the latter form of attacking "reason" is that it takes those arguing in its name too much
at their own word. Poke around a bit under the facade of carefully-honed rationality and
precise logical moves and what does one usually discover? Pure mush. Those vast,
intricate edifices rest on a bowl of porridge, made up of irrational self-interest, the
worst forms of sentimentality (or pure cruelty), utterly unanalyzed assumptions about
politics, or ethics, or human nature, tribalism, and god knows what else. None of that has
much if anything to do with reason. A recent article by Robert L. Heilbroner, author of the
much-acclaimed book, An Inquiry Into the Human Prospect, is indicative of the muddle created
when one calls for an abandonment of rationality in favor of something more
Illuminating. In "What has Posterity Ever Done for Me?" (New York Times Magazine, January 19,
1975), Prof. Heilbroner tries to make the case that contemporary human beings will never learn to
take responsibility for the future of mankind until they give up trying to find a compelling reason
why they should. Only some fundamental revelatory experience-to wit, famine, war and the like-will
bring people back to what is an essentially "religious" insight, that of "the transcendent importance
of posterity for them." It is intriguing to see the way Heilbroner develops his case. "Why," he asks,
"should I lift a finger to affect events that will have no more meaning for me 75 years after my
death than those that happened 75 years before I was born? There is no rational answer to that
terrible question. No argument based on reason will lead me to care for posterity or to lift a finger in
its behalf. Indeed, by every rational consideration, precisely the opposite answer is thrust upon us
with irresistible force." Going on, Heilbroner quotes an anonymous "Distinguished Younger
Economist" who has concluded that he really doesn't "care" whether mankind survives or not. "Is
this," Heilbroner queries, "an outrageous position? I must confess it outrages me. But this is not
because the economist's arguments are 'wrong'-indeed, within their rational framework they are
indisputably right. It is because their position reveals the limitations-worse, the suicidal dangers-of
what we call 'rational argument' when we con-front questions that can only be decided by an
appeal to an entirely different faculty from that of cool reason." I find Heilbroner's despair at
finding a rational basis to care about posterity, or the distant past, simply startling. Surely,
A RECENT
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to begin with the past, he can hardly believe (to stick to his own field of economics) that Adam
Smith and the other "worldly philosophers" have no significance whatever any more, despite the
fact that they had a critical place in shaping the world in which we live today. And surely, as an
American, he must find some slight trace of present and personal meaning in the historical fact that
some distant people once upon a time signed a "declaration of independence." My beginning with
the past is no accident. If a case is to be made for caring about the fate of posterity, it will arise out
of the highly rational recognition that (for better or worse) we are where we are because it seemed
to our ancestors only sensible to worry about the fate of their descendants, just as (also for better
or worse) still earlier generations had worried about their descendants. More deeply, unless one has
decided that human life is, regardless of its condition, meaningless and terrible-in which case, what
the hell-one will also recognize the moral interdependence of generations as one of the conditions
for extracting whatever possibilities there are for human happiness. To love and believe in life at all
is not just to love one's own life; it is to love both the fact and idea of life itself, including the life of
those yet to be born. My point here, however, is not to make the rational case for obligations
Callahan (2/2)
toward posterity. It is only to indicate there are rational ways of going about it (and if you don't like
the reasons I've given, I can think of still others), just as there are rational ways of establishing
a variety of other moral duties. The truly hazardous part of despairing of reason, and
longing for a return to something more primitive, can readily be seen in the texture of
some of Heilbroner's other arguments. He is looking for what he calls the "survivalist" principle,
by which he seems to mean some deep sense of obligation toward the future, powerful enough to
give us the courage and the toughness to take those immediate steps necessary to discharge our
obligation. "Of course," he writes, "there are moral dilemmas to be faced even if one takes one's
stand on the 'survivalist' principle.... [But] this essential commitment to life's continuance gives us
the moral authority to take measures, per-haps very harsh measures, whose justification cannot be
found in the precepts of rationality, but must be sought in the unbearable anguish we feel if we
imagine ourselves as the executioner of mankind." Of course we may have to act harshly. But, to
bring the circle full turn, how are we to act harshly, to whom and under what circumstances? Are we
also meant to abandon reason in trying to answer that question? Are we supposed to solve the
evident "moral dilemmas" to which Heilbroner refers by a dependence, not on reason, but
on a sense of "unbearable anguish"?I see no reason to hope that even a fully shared sense of
anguish would tell us how to resolve moral dilemmas. Moreover, Heilbroner himself cites at least
one person who does not share his feelings, and unless we are to suppose that person to represent
a class of one, the pillar to the center of the earth Heilbroner offers us begins to look like a piece of
balsa wood. The amusing side of all this is that the two principal "survivalists" of our day, Garrett
Hardin and Robert Heilbroner, seem to come out at opposite poles in the place they give to reason.
Hardin appears the very paradigm of that cool rationality which Heilbroner believes to be our
greatest threat to survival. And Heilbroner's quest for some deeper affective, "religious" motivation
for survival seems the very model of that soft-hearted and woolly-headed humanitarianism which
Hardin identifies as the villain. Neither is likely to carry the day, and for very healthy reasons.
Heilbroner is correct when he discerns that the appeal to reason has its limitations. It
takes more than mere logic to move people deeply, especially to move them to act. More
than that, the frequently indignant reaction which greeted Hardin's "lifeboat ethic" indicates that
many are not about to adopt a policy of calculating callousness, "logical" though that may seem.
Hardin is correct when he says that we must think very hard about the question of survival,
however much such thought may end by posing hard, even revolting, choices. But he seems not to
have realized that, unless the drive for survival has a moral basis and a saving reference to something deeper than rational calculation, some and perhaps many people will decide that survival at
any price is not a moral good. Nothing I have said here solves the vexing problem of the right
relationship between reason and feeling in the moral life. But it seems to me at least
clear that the worst possible solution is to choose one at the expense of the other, or to
think that we can make a flat choice between them. There is enough evidence from
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recent psychological research to indicate that our feelings and emotions are vigorously
tutored by our perceptions and cognition; reason has its say even in the way we feel. A no less
important insight is that there is all the difference in the world between being "rational and being
"logical."Almost anyone can work through a simple syllogism, presuming he is spared the ordeal of
worrying about whether the premises are correct. It is a far more difficult matter to be rational,
particularly where ethics is concerned
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Callahan Ext
We replace survival as the sole aspect of decision making
Moore, Cambridge University Press, 75
Harold Moore, The Review of Politics, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Jul., 1975), Cambridge University
Press,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1406214
If the solution does not lie in the development of more efficient technology, then contemporary
society needs a new basis for analyzing the moral problems precipitated by recent
technological developments. Callahan claims that two extremes are to be avoided in
forging a responsible perspective: the "tyranny of survival" on the one hand and the
"tyranny of individualism" on the other. He very effectively points out that there is almost
nothing people won't do once they are convinced that survival (of a group, life or kind of
life) is at stake. The moral difficulty is obvious: the social concern with survival as the
only or as the decisive variable in making decisions on technological utilization is decisionmaking at a level well below any acceptable moral minimum. If survival is the only value,
then indeed just about anything is permitted. The "survival only" thesis fails by
overemphasizing one value. The thesis of "individualism" errs in another way: in making the
satisfaction of individual needs and desires the locus of morality it offers no real hope of coping with
either man's communal life or the moral problems that ineluctably follow from man's social nature.
Given the failure of the extreme positions, Callahan argues for the development of a
public morality, one that is capable of integrating values other than mere survival.
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Moral Justice First

Moral justice vital sets us apart from animalistic tendencies.
Taylor, professor of philosophy @ Princeton. 2003.
Robert.
Rawls Defense of the Priority of Liberty: A Kantian Reconstruction.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pg 12. Project MUSE.
Reasonableness, or the capacity for a sense of justice, is the ability to limit the pursuit of ones
conception of the good out of a respect for the rights and interests of other people and out of a
desire to cooperate with them on fair terms. A person who acts reasonably acts according to a
principle of reciprocity: he seeks to give justice to those who can give justice in return (p. 447).
The tight connection between reasonableness and autonomy is explained by Rawls in sec. 86 of
Theory: the sense of justice . . . reveals what the person is, and to compromise it is not to achieve
for the self free reign but to give way to the contingencies and accidents of the world (p. 503).
When we act reasonably, says Rawls, we demonstrate an ability to subordinate the pursuit of our
own good, which may be unduly influenced by the contingencies and accidents of the world, to
those principles we would choose as members of the intelligible realmour reasonableness, in
other words, is emblematic of our autonomy, our independence from natural and social
contingencies. This explains our sense of shame when we fail to act reasonably: we behave
then as if we were members of a lower order of animal , whose actions are determined by
the laws of nature rather than the moral law (p. 225).
Moral law outweighs other considerations integral to human nature.

Robert.
The Priority of Right over the Good and the Priority of Justice over Welfare and Efficiency are both
expressions of our nature as reasonable beings, i.e., beings able to act in conformity with, and out
of respect for, the moral law. In Kants terms, to sacrifice justice for the sake of welfare or
excellence of character would be to sacrifice what is of absolute value (the good will) for what is of
merely relative value (its complements). Rawls himself makes the same strong connection between
reasonableness and these two kinds of priority: But the desire to express our nature as a free and
equal rational being can be fulfilled only by acting on the principles of right and justice as having
first priority. . . . Therefore in order to realize our nature we have no alternative but to plan to
preserve our sense of justice as governing our other aims. This sentiment cannot be fulfilled if it is
compromised and balanced against other ends as but one desire among the rest (TJ, p. 503,
emphasis added). Just as reasonableness is a key facet of our autonomy, so the priorities of right
and justice are expressions of our reasonableness: we best indicate our commitment to guide our
actions by the principles of justice by refusing to compromise those principles for the sake of our
other ends.
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Moral Rationality First

Moral rationality key to sustainable decisionmaking avoids animalistic
tendencies.
Robert.
Rationality is our capacity for a conception of the good, which we pursue through a plan of life. We
schedule, prioritize, temper, and prune our desires in accordance with this plan ; rather than living
from impulse to impulse, as other animals do, we arrange the pursuit of our interests and ends
according to a coherent scheme (secs. 6364). Now, given what was said in the previous
subsection, one may find it difficult to see the connection between rationality, so defined, and
autonomy: if our desires are largely the product of natural and social contingencies, then how can
acting in accordance with a plan to advance them be an aspect of our autonomy? In other words, if
rationality is merely the slave of the passions, 11 and these passions are the result of such
contingencies, then how can rationality possibly express our nature as free and equal beings?
According to Rawls, however, rationality is much more than a slave of the passions. The exercise
of rationality involves a clear distancing from ones immediate desires, as Rawls indicates in the
following passage: The aim of deliberation is to find that plan which best organizes our activities
and influences the formation of our subsequent wants so that our aims and interests can be
fruitfully combined into one scheme of conduct . Desires that tend to interfere with other
ends, or which undermine the capacity for other activities, are weeded out; whereas
those that are enjoyable in themselves and support other aims as well are encouraged. 12 The image
of rationality here is active, not passive. Rather than being haplessly driven on by the dominant
desires, rationality exercises authority over them: rationality elevates some desires and lays low
others; it integrates retained desires into one scheme of conduct; and it even shapes the
development of future desires. Far from being a slave of desire, rationality is its master. This
conception of rationality is consistent with at least one reading of Kants idea of practical reason as
applied to the pursuit of happiness: H. J. Paton notes that prudential reasoning in Kants moral
theory involves a choice of ends as well as means and a subsequent maximum integration of
ends.13
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Rights Absolute
Rights absolute cant infringe on one persons rights to increase wellbeing of others.
Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U Chicago. 1994.
Alan. Are There Any Absolute Rights? Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Joram Graf
Haber. Pgs 137-138
Ought Abrams to torture his mother to death in order to prevent the threatened nuclear
catastrophe? Might he not merely pretend to torture his mother, so that she could then be safely
hidden while the hunt for the gang members continued? Entirely apart from the fact that the gang
could easily pierce this deception, the main objection to the very raising of such question s is the
moral one that they seem to hold open the possibility of acquiescing and participating in an
unspeakably evil project. To inflict such extreme harm on one' s mother would be an ultimate act of
betrayal; in performing or even contemplating the performance of such an action the son would
lose all self-respect and would regard his life as no longer worth living.' A mother' s right not to be
tortured to death by her own son is beyond any compromise. It is absolute . This absoluteness may
be analyzed in several different interrelated dimensions. all stemming from the supreme principle of
morality. The principle requires respect for the rights of all persons to the necessary conditions of
human action, and this includes respect for the persons themselves as having the rational capacity
to reflect on their purposes and to control their behaviour in the light of such reflection. The
principle hence prohibits using any person merely as a means to the well-being of other persons.
For a son to torture his mother to death even 10 protect the lives of others would be an extreme
violation of this principle and hence of these rights, as would any attempt by others to force such
an action . For this reason , the concept appropriate to it is not merely 'wrong' but such others as
'despicable', 'dishonorable", 'base', 'monstrous'. In the scale of moral modalities , such concepts
function as the contrary extremes of concepts like the supererogatory , What is supererogatory is
not merely good or right but goes beyond these in various ways; it includes saintly and heroic
actions whose moral merit surpasses what is strictly required of agents, In parallel fashion, what is
base, dishonourabte. or despicable is not merely bad or wrong but goes beyond these in moral
demerit since it subverts even the minimal worth or dignity both of its agent and of its recipient and
hence, the basic presupposition s of morality itself, Just as the supererogatory is superlatively good,
so the despicable is superlatively evil and diabolic, and its moral wrongness is so rotten that a
morally decent person will not even consider doing it. This is but another way of saying that the
rights it would violate must remain absolute.
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Rights/Liberty K2 Rationality
Rights and basic liberties are a prerequisite of rational decisionmaking.
Robert.
In order to advance the reconstruction of the Hierarchy Argument, we must now answer the
following question: How does this highest-order interest in rationality and its preconditions justify
the lexical priority of the basic liberties over other primary goods, as called for by the Priority of
Liberty? In short, it justifies such priority because the basic liberties are necessary conditions
for the exercise of rationality, which is why parties in the Original Position give first priority to
preserving their liberty in these matters (pp. 13132). If the parties were to sacrifice the basic
liberties for the sake of other primary goods (the means that enable them to advance their other
desires and ends [p. 476]), they would be sacrificing their highest-order interest in rationality and
its preconditions, and thereby failing to express their nature as autonomous beings (p. 493). A brief
examination of the basic liberties enumerated by Rawls will indicate why they are necessary
conditions for the exercise of rationality (p. 53). The freedoms of speech and assembly, liberty of
conscience, and freedom of thought are essential to the creation and revision of plans of life:
without secure rights to explore ideas and beliefs with others (whether in person or through various
media) and consider these at our leisure, we would be unable to make informed decisions about our
conception of the good. Freedom of the person (including psychological and bodily integrity), as
well as the right to personal property and immunity from arbitrary arrest and seizure, are necessary
to create a stable and safe personal space for purposes of reflection and communication, without
which rationality would be compromised if not crippled. Even small restrictions on these basic
liberties would threaten our highest order interest , however slightly, and such a threat is
disallowed given the absolute priority of this interest over other concerns. Note also that lexical
priority can be justified here for all of the basic liberties, not merely a subset of them (as was the
case with the strains-of-commitment interpretation of the Equal Liberty of Conscience Argument). 14
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Moral Resolution O/W Util

Utilitarianism fails to take into account prima facie rights moral
resolution of conflicts necessary.
McCloskey, professor of philosophy. 1986.
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights. Pg 133.
The theory of prima facie human rights that is outlined here is one in terms of prima facie rights,
many of which are rights of recipience, in which the rights create obligations and claims that
collide with one another and with the moral demands created by other values. Many of these
conflicts are to be resolved without reference, or with only negative reference, to consequences.
When the consequences do enter seriously into the resolution of the conflicts, the solution arrived
at is often very different from that which would be dictated by utilitarian con siderations. The points
made in the preceding section may be illustrated by reference to conflicts of prima facie human
rights such as the right to life, viewed as a right of recipience, the right to moral autonomy and
integrity- and values such as pleasure and happiness, and the absence of pain and suffering. A
consideration of the morally rightful resolution of such conflicts brings out the inadequacy of the
utilitarian calculus as a basis for determining the morally right response to such situations and
conflicts.
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Morals Compatible With Util

Concept of morals not mutually exclusive with utilitarianism.
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pg 204-205.
There is, however, another line of thinking that connects desirability with moral obligation for the
utilitarian, and in fact shows why a utilitarian requires a concept of moral obligation and
what the concept will be. This line of reasoning goes as follows. We begin with the assumption that
the utilitarian wants to maximize happiness in society. Now, he knows that one important means to
his goal, indeed the only one within our control, is human actions with that effect. So he will want
acts that produce welfare, ideally ones that will maximize it as compared with other options. Let us
say, then, that he will want expedient acts as a means to happiness. But the thoughtful utilitarian will further ask himself
how he can bring it about that people perform acts which, taken together, will maximize happiness. One way, and surely a
good way up to a point, is to employ moral education to make people more sympathetic or altruistic; if they become so, they
will tend to act more frequently to produce happiness in others. It looks, however, ;as if such educational encouragement of
sympathy is not enough, mainly because people are ill-informed about the probable consequences of what they do, and in
any case because the intent to do as much good as one can may lead to action at cross-purposes rather than to more
beneficial cooperative behavior. So the utilitarian, who wants maximal happiness, will do something more
than just try to motivate people to aim directly at it. It will occur to him that a legal system, with its
sanctions and implicit directives, will both guide people what to do, and at the same time provide
motivation to conform to the legal standards. He will want, with Bentham, a legal system which as a
whole will maximize happiness by producing pro-social conduct at the least cost. Moreover, the one
thing should be clear: If the moral system has been carefully devised, there will not be gross
disparity between what it requires and conduct that promises to maximize benefit. To avoid such
disparity, an optimal rule-utilitarian moral code will contain " escape clauses." For instance, it will
permit a driver to obstruct a driveway illegally when there is an emergency situation. But suppose
there is a minor disparity between the requirements of the moral code and what will do most good:
suppose Mary will have to walk to work tomorrow, but the gain in convenience to the person who
obstructs her driveway will be: greater than the loss to her. Will the consistent utilitarian then
advise the driver to park illegally? Let us suppose the utilitarian has decided that a utility
maximizing moral code will not direct a person to do what he thinks will maximize expectable utility
in a particular situation, but to follow certain rules - roughly, to follow his conscientious principles,
as amended where long-range utility requires. If he has decided this, then it is inconsistent of him
to turn around and advise individuals just to follow their discretion about what will maximize utility
in a particular case. Of course, the utilitarian will want everyone to be sensitive to the utility of
giving aid to others and avoiding injury; requirements or encouragement to do so are pan of our
actual moral cede, and it is optimal for the code to be $0. But once it is decided that the optimal
code is not that of act-utilitarianism, the utilitarian will say it is desirable for a person to follow the
optimal moral code, that is, follow conscience except where utility demands amendment of the
principles of the code, So it seems the consistent utilitarian will conclude that there is a moral
obligation not to obstruct Mary' s driveway illegally, in accordance with the optimal code.
Successful integration of morality into utilitarian calculus possible.

My conclusion is that if we are to be utilitarians in the sense that we think morality should maximize
long-range utility, and at the same time think that a utilitarian morality should have room for
recognition of rights that cannot be overridden by marginal gains in utility, there are two positions
we must espouse. First, we must hold that a person does the right act, or the obligatory act, not by
just following his actual moral principles wherever they may lead, but by following the moral
principles the acceptance of which in society would maximize expectable utility. Of course, this
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means that people who want to do what is right may have to do some thinking about their moral
principles in particular situations. Second, we must emphasize that the right act is the one
permitted by or required by the moral code the acceptance of which promises to maximize utility,
and not compromise, except in extreme circumstances, in order to do what in a particular situation
will maximize utility , where so doing conflicts with the utility-maximizing code. Only if we do this
will we have room for a concept of " a right" which cannot be overridden by a marginal addition to
the general welfare. It is clear that acting morally in this sense will never be very costly in utility,
and where it is costly at all, that is the price that has to be paid for a policy, a morality of principle.
If my exegesis of J. S. Mill is correct, these recommendations are ones in which he would join.
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No Rights = Violent Backlash

Failure to satisfy moral obligations leads to violent backlash.
Richard. Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights. Cambridge University Press. Pgs 188-189.
How can we absorb this idea into the conceptual scheme developed so far? Morality, as I have
described it, is a feature of agents - their motives, dispositions to fed guilt - and of the attitudes of
the generality of other persons toward agents - approval or disapproval of them. In my account
nothing has been said about the patients, the targets of the behavior of agents. I now suggest that
we should extend our description of moral codes, to include something about patients. First.
patients may have a disposition to resent infringements of the rules we have been talking about
when these impinge on them, when they are the parties injured. or deprived. or threatened. Of
course, people tend to resent any deliberate injury . so this reaction is not specific to rules of
rights.10 Second, persons who resent it when they are injured or deprived in one of these ways or
even when they are threatened because of the nonexistence of institutions able to protect them,
may also be inclined not to feel ashamed or embarrassed to protest on their own behalf. This
feature need not occur, and in societies in which individuals have felt it is their place to be
downtrodden, ill-treated, and so on, it was not the case. Of course there are several levels of this.
The first is expression of resentment to the injuring party. A second level is public protest, or joining
in a public protest, calling attention to the situation and inviting sympathy and support, particularly
for the institution of legal devices for prevention of what has occurred or redress or punishment
when it already has occurred. A third level is that of passive disobedience, lack of cooperation,
perhaps nonviolent economic pressure that causes inconvenience or discomfort on behalf of a
cause. Finally there is violent action, willingness to cause personal or property damage, in order
to bring about a change in those who are infringing moral obligations or to bring about
legal institutions to prevent or punish such infringements. Presumably the level of protest will
normally correlate with the strength of the obligation being infringed and the seriousness of the
damage or threat. The practice of company stores might elicit one level of protest, the practice of
lynch law on members of a racial minority quite another.
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Right To Health O/W

Right to health outweighs violation of right to life.
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights.
Pgs 127-128.
R. G. Frey.
Utility and Rights.
The right to health, like the right to bodily integrity, is related to but not whol1y based on the right
to life. Ill health and mutilation of the body need not threaten life. Deliberately to harm the health of
persons is to violate their personhood, impairing capacities, causing needless suffering, overriding
wills. So too with violation of bodily integrity, as with compulsory sterilization, barbarous forms of
punishment such as chopping off hands, blinding, removing the tongue. In a real sense, although
not in the sense suggested in Locke's labor argument for private property nor in the sense claimed
by many feminists in their defense of abortion from a woman's right to control (and mutilate?) her
body, our body is ours to care for and maintain as the vehicle of our personhood. Although it is true
that we can lose an organ, a leg, an eye, and still be the same person, our body appertains to us as
persons. The negative aspect of the case for the rights to health and bodily integrity is evidently
strong. How can another have the right to injure, infect, disease a person? So to act is to violate a
right. A very powerful moral justification would be necessary for such an act not to constitute a
grave end illegitimate violation of a right.
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Poverty Moral Obligation

Humanity has a moral obligation to alleviate poverty.
UN General Assembly Press Release. December 2006.
United NationsWORLD HAS MORAL OBLIGATION TO FIGHT POVERTY,
PROTECT HUMAN RIGHTS OF MOST VULNERABLE, SAYS GENERAL
ASSEMBLY PRESIDENT IN HUMAN RIGHTS DAY MESSAGE 2006
www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm
Following is the message by Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the
General Assembly, on the occasion of Human Rights Day, observed 10 December: This year,
we commemorate Human Rights Day with the theme Fighting Poverty: a matter of
obligation not charity. When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense,
the world has a moral and strategic obligation to fight poverty and to address the
human rights concerns of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to
experience human rights violations, discrimination or other forms of persecution.
Being poor makes it harder to find a job and get access to basic services, such as
health care, education and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power
and no voice. History is littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are
to eradicate poverty and promote human rights, we need to take action to
empower the poor and address the root causes of poverty, such as discriminateon and
social exclusion. It is because human rights, poverty reduction and the
empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that we all have a moral duty to take
action.
We have a moral obligation to solve poverty

Al Khalifa, President of the General Assembly, 06
Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa ( Bahrain), President of the General Assembly 8 December
2006 http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/gasm380.doc.htm
When poverty is so immediate and the suffering so intense, the world has a moral
and strategic obligation to fight poverty and to address the human rights concerns
of the most vulnerable. The poorest are more likely to experience human rights
violations, discrimination or other forms of persecution. Being poor makes it
harder to find a job and get access to basic services, such as health care, education
and housing. Poverty is above all about having no power and no voice. History is
littered with well-meaning, but failed solutions. If we are to eradicate poverty and
promote human rights, we need to take action to empower the poor and address the
root causes of poverty, such as discrimination and social exclusion. It is because human
rights, poverty reduction and the empowerment of the poor go hand in hand that
we all have a moral duty to take action.
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Action Key End Result Irrelevant

People are not a means to a result, the results of an action are never as
important as the action itself.
Schapiro 2001 [Tamar Schapiro is professor of philosophy at Stanford. Three
Conceptions of Action in Moral Theory Ous, Mar 2001, Vol. 35 Issue 1, p93, 25p Ebsco]
Kamms view of action, though less explicit and developed, shares this propositional orientation. An
action in accordance with moral constraints, Kamm claims, states that another person has or lacks
value as a matter of fact. And since there is such a fact of the matter, actions can succeed or fail to
express the truth.18 And yet on both Wollastons and Kamms accounts, the world to which
action relates us descriptively is not the utilitarians world of natural causes and
effects. The claim that youre really something is a not a claim about a persons
empirical or psychological state; rather it is a claim about his status.19 Similarly, the
examples Wollaston invokes to illustrate his theory of action all involve claims about the status of
an agent in relation to others. Thus Wollastons view, echoed by Kamm, seems to be that action
tracks certain practical factsfacts about where we stand in relation to one

another as members of a social world. Wollastons conception of action seems to
presuppose a moral psychology which is different from Cumberlands. While Wollaston would
not deny that every action involves an exercise of efficient causality, his
view suggests that our ultimate practical concern is not for the effects we
can produce. Indeed his conception implies that in addition to a causal element, action
contains a reflexive element. The exercise of human agency, according to Wollaston,
involves a reflective awareness of ourselves in relation to others. 20 Action expresses a
conception of where we stand in relation to the other constituents of the world,
conceived as a realm of status relations. Moreover, this awareness determines an
ultimate end of action which is not an effect to be brought about. That end is the
faithful representation of the interpersonal order of which we are members.
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**AT DEONTOLOGY/RIGHTS**
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Rights Violation Inev

Hatred between groups of people make human rights violations
inevitable
Kohen, Assistant Professor. Ph.D. Duke University Contemporary Political
Science 05
Ari Kohen. "The Possibility of Secular Human Rights: Alan Gewirth and the Principle of
Generic Consistency" Peer Reviewed Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Western Political Science Association, March 17, 2005,
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8crjwyet6g6mr9fh/fulltext.pdf
The trouble with this response is pointed out by Richard Rorty, who offers the rejoinder, made by
an agent who wants to infringe upon the rights of another, that philosophers like Gewirth
"seem ,oblivious to blatantly obvious moral distinctions, distinctions any decent
person would draw. ''8~ For Rorty, the problem cannot be solved by sitting down with
a chalkboard and diagramming how the agent and his potential victim are both
PPAs. It is, he argues, a problem that will not be solved by demonstrating that the
agent violates his victim on pain of self-contradiction because, for this agent, the victim
is not properly a PPA, despite looking and acting very much like one. The old adage about
looking, swimming, and quacking like a duck comes to mind here; no amount of
quacking will convince the agent that his victim is, in fact, a duck. As Rorty points out,
This rejoinder is not just a rhetorical device, nor is it in any way irrational. It is heartfelt. The identity
of these people, the people whom we should like to convince to join our Eurocentric human rights
culture, is bound up with their sense of who they are not . . . . What is crucial for their sense of who
they are is that they are not an infidel, not a queer, not a woman, not an untouchable .... Since the
days when the term "human being" was synonymous with "member of our tribe," we have always
thought of human beings in terms of paradigm members of the species. We have contrasted us, the
real humans, with rudimentary or perverted or deformed examples of humanity. 82
There are, I believe, two problems for Gewirth's theory here . The first is that an
agent can quite clearly sidestep rational inconsistency by believing that his victim is
somehow less of an agent (and, in the case presented by Rorty, less of a human being) than he is
himself. The agent, here, might recognize that his victim is a PPA, but other factors
(being an infidel, a queer, a woman, or an untouchable) have far greater resonance and
preclude her having the same rights as the agent . He might also recognize his victim as a
potential PPA, but not one in the fullest sense of that term or one who has actually achieved that
status; as Gewirth himself notes, "there are degrees of approach to being prospective purposive
agents. ''83 It seems to me that the Nazis knew quite well that their Jewish victims
could be PPAs in some sense; the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 confirm their awareness that Jews
could plan and execute the same sorts of actions they could (voting and working, for example). The
rights of the Jews could be restricted, however, because Jews were quite different from Germans;
rather than PPAs in the fullest sense, they were, in the eyes of the Nazis, what Rorty calls
"pseudohumans. ''~4 On this point, Rorty's point is both clear and compelling: " Resentful young
Nazi toughs were quite aware that many Jews were clever and learned, but this
only added to the pleasure they took in beating such Jews . Nor does it do much good to
get such people to read Kant and agree that one should not treat rational agents simply as means.
For everything turns on who counts as a fellow human being, as a rational agent in the only
relevant sense--the sense in which rational agency is synonymous with membership in our moral
community. ''s5 The second problem for the PGC pointed out by Rorty is that it is overly
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academic and insufficiently pragmatic. In other words, its fifteen steps might be
logically compelling to those in a philosophy department, but not to those who are
actually making these decisions on inclusion and exclusion. "This is not," Rorty tells us,
"because they are insufficiently rational. It is, typically, because they live in a world in which it
would be just too risky-- indeed, would often be insanely dangerous--to let one's sense of moral
community stretch beyond one's family, clan, or tribe. ''86 This second point leads to the final
critique of Gewirth's argument for the PGC.
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AT: Rights First

Rights dont come first conflicting values and ideologies.
HJ. Utilitarianism and Natural Human Moral Rights.
Pg 129.
R. G. Frey.
Utility and Rights.
Problems of a different kind are encountered by the claim that certain negative rights, for example,
the right to life interpreted as a right not to be killed, are always absolute, namely, that such a
claim leads to morally unacceptable conclusions. Different rights, for example, the rights to life and
to moral autonomy and integrity, may conflict with one another, such that we have morally to
determine which to respect and in what way; the one right, such as the right to life, may give rise to
conflicts, such that we can protect, save one life, only by sacrificing or not saving another life. And
rights may conflict with other values, such as pleasure or pain, in ways that morally oblige us
to qualify our respect for the right, as in curtailing acts directed at a persons' self-development to
prevent gross cruelty to animals. Thomists have offered partial, but only partial, replies to criticisms
based on these difficulties in terms of theories such as the Doctrine of Double Effect, the theory of
the Unjust Aggressor (who may be neither unjust nor morally responsible for what he does).
However these replies themselves encounter difficulties of many kinds, including those of involving
their exponents in morally abhorrent conclusions not unlike those to which they object when such I
conclusions are shown to follow from rival theories.
Rights not absolute doesnt take into account intended good.

129.
Thus the Doctrine of Double Effect permits the knowing, unintentional killing of thousands of
innocent children for the sake of a proportional good; yet it commits its exponents to losing a just
war if success can be achieved, and millions of innocent lives be saved, only by the intentional
killing of one innocent person. Similarly objectionable conclusions follow about the permissibility of
killing morally innocent 'unjust aggressors' to save one's life. At the same time, acceptance of these
supporting theories amounts to an admission that human rights such as the right to life are not
always absolute. How can it be so if we are said to have the moral right intentionally to kill the
morally innocent unjust aggressor, and knowingly, albeit unintentionally, to kill innocent persons,
when and if the intended good is proportionately good, and cannot be achieved without bringing
about the unintended, foreseen good?
No appropriate duty to satisfy rights of conscience.

123..
The view that rights and duties are correlative would, if true, lend support to the reducibility-ofrights-to-duties thesis.' However, whilst duties and rights may be correlative-as when by a
voluntary act a person enters into a promise, contract, becomes a parent - commonly / rights, and
more evidently, basic human moral rights, and duties are not correlative. This is so with the
examples cited above. There may be no correlative duty to a right of conscience . With rights
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of recipience, rights to aids and facilities, the duties that arise from the right are not the
determinate, fixed, finite duties, correlative duties are thought of as being. Equally, we may have
important duties in respect of other persons, without those persons necessarily having rights
against us. This is often so in respect of duties of benevolence towards determinate persons. The
duty to maximize good, which dictates that we visit our lonely, ailing I aunt in hospital, need give
her no moral right to our visit.
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AT: Rights First

No absolute rights competing values and rights of different groups.
129.
A similar distinction needs to be drawn and a similar terminology is required in respect of basic
human rights. They are always rights-inalienable, intrinsic rights-but they are simply prima facie
rights; they are rights that are absolute rights only if they are not overridden by more stringent
moral rights or other moral considerations. The introduction of this distinction into human moral
rights theory is both right and necessary. It does however greatly complicate the problem of
determining what are the absolute, morally operative rights of a person in any concrete situation.
Yet the acknowledgment of this feature of basic human rights is necessary for two reasons, the one
because (physical resources may be inadequate to allow all to enjoy their basic rights, and the
other because, in specific situations, we may have to decide between the rights of different
persons, and between respecting rights and securing other values.
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AT Rawls
Rawls conception of rights flawed fails to explain why small incursions
on liberty would threaten citizenship.
Robert.
Up to this point, Rawls has said nothing about the priority of the basic liberties; rather, he has
focused exclusively on their equal provision. Only at the end of his main presentation of the SelfRespect Argument does he briefly discuss the Priority of Liberty: When it is the position of equal
citizenship that answers to the need for status, the precedence of the equal liberties becomes all
the more necessary. Having chosen a conception of justice that seeks to eliminate the significance
of relative economic and social advantages as supports for mens self-confidence, it is essential that
the priority of liberty be firmly maintained (p. 478).These two sentences provide a good illustration
of what I earlier called the Inference Fallacy: Rawls tries to derive the lexical priority of the basic
liberties from the central importance of an interest they supportin this case, an interest in
securing self-respect for all citizens. Without question, the Self-Respect Argument makes a strong
case for assigning the basic liberties a high priority: otherwise, economic and social inequalities
might reemerge as the primary determinants of status and therefore of self-respect. It does not
explain, however, why lexical priority is needed. Why, for example, would very small restrictions on
the basic liberties threaten the social basis of self-respect, so long as they were equally applied to
all citizens? Such restrictions would involve no subordination and, being very small, would be
unlikely to jeopardize the central importance of equal citizenship as a determinant of status.
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AT Rawls
Rawls fails to provide warrants for the absolute preservation of basic
liberties over other ends.
Robert.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pgs 20-21. Project
MUSE.
Although Rawls briefly discusses and defends the Priority of Liberty early in Political Liberalism (PL,
pp. 41, 74, 76), his most sustained arguments for it are to be found late in the book, in the lecture
entitled The Basic Liberties and Their Priority. All of these arguments are framed in terms of
Justice as Fairness rather than liberal political conceptions of justice more generally, a point to
which we will return below. The three arguments for the Priority of Liberty that we identified in
Theory can also be found in Political Liberalism, and both their strengths and weaknesses carry over
into the new context.18 At least two new arguments can be found, however, arguments that I will
refer to as the Stability Argument and the Well-Ordered Society Argument, respectively. As I will
now show, both of these arguments are further illustrations of the Inference Fallacy. The Stability
Argument has a structure similar to that of the Self- Respect Argument. In it, Rawls notes the great
advantage to everyones conception of the good of a . . . stable scheme of cooperation, and he
goes on to assert that Justice as Fairness is the most stable conception of justice . . . and this is the
case importantly because of the basic liberties and the priority assigned to them.Taking the second
point first, Rawls never makes clear why the Priority of Liberty is necessary for stability, as opposed
to strongly contributory to it. Very small restrictions on the basic liberties would seem
unlikely to threaten it, and some types of restrictions (e.g., imposing fines for the advocacy of
violent revolution or race hatred) might actually enhance it. Even if we assume, however, that the
Priority of Liberty is necessary for stability, this fact is not enough to justify it: as highly valued as
stability is, sacrificing the basic liberties that make it possible may be worthwhile if such a sacrifice
is necessary to advance other highly valued ends. Pointing out the high priority of stability, in other
words, is insufficient to justify the lexical priority of the basic liberties that support itonly the
lexical priority of stability would do so, yet Rawls provides no argument for why stability should be
so highly valued.
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AT Rawls
Rawls conception of personal freedom cannot resolve utilitarian
democratic ideals.
Robert.
Princeton University Press. Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, No. 3, Pgs 22-23. Project
MUSE.
Rawls speculates that the narrower the differences between the liberal conceptions when correctly
based on fundamental ideas in a democratic public culture . . . the narrower the range of liberal
conceptions defining the focus of the consensus.25 By correctly based, Rawls appears to mean
at least two things: first, that the conceptions should be built on the more central of these
fundamental ideas; second, that these ideas should be interpreted in the right way (PL, pp. 167
68). For example, Rawls asserts that his conception of the person as free and equal is central to
the democratic ideal (PL, p. 167). This idea is in competition with other democratic ideas, however
(e.g., the idea of the common good as it is understood by classical republicans), as well as with
other interpretations of the same idea (e.g., the utilitarian understanding of equality as the equal
consideration of each persons welfare). A necessary condition, then, for Justice as Fairness to be
the focus of an overlapping consensus would be for adherents of all reasonable comprehensive
doctrines to endorse this idea, along with the interpretation Rawls gives it, as more central to the
democratic ideal than other fundamental ideas. If they were to accept not only this idea but also
its companion idea of society as a fair system of cooperation, then the procedures of political
constructivism (including the Original Position) would presumably lead them to select Justice as
Fairness as their political conception of justice.
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AT: Liberty/Rights First

Priority of liberty not viable as basis of government at best it would be
a competing theory among other liberal conceptions of justice.
Robert.
Is such acceptance likely? Consider the important example of the adherents of utilitarian reasonable
comprehensive doctrines. Would a utilitarian be able to endorse a Kantian conception of free
persons, with its elevation of rationality over the satisfaction of desire and its consequent
implications for agent motivation in the Original Position? It seems unlikely that any utilitarian (with
the possible exception of John Stuart Mill in his most syncretic mood) would countenance this
variety of asceticism. Thus, utilitarians would be likely to focus on another interpretation of the
idea of free persons or perhaps on an entirely different fundamental idea or set of ideas; doing so
would lead them to structure the Original Position differently and would presumably produce a
political conception of justice that did not include the Priority of Liberty. Rawls argues in Political
Liberalism that classical utilitarians (such as Jeremy Bentham and Henry Sidgwick) would be likely
to endorse a political conception of justice liberal in content, but he never suggests that they
would choose the Priority of Liberty, or Justice as Fairness more generally (PL, p. 170). We can
conclude from this finding that the class of liberal political conceptions of justice constituting the
focus of a realistic overlapping consensus would include conceptions that did not endorse the
Priority of Liberty (although they would all give the basic liberties special priority). Moreover,
Justice as Fairness might not be alone among the liberal conceptions in endorsing the Priority of
Liberty: a reasonable comprehensive doctrine might, for example, support a Kantian conception of
free persons but not Rawlss particular interpretation of society as a fair system of cooperation,
leading through the procedures of political constructivism to a liberal conception of justice that
endorsed the Priority of Liberty but rejected, say, the Difference Principle. Thus, the Priority of
Liberty would be one competitor idea among many in an overlapping consensus, endorsed by both
adherents of Kantian comprehensive doctrines and their fellow travelers, but rejected by others.
No justification for violation of rights to prevent external loss - principle

of intervening actions means that government is not held responsible for
death of others.
Gewirth, prof of philosophy @ U Chicago. 1994.
Alan. Are There Any Absolute Rights? Absolutism and its Consequentialist Critics. Joram Graf
Haber. Pgs 143.
He may be said to intend the many deaths obliquely, in that they are a foreseen but unwanted sideeffect of his refusal . But he is not responsible for that side-effect because of the terrorist s'
intervening action. It would be unjustified to violate the mother's right to life in order to protect the
rights to life of the many other residents of the city. For rights cannot be justifiably protected
by violating another right which, according to the criterion of degrees of necessity for action, is
at least equally important. Hence, the many other residents do not have a right that the mother' s
right to life be violated for their sakes . To be sure , the mother also does not have a right that their
equally important rights be violated in order to protect hers. But here too it must be emphasized
that in protecting his mother's right the son does not violate the rights of the others; for by the
principle of the intervening action, it is not he who is causally or morally responsible for
their deaths . Hence too he is not treating them as mere means to his or his mother's ends.
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AT: Morals First

Government cannot act to uphold the rights of the subject on the basis of
moral principle.
Gewirth, professor of philosophy, 81.
Alan. Reason and Morality. Pg 65.
In the agent's statement, 'I have rights to freedom and well-being,' the subject of the rights is the
agent himself, the same person for whom freedom and well-being are necessary goods. The object
of the rights is these same necessary goods. Now in rights-judgments, the subject who is said to
have rights is not always the same as the person who makes a claim or a right-judgment
attributing the rights to the subject. Moreover, a rights-judgment need not be set forth
independently; it may, instead, figure as a subordinate clause wherein the attribution of rights to
the subject is only conditional. In all cases. however, there is assumed some reason or ground that
is held, at least tentatively, to justify that attribution. This reason may, but need not, be some moral
or legal code. In the present case, where what is at issue is the justification of a moral
principle, such a principle cannot, of course, be adduced as constituting the justifying
ground for the attribution of the generic rights to the agent. Rather, in his statement
making this attribution, the justifying reason of the generic rights as viewed by the agent is the fact
that freedom and well-being are the most general and proximate necessary conditions of all his
purpose- fulfilling actions, so that without his having these conditions his engaging in purposive
action would be futile or impossible. Because of this necessity, the agent who is the subject of the
generic rights is assumed to set forth or uphold the rights-judgment himself, as knowing what
conditions must be fulfilled if he is to be a purposive agent; and he upholds the judgment not
merely conditionally or tentatively but in an unqualified way.
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AT: Gewirth
Gewirths theories fail to leave the theoretical realm
Science 05
Despite his best efforts to demonstrate the way in which the PGC applies to real
agents, Beyleveld has simply restated Gewirth's argument and , in my estimation,
added additional jargon that seems to encourage rather than refute Held's objection.
The biggest difficulty with this defense--apart from the way it is worded, which lends
credence to our belief that there is something not quite human about these PPAs --is that
Beyleveld seems to have conflated characteristics and purposes. It is correct that a
PPA must accept the PGC regardless of the nature of his purposes, for having any purposes at all
entails that he is a PPA and being a PPA necessitates his acceptance of the PGC. However, it
does not follow that he must accept the PGC regardless of the nature of his (or
others') characteristics, for these characteristics might invalidate some aspect of
the PGC. He might be, for example, one of the unfortunate marginal agents
discussed above; alternately, he might be acting upon one of those marginal agents, in which
case he need not worry about granting the generic rights that he claims for himself. Beyleveld's
response to this concern seems lackluster: "a PPA, regardless of its particular occurrent
characteristics, is logically required to concentrate attention on the generic features as the basis of
its rights-claims, and must restrict its categorically binding rights-claims to these features, because
it is not logically required to attend to any other features. "94 Leaving aside the fact that
Beyleveld refers to PPAs as neither "him" nor "her," but rather "it," at the same time that
he is attempting to humanize them, the argument he makes here does not stand
up to scrutiny. All he claims is that PPAs are required to base their rights-claims on
the generic features of action (which everyone, except for marginal agents, must possess)b
because they are not required to base those claims on other features. This does not mean that
a PPA cannot base his claim on characteristics other than the generic features of
action; it simply means he must also include the generic features of action in his
claim, as they--like the other characteristics--are necessarily connected with agency. By
and large, then, it seems that Gewirth has not gone a great distance toward
refuting this critique nor has Beyleveld offered much assistance. In fact, Gewirth seems to
recognize his shortcoming even as he attempts to offer his response to Engels:
"Hence, while not entirely exempt from Engels's criticism, the present approach in terms of the
generic features of action has an important justification. For it sets up a morally neutral starting
point that does not accept persons' actual power relations and other differences as a moral datum.
''95 This, though, seems to be the point of Engels' critique and of more recent critiques of analytical
theories that attempt to abstract from the world in order to discuss it. Indeed, Michael Sandel's
objections to Rawls' well-known ideas of the original position and veil of ignorance are equally apt in
looking at the greatest weakness of Gewirth's theory. Although Sandel stands quite close to Rawls
on the question of what a liberal society's principles of justice ought to be, he contends that Rawls'
assumptions about the populace of that society provide a poor foundation for his principles.
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AT: Gewirth
Gewirths study of contradiction fails, he never isolates where negative
consequences come from
Science 05
To begin, then,
let us consider the argument that engaging in a self-contradictory

action could be impossibly problematic for any agent. It is important to note that
the problem of contradiction seems simply to be implied, for nowhere does Gewirth
actually make a case for why we may not engage quite comfortably in selfcontradiction. In fact, in a footnote dealing with Millard Schumaker's multiple objections to the
PGC, Beyleveld points out that quite the opposite is the case: "The error lies in Schumaker's
reading of "incurring the pain of sell-contradiction.' We are to understand that Gewirth argues that
PPAs will be motivated to be moral by the fact that to act immorally is to suffer some form of
emotional distress. But to say that X does Y on "pain of self contradiction" is to say only that if X
does Y, then X contradicts itself. It is not to say that if X does Y. then X contradicts
itself and that this state of affairs causes X to suffer anguish. ''67 It seems, then that
self-contradiction is not necessarily painful for the agent . If it is not, we might wonder,
what reason is there for avoiding it , particularly if engaging in it could be in an agent's selfinterest or if avoiding it turns out to be costly? The only answer that Gewirth seems to provide
comes at the very beginning of his argument for the PGC, in the following statement about his
rational agent: "It is to be noted that the criterion of "rational' here is a minimal deductive one,
involving consistency or the avoidance of self-contradiction in ascertaining or accepting what is
logically involved in one's acting for purposes and in the associated concepts. "68 The assumption,
here, is that all agents have a meta-desire for consistency upon which all of their rational decisions
are built. And yet, it seems important to question whatever we can assume that
human beings are necessarily rational actors who behave as Gewirth outlines or,
instead, a bundle of desires engaged in continual struggle , especially after looking at
the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan.
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AT: Gewirth
Gewirth ignores the fundamental differences between peoples
Science 05
While this Lacanian critique is an interesting one, it is not the strongest argument against Gewirth
on the question of contradiction. Though it might be the case that people are unable to rationally
order their preferences, as Lacan argues, or that some people do not have the sort of meta-desire
for rational consistency that Gewirth assumes for the purposes of his theory, it certainly seems to
be more often the ease that people can and do. What Gewirth fails to consider properly ,
however, is the ability that people have to rationalize their actions in an effort to
avoid the cognitive dissonance that comes with self-contradiction. He clearly

recognizes the problem, pointing out that "some person may without inconsistency claim the
right to inflict various harms on other persons on the ground that he possesses qualities that are
had only by himself or by some group he favors. ''72 By way of a response, as noted above, he
puts forward the ASA: that being a PPA is both the necessary and sufficient justificatory
reason for having the generic rights. This answer seems not to have placated
Gewirth's detractors, nor has it gone far enough to suit me . Of course, Beyleveld deals
with multiple versions of this objection in the fortieth through forty-fifth objections to the PGC. One
such objection is that of Donald E. Geels, who "alleges that '[i]t is trivial to claim that
whatever is right for one person must be right for any relevantly similar person in
any relevantly similar circumstances,' because there is no determinate criterion of relevant
similarity. ''73 This sounds remarkably similar to Gewirth's own objection to the formal principle,
described above. As Beyleveld points out, however, Gewirth has quite clearly specified the criterion
of relevant similarities: "a PPA must claim that it has the generic rights (according to the argument
for the sufficiency of agency [ASA]) for the sufficient reason that it is a PPA. Because a PPA logically
must claim the generic rights, it is the property of be/ng a PPA that is logically required to be the
criterion of relevant similarities. ''74 More interesting, in my estimation, are arguments like
the one made by N. Fotion, that "a 'fanatic' (read 'elitist') can grant itself rights on the
grounds that it is a superior PPA, yet refuse to grant these rights to other PPAs, who
are not superior PPAs, without contradiction. ''75
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AT: Gewirth
Gewirths theories fail to answer how different people treat each other
equally
Science 05
More challenging for Gewirth is the claim not that a PPA is in some way special and
thereby deserving of rights, but instead that some other PPA is somehow damaged and
thereby not worthy of them. Such an argument, however, seems neither to have
been made directly against Gewirth nor is it carefully considered by him or by
Beyleveld. Gewirth seems to recognize the existence of this problem --indeed, he seems
to put it forward himself--but fails really to grapple with it in any meaningful way.
He says, To be P, that is, a prospective purposive agent, requires having the practical abilities the
generic features of action: the abilities to control one's behavior by one's unforced choice, to have
knowledge of relevant circumstances, and to reflect on one's purposes. These abilities are gradually
developed in children, who will eventually have them in full; the abilities are had in varying
impaired ways by mentally deficient persons; and they are largely lacking among animals...Since
the quality that determines whether one has the generic rights is that of being P, it follows from
these variations in degree, according to the Principle of Proportionality, that although children,
mentally deficient persons, and animals do not have the generic rights in the full-fledged way
normal human adults have them, members of these groups approach having the generic rights in
varying degrees, depending on the degree to which they have the requisite abilities. 77 Of
course, in reading these remarks, one must wonder whether it is acceptable to infringe
upon the rights of those who fall within the categories Gewirth lays out . If one is
like a child, then perhaps it is acceptable for society to take away one's rights to
freedom and well-being. Surely that must be the case if one is like an animal for, as Gewirth
says, "the lesser the abilities, the less one is able to fulfill one's purposes without
endangering oneself and other persons. ''78 There is something rather troubling
about making these sorts of statements, but Gewirth seems not to see it. For him, it
is sufficient to argue that one ought to have the generic rights to the degree to which one
approaches being a PPA. Beyleveld's response to this objection, unlike his many others,
is surprisingly lacking and is confined to a footnote. By doing so, he seems to have

made things worse for Gewirth, as he points out that five theorists have taken
issue with the PGC on this important point but then offers no substantive rejoinder .
He says, It seems to me that Gewirth's theory is essentially a theory of the rights of PPAs, and not a
theory of human rights as such...From this ft follows that there are some human beings (those who
are not even marginal agents) who do not have the generic rights, and that nonhuman beings
might have the generic rights...The question of the rights of "marginal agents" is, however, a more
complex one. I do not discuss this, because I view its importance as being for the argument from
the PGC, rather than the argument to the PGC, with which this book is solely concerned; so I shall
not discuss any of the above claims in detail. 79
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AT: Gewirth
Human beings are infinitely more complex than Gewirths theories
assume
Science 05
In order to offer a truly compelling secular foundation for the idea of human rights ,
one must do more than Gewirth has done in demonstrating the logical necessity of
accepting a principle that entails the universalization of the generic rights of freedom and wellbeing. As we have seen. Gewirth crafts an interesting argument for human rights in
theory, but runs into considerable trouble when his theory is put into practice. As
critics like Rorty and Sandel point out, there is something about the Principle of Generic
Consistency that rings a bit hollow . For Rorty, the problem lies in Gewirth's failure to
appreciate the fierce partiality that often drives human rights violations; it is a
confusion to point out contradictions to those who either refuse to recognize them or are not
terribly troubled by them. For Sandel, the PGC must fail for the same reason that Rawls'
original position fails; there is simply no getting around the fact that human beings
are more complex than abstract possessors of goods or prospective purjoiiooposive
agents. Any examination of human life that abstracts in these ways removes the discussion too far
from the real world in which human rights are actually violated. These violations cannot be
said to be the same thing as the simple removal of freedom and well-being from a
PPA, for this sort of language is hopelessly sterile. Human rights violations happen,
instead, to men like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Primo Levi, who struggle desperately to
survive and, if successful, carry the scars of their experiences with them for the
rest of their lives. This is a mistake of the highest order, one that insults the victims
and survivors of some of humanity's most terrible tragedies. It is one that Gewirth
and Beyleveld cannot possibly intend to make, but one that creeps up on them as
the abstractions with which they deal multiply.
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AT: Gewirth
Gewirths academic discussion of human rights ignores the actual human
cost and suffering of torture and death
Science 05
In abstracting away so many characteristics from human beings in order to create the prospective
purposive agent, something has clearly been lost from Gewirth's account of the
justification for human inviolability. It might be philosophically interesting to consider
whether the generic features of action can logically provide a secular grounding for the idea of
human fights, but what is at stake for Gewirth seems overly academic. Human rights,
however, are not simply academic and their justification is far more than a
philosophical puzzle; they are deadly seriou s, often a matter of life and death. For
this reason, human fights cannot be considered in a vacuum, and any attempt at
their justification must be firmly entrenched in the real world. While I have quibbled
with the PGC on its own terms and argued that (15) does not necessarily follow from (1), and while I
have noted that a great many other theorists have done likewise, my deepest critique is that
the PGC's assumptions cause a great deal of trouble whether or not Gewirth's
theory ultimately makes logical sense. As Rorty argues, Gewirth's theory removes the
discussion of human rights from the realm of the actual and concentrates on the
purely theoretical. In doing so, it calls to mind Arthur Koestler's point that "Statistics
don't bleed; it is the detail which counts . ''98 Neither, it seems to me, do PPAs. And the
terrible reality is that human beings do, often at the hands of others . This grim
reality is not surprising to anyone, but it is not often expressed in the way that
Samantha Power does, for example. In writing about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Power offers a
quotation from a UN official on the ground during the worst of the violence: When we arrived, I
looked at the school across the street, and there were children, I don't know how many, forty, sixty,
eighty children stacked up outside who had all been chopped up with machetes . Some of
their mothers had heard them screaming and had come running, and the militia had killed them,
too. We got out of the vehicle and entered the church. There we found 150 people, dead mostly,
though some were still groaning, who had been attacked the night before .... The Rwandan army
had cleared out the area, the gendarmerie had rounded up all the Tutsi, and the militia had hacked
them to death. 99 This sort of thick description stands in marked contrast to the kind of
language that Gewirth employs in his discussion of the PGC's applications . Consider
the following example, one of the few in which Gewirth departs from talking about
PPAs and assigns names: Suppose Ames physically assaults Blake, who defends himself by
physically assaulting Ames. In a purely formal view, Ames and Blake are each disobeying the moral
principle
that requires persons to respect and not infringe one another's well-being. On the PGC's
substantive view, however, these two infractions are not on a par as being both unjustified. Since Ames
inflicted or acted to inflict basic harm on Blake. and hence intended to violate a generic right of Blake
while acting in accord with his own generic rights, Ames's intention was inconsistent and his action
morally wrong? ~176 Because they are not real and no attempt has been made to
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make them real for us, we do not--we cannot--become emotional'ly attached to

Ames and Blake, and we do not care, therefore, what happens to either of them. Our
eyes trip lightly over the words "physically assaults" in Gewirth's example in a way
that they cannot move past the words "who had all been chopped up with
machetes" in Power's.
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Ethics Bad
Ethics is structurally flawed, in that it implies a transgression
Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of
Sciences, 00
(Alenka Zupancic, researcher, Institute of Philosophy in the Slovene Academy of Sciences, 2000,
Ethics of the Real, p. 95-96)
This is why we propose to maintain the concept of the act developed by Kant, and
to link it to the thematic of overstepping of boundaries, of transgression, to the
question of evil. It is a matter of acknowledging the fact that any (ethical) act
precisely in so far as it is an act, is necessarily evil. We must specify, however,
what is meant here by evil. This is the evil that belongs to the very structure of
the act, to the fact that the latter always implies a transgression, a change in
what is. It is not a matter of some empirical evil, it is the very logic of the act
which is denounced as radically evil in every ideology.
The fundamental
ideological gesture consists in providing an image for this structural evil. The gap
opened by an act (i.e. the unfamiliar, out-of-place effect of an act) is immediately
linked in this ideological gesture to an image. As a rule this is an image of
suffering, which is then displayed to the public alongside this question: Is this what
you want? And this question already implies the answer: It would be impossible,
inhuman, for you to want this! Here we have to insist on theoretical rigour, and
separate this (usually fascinating) image exhibited by ideology from the source of
uneasiness from the evil which is not an undesired, secondary effect of the
good but belongs, on the contrary, to its essence. We could even say that the
ethical ideology struggles against evil because this ideology is hostile to the
good, to the logic of the act as such. We could go even further here: the current
saturation of the social field by ethical dilemmas (bioethics, environmental ethics,
cultural ethics, medical ethics) is strictly correlative to the repression of ethics,
that is, to an incapacity to think ethics in its dimension of the Real, an incapacity to
conceive of ethics other than simply as a set of restrictions to yet another aspect
of modern society: to the depression which seems to have became the social
illness of our time and to set the tone of the resigned attitude of the
(post)modern man of the end of history. In relation to this, it would be
interesting to reaffirm Lacans thesis according to which depression isnt a state of
the soul, it is simply a moral failing, as Dante, and even Spinoza, said: a sin, which
means a moral weakness. It is against this moral weakness or cowardice [ lachete
morale] that we must affirm the ethical dimension proper.
The ideology of good and evil is inherently flawed
Sciences, 00
The first difficulty with this concept of diabolical evil lies in its very definition: that
diabolical evil would occur if we elevated opposition to the moral law to the level of
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a maxim (a principle or law). What is wrong with this definition? Given the Kantian
concept of the moral law which is not a law that says do this or do that, but an
enigmatic law which only commands us to do our duty, without ever naming it
the following objection arises: if the opposition to the moral law were elevated to a
maxim or principle, it would no longer be an opposition to the moral law, it would
be the moral law itself. At this level no opposition is possible. It is not possible to
oppose oneself to the moral law at the level of the (moral) law. Nothing can
oppose itself to the moral law on principle that is, for non-pathological reasons
without itself becoming a moral law.
To act without allowing pathological
incentives to influence our actions is to do good. In relation to this definition of the
good, (diabolical) evil would then have to be defined as follows: it is evil to oppose
oneself, without allowing pathological incentives to influence ones actions, to
actions which do not allow any pathological incentives to influence ones actions.
And this is simply absurd.
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Ethics Bad
The real drive behind ethics is desire, not the will to do good
Sciences, 00
Kants second break with the tradition, related to the first, was his rejection of the view that
ethics is concerned with the distribution of the good (the service of goods in Lacans
terms). Kant rejected an ethics based on my wanting what is good for others, provided of course
that their good reflects my own.
It is true that Lacans position concerning the status of the ethics of desire continued to develop.
Hence his position in Seminar XI (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis) differs on
several points from the one he adopted in Seminar VII (The Ethics of Psychoanalysis). That the
moral law, looked at more closely, is simply desire in its pure state is a judgment
which, had it been pronounced in Seminar VII, would have had the value of a compliment; clearly
this is no longer the case when it is pronounced in Seminar XI. Yet even though the later Lacan
claims that the analysts desire is not a pure desire, this does not mean that the analysts desire is
pathological (in the Kantian sense of the word), nor that the question of desire has lost its
pertinence. To put the matter simply, the question of desire does not so much lose its central place
as cease to be considered the endpoint of analysis. In the later view analysis ends in
another dimension, that of the drive. Hence as the concluding remarks of Seminar XI have
it before this dimension opens up to the subject, he must first reach and then traverse the limit
within which, as desire, he is bound.
Morality is a demand for the impossible as it is based on our desires

Sciences, 00
Ethics of the Real, p. 3)
Kant is admired by Lacan above all for his break, at two crucial points, with traditional
ethics. The first is his break with the morality that spelled out obligations in terms of
the possibility of fulfilling them. According to Lacan, the crucial point here is that morality
as such, as Kant well knew, is a demand for the impossible: the impossibility in which we
recognize the topology of our desire. By insisting on the fact that the moral imperative
is not concerned with what might or might not be done, Kant discovered the
essential dimension of ethics: the dimension of desire, which circles around the real qua
impossible. This dimension was excluded from the purview of traditional ethics, and could therefore
appear to it only as an excess. So Kants crucial first step involves taking the very thing excluded
from the traditional field of ethics, and turning it into the only legitimate territory for ethics.
If critics often criticize Kant for demanding the impossible, Lacan attributes an incontestable
theoretical value to this Kantian demand.
Ethics is merely a tool by which personal morals are imposed on others,

which is the root of discontent in society
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Sciences, 00
The Freudian blow to philosophical ethics can be summarized as follows: what philosophy calls the
moral law and, more precisely, what Kant calls the categorical imperative is in fact nothing
other than the superego. This judgment provokes an effect of disenchantment that calls into
question any attempt to base ethics on foundations other than the pathological. At the same
time, it places ethics at the core of what Freud called das Unbehagen in der Kultur. the
discontent or malaise at the heart of civilization . In so far as it has its origins in the
constitution of the superego, ethics becomes nothing more than a convenient tool for
any ideology which may try to pass off its own commandments as the truly
authentic, spontaneous and honourable inclinations of the subject. This thesis,
according to which the moral law is nothing but the superego, calls, of course, for careful
examination, which I shall undertake in Chapter 7 below.
Ethics Bad
It is impossible to determine whether an action is truly ethical or not
Sciences, 00
By spelling things out in this way we can see clearly that the ethical is, in fact, essentially a
supplement. Let us, then, begin with the first level (the legal). The content of action (its
matter), as well as the form this content, are exhausted in the notion of in
conformity with duty. As long as I do my duty nothing remains to be said. The
fact that the act that fulfils my duty may have been done exclusively for the sake
of this duty would change nothing at level of analysis. Such an act would be
entirely indistinguishable from an act done simply in accord with duty, since their
results would be exactly the same. The significance of acting (exclusively) for the sake of
duty will be visible only on the second level analysis, which we will simply call the level form. Here
we come across a form which is no longer the form of anything, of some content of other, yet it is
not so much an empty form as form outside content, a form that provides form only for itself. In
other words, we confronted here with a supply which at the same time seems to be pure waste,
something that serves absolutely no purpose.
Ethics in terms of attempts to do something good only re-entrenches

the presence of the omnipresent evil
Sciences, 00
The theme of radical evil is currently something of a hot topic, and Kant, as a theoretician of
radical evil, is subject to very diverse and sometimes contradictory readings. In his book, LEthique
Alain Badiou points out that the topic of radical evil has become a spectre raised
by ethical ideologists every time a will to do something (good) appears. Every
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positive project is capable of being undermined in advance on the grounds that it

might bring about an even greater evil. Ethics would thus be reduced to only one
function: preventing evil, or at least lessening it. It seems that such an ethics of the
lesser evil is justified in its reference to Kant. The criticism of Kant according to which he defined
the criteria of the (ethical) act in such a way that one can never satisfy them goes as far back as
Hegel. From this point it follows that all our actions are necessarily bad, and that
one can remain pure only if one chooses not to act at all. In this perspective,
good does not exist, whereas evil is omnipresent.
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Deontology Bad No Assume Nuke War

Deontology does not hold up against the threat of nuclear war.
Hardin and Mearsheimer 85 [ Russell Hardin and John Mearsheimer are both
Professors of Political Science at the University of Chicago, ol. 95, No. 3, Special Issue:
Symposium on Ethics and Nuclear Deterrence JSTOR ]
Discussion among philosophers often stops at the point of fundamental

disagreement over moral principles, just as discussion among strategists often stops at the
point of disagreement over hypothetical assertions about deterrence. But most moral theorists -and
all
utilitarians
-also
require
consideration
of
hypothetical
assertions to reach their conclusions, although they are typically even less adept at objective,
causal
argument
than are strategists, who are themselves often quite casual with their social scientific claims. Even
if
one
wishes to argue principally from deontological principles, one must have some
confidence in one's social scientific expectations to decide whether consequences
might not in this instance be overriding . Only a deontologist who held the
extraordinary position that consequences never matter could easily reach a
conclusion on nuclear weapons without considering the quality of various
outcomes. Alas, on this dreadful issue good causal arguments are desperately needed.
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Deontology Bad - Policy

Deontology is a terrible system for policy- policies must use means to an
end framework and are judged by their effectiveness
Institute For Public Policy 97 [ Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June, 1997 A
Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf]
deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical

limitations as a basis for
public policy. At best, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to
ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate
public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness
while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse . For
example, a moral obligation to preserve the environment by no means implies the
best way, or any way for that matter, to do so, just as there is no a priori reason to
believe that any policy that claims to preserve the environment will actually do so.
At the same time,
Any number of policies might work, and others, although seemingly consistent
with the moral principle, will fail utterly. That deontological principles are an inadequate basis for
environmental
policy is evident in the rather significant irony that most forms of deontologically based
environmental
laws and regulations tend to be implemented in a very utilitarian manner by street-level
enforcement
officials. Moreover, ignoring the relevant costs and benefits of environmental policy and their
attendant incentive
structures can, as alluded to above, actually work at cross purposes to environmental preservation.
(There exists an extensive literature on this aspect of regulatory enforcement and the often
perverse outcomes
of regulatory policy. See, for example, Ackerman, 1981; Bartrip and Fenn, 1983; Hawkins,
1983, 1984; Hawkins and Thomas, 1984.) Even the most die-hard preservationist/deontologist
would, I believe,
be troubled by this outcome. The above points are perhaps best expressed by Richard Flathman,
The number of values typically involved in public policy decisions, the broad
categories which must be employed and above all, thescope and complexity of the
consequences to be anticipated militate against reasoning so
conclusively that they generate an imperative to institute a specific policy. It is
seldom the case that only one policy will meet the criteria of the public interes t
(1958, p. 12). It therefore follows that in a democracy, policymakers have an ethical duty
to establish a plausible link between policy alternatives and the problems they
address, and the public must be reasonably assured that a policy will actually do
something about an existing problem; this requires the means-end language and
methodology of utilitarian ethics. Good intentions, lofty rhetoric, and moral piety
are an insufficient,
though perhaps at times a necessary, basis for public policy in a democracy .
.
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Deontology Bad - Policy

Deontology is irrelevant in policy making - intentions are impossible to
know, only the outcome matters
Hinman98
(Lawrence Hinman is a professor of Ethics Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory, p. 186)
When, for example, we want to assess the moral correctness of proposed
governmental legislation, we may well wish to set aside any question of the
intentions of the legislators. After all good laws may be passed for the most venal
of political motives, and bad legislation may be the outcome of quite good
intentions. Instead, we can concentrate solely on the question of what
effects the legislation may have on the people. When we make this shift, we
are not necessarily denying that individual intentions are important on some
level, but rather confining our attention to a level on which those intentions
become largely irrelevant. This is particularly appropriate in the case of policy decisions by
governments, corporations, or other groups. In
such cases there may be a diversity of different intentions that one may want to
treat as essentially private matters hwen assessing the moral worth of the
proposed law, policy, or action. Therefore, rule
utilitarianism's neglect of intentions intuitively makes the most sense when we are
assessing the moral
worth of some large-scale policy proposed by an entity consisting of more than one
individual.
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Deontology Bad - Democracy

Deontology in policy making fails to uphold democracy and legitimizes
oppression.
Institute For Public Policy 97 [ Institute For Public Policy New Mexico June, 1997 A
Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics http://apsapolicysection.org/vol7_2/72.pdf]
Regarding the policymaking role of deontological philosophy in a democracy, I am

concerned about the
same issue that concerned scholars such as Herman Finer and Victor Thompson-the specter of
policymakers (whether elected or unelected) imposing their own perceptions of
higher-order moral principles on an unwilling or uninformed society . History has
shown that the imposition of higher-order moral principles from above all too often
degenerates into instrumental oppression . Thus as Finer has--I believe correctly--pointed
out, the crucial difference between democracy and totalitarianism is the people's
power to exact obedience to the public will. In a democracy, values are not
"discovered" by policy activists; instead, yhey emerge out of the democratic
process. For this reason I find very troubling the suggestion by Joel Kassiola that environmental
ethics requires that such long-standing and powerful values as national sovereignty and property
rights will have to be ethically assessed and, perhaps, redefined or subordinated to a
more morally-weighty, environmentally-based values and policies. I cannot help but wonder just
who will
be doing the refining and subordinating of these values and how this is to be done. As Kurt
Baier reminds us, in a democracy the moral rules and convictions of any group
can and should be subjected to certain tests (1958, p. 12). That test is the
submission of those moral rules and convictions
to the sovereign public. While policymakers are expected to sort out the value
conflicts that arise in light of their duty to serve the public interest, they are
seldom entitled to act solely according to some perceived a priori moral imperativ e.
(Those who would act this way in the case of environmental policy are aptly described by Bob
Taylor as environmental ethicists who discover 'truth' even though this truth can't or won't be seen
by their fellow citizens.) Herein lies one of the important moral dilemmas of
democratic government. Individuals are free, within the constraints of law, to act
on perceived moral imperatives; democratic governments are not. It is, for
example, one thing for individuals to donate their property for environmental
preservation, but it is quite another thing for the government
to seize private lands (i.e., redefine property rights) for the same purpose.
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Deontology Bad -- Conflicts

Deontology fails-- no way of evaluating conflicting obligations
Rainbow 2002 [ Catherine Rainbow is a teacher at Davidson College.Descriptions of Ethical
Theories
and
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/Indep/carainbow/Theories.htm]
Principles
Although deontology contains many positive attributes, it also contains its fair number of
flaws. One weakness of this theory is that there is no rationale or logical basis
for deciding an individual's duties . For instance, businessman may decide that
it is his duty to always be on time to meetings. Although this appears to be a noble
duty we do not know why the person chose to make this his duty . Perhaps the reason
that he has to be at the meeting on time is that he always has to sit in the same chair. A similar
scenario unearths two other faults of deontology including the fact that sometimes a person's
duties conflict, and that deontology is not concerned with the welfare of others . For
instance, if the deontologist who must be on time to meetings is running late, how is
he supposed to drive? Is the deontologist supposed to speed, breaking his duty to

society to uphold the law, or is the deontologist supposed to arrive at his meeting
late, breaking his duty to be on time? This scenario of conflicting obligations
does not lead us to a clear ethically correct resolution nor does it protect
the welfare of others from the deontologist's decision. Since deontology is not
based on the context of each situation, it does not provide any guidance when one
enters a complex situation in which there are conflicting obligations (1,2).
The need for exceptions means deontology fails as a theory.

Treasury Board 2006 [Canadian Treasury Board Professional Ethics and Standards
for the Evaluation Community in the Government of Canada
sct.gc.ca/eval/dev/career/pesecgc-enpcegc/pesecgc-enpcegc_e.asp]
Among the criticisms of deontological theory is
http://www.tbs-
that it is difficult to get universal
agreement on
what principles should be considered fundamental. It is also difficult to prioritize
and to apply
such abstract principles as truth telling and the sanctity of life to specific cases
that arise in ones
day-to-day work. In addition, the application of certain principles, without reference
to
consequences, can have extremely negative results for example, when telling the truth
results
in penalties for well-intentioned actions. Moreover,
it is often the case that one principle will
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come into conflict with another. A celebrated example is truth telling versus the
sanctity of life
when one is considering whether to lie to a prospective murderer about the
location of the
intended victim. It is also argued that if exceptions are made in the application of a
principle, it
cannot be considered a fundamental one . Many deontologists, however, would
approve of
exceptions when a greater moral principle is at stake. At a less dramatic level than life
and death,
one can envisage an evaluator having to choose between the publics right to know and a clients
right to privacy.
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Deontology Bad Subjective Rights

The subjectivity of what rights are important means deontology fails.
Rainbow 2002 [ Catherine Rainbow is a teacher at Davidson College.Descriptions of Ethical
Theories
and
http://www.bio.davidson.edu/people/kabernd/Indep/carainbow/Theories.htm]
Principles
In the rights ethical theory the rights set forth by a society are protected and given
the highest priority. Rights are considered to be ethically correct and valid since a
large or ruling population endorses them. Individuals may also bestow rights upon
others if they have the ability and resources to do so (1). For example, a person
may say that her friend may borrow the car for the afternoon. The friend who was
given the ability to borrow the car now has a right to the car in the afternoon. A
major complication of this theory on a larger scale, however, is that one must
decipher what the characteristics of a right are in a society. The society has to
determine what rights it wants to uphold and give to its citizens. In order for a
society to determine what rights it wants to enact, it must decide what the
society's goals and ethical priorities are. Therefore, in order for the rights theory to
be useful, it must be used in conjunction with another ethical theory that will
consistently explain the goals of the society (1). For example in America people
have the right to choose their religion because this right is upheld in the
Constitution. One of the goals of the founding fathers' of America was to uphold
this right to freedom of religion. However, under Hitler's reign in Germany, the Jews
were persecuted for their religion because Hitler decided that Jews were
detrimental to Germany's future success. The American government upholds
freedom of religion while the Nazi government did not uphold it and, instead, chose
to eradicate the Jewish religion and those who practiced it.
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Extinction O/W Deontology

The risk of extinction is so great that deontological framework needs to
be ignored in evaluating it.
Schell 82[Jonathan Schell 1982 Fate of the Earth pp. 93-96]
To say that human extinction is a certainty would, of course, be a misrepresentation just as it
would be a misrepresentation to say that extinction can be ruled out. To begin with, we know that a
holocaust may not occur at all. If one does occur, the adversaries may not use all their weapons. If
they do use all their weapons, the global effects in the ozone and elsewhere, may be moderate. And
if the effects are not moderate but extreme, the ecosphere may prove resilient enough to withstand
them without breaking down catastrophically. These are all substantial reasons for supposing that
mankind will not be extinguished in a nuclear holocaust, or even that extinction in a holocaust is
unlikely, and they tend to calm our fear and to reduce our sense of urgency. Yet at the same time
we are compelled to admit that there may be a holocaust, that the adversaries may use all their
weapons, that the global effects, including effects of which we as yet unaware, may be severe, that
the ecosphere may suffer catastrophic breakdown, and that our species may be
extinguished. We are left with uncertainty, and are forced to make our decisions in
a state of uncertainty. If we wish to act to save our species, we have to muster our resolve in
spite of our awareness that the life of the species may not now in fact be jeopardized. On the other
hand, if we wish to ignore the peril, we have to admit that we do so in the knowledge that the
species may be in danger of imminent self-destruction. When the existence of nuclear weapons was
made known, thoughtful people everywhere in the world realized that if the great powers entered
into a nuclear-arms race the human species would sooner or later face the possibility of extinction.
They also realized that in the absence of international agreements preventing it an arms race would
probably occur. They knew that the path of nuclear armament was a dead end for mankind. The
discovery of the energy in mass of "the basic power of the universe" and of a means by which
man could release that energy altered the relationship between man and the source of his life, the
earth. In the shadow of this power, the earth became small and the life of the human species
doubtful. In that sense, the question of human extinction has been on the political agenda of the
world ever since the first nuclear weapon was detonated, and there was no need for the world to
build up its present tremendous arsenals before starting to worry about it. At just what point the
species crossed, or will have crossed, the boundary between merely having the technical
knowledge to destroy itself and actually having the arsenals at hand, ready to be used at any
second, is not precisely knowable. But it is clear that at present, with some twenty thousand
megatons of nuclear explosive power in existence, and with more being added every day, we have
entered into the zone of uncertainty, which is to say the zone of risk of extinction. But the mere
risk of extinction has a significance that is categorically different from, and

immeasurably greater than that of any other risk and as we make our decisions we have
to take that significance into account. Up to now, every risk has been contained within
the framework of life; extinction would shatter the frame. It represents not the
defeat of some purpose but an abyss in which all human purpose would be
drowned for all time. We have no right to place the possibility of this limitless,
eternal defeat on the same footing as risk that we run in the ordinary conduct of
our affairs in our particular transient moment of human history. To employ a
mathematician's analogy, we can say that although the risk of extinction may be
fractional, the stake is, humanly speaking, infinite, and a fraction of infinity is still
infinity. In other words, once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction we
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have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we
nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking,
there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a
holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the
same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as
though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species. In
weighing the fate of the earth and, with it, our own fate, we stand before a mystery, and in
tampering with the earth we tamper with a mystery. We are in deep ignorance. Our ignorance
should dispose us to wonder, our wonder should make us humble, our humility should inspire us to
reverence and caution, and our reverence and caution should lead us to act without
delay to withdraw the threat we now post to the world and to ourselves.
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Deontology Bad - Absolutist

Deontologys absolutism prioritizes morality as a concept over moral
results.
Nielsen 93 [Kai Nielsen is a Philosophy Professor at University of Calgary
Absolutism and It Consequentialist CriticsEdited by Joram Haber, p. 170-2]
Blowing up the fat man is indeed monstrous. But letting him remain stuck while the whole group
drowns is
still more monstrous. The consequentialist is on strong moral ground here, and, if his reflective
moral
convictions do not square either with certain unrehearsed or with certain reflective particular moral
convictions of human beings, so much the worse for such commonsense moral convictions. One
could even
usefully and relevantly adapt here-though for a quite different purpose-an argument of Donagan's.
Consequentialism of the kind I have been arguing for provides so persuasive "a theoretical basis for
common morality that when it contradicts some moral intuition, it is natural to suspect that
intuition, not
theory, is corrupt." Given the comprehensiveness, plausibility, and overall rationality of
consequentialism,
it is not unreasonable to override even a deeply felt moral conviction if it does not square with such
a
theory, though, if it made no sense or overrode the bulk of or even a great many of our considered
moral
convictions that would be another matter indeed Anticonsequentialists often point to the
inhumanity of
people who will sanction such killing of the innocent but cannot the compliment be
returned by speaking of
the even greater inhumanity, conjoined with evasiveness, of those who will allow
even more death and far
greater misery and then excuse themselves on the ground that they did not intend
the death and misery but
merely forbore to prevent it? In such a context, such reasoning and such forbearing to
prevent seems to me
to constitute a moral evasion. I say it is evasive because rather than steeling himself to do what in
normal
circumstances would be a horrible and vile act but in this circumstance is a harsh moral necessity
he
allows. when he has the power to prevent it, a situation which is still many times worse. He tries to
keep
his 'moral purity' and [to] avoid 'dirty hands' at the price of utter moral failure and what
Kierkegaard
called 'double-mindedness.' It is understandable that people should act in this morally evasive way
but this
does not make it right.
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Deontology Bad - Absolutist

Deontologys absolutism means it will inevitably fail.
Pritchett No Date [ Adrian Pritchett is a University of Georgia graduate and an attorney. Paper
written post 1998. Kai Nielsens Support of Consequentialism and Rejection of Deontology
http://pritchea.myweb.uga.edu/phil3200paper1.htm]
Throughout the article, Nielsen concurrently argues that deontology should be rejected but that
consequentialism is viable. We may reconstruct his argument as follows: Deontology, as a
morally absolute theory, makes mistakes . Likewise, an absolutist form of consequentialism
also makes mistakes. So absolutism is wrong. Unfortunately, deontology can only be
formulated as some type of moral absolutism, while consequentialism can be

flexible. Therefore, deontology should be rejected, and by rejecting deontology we
are left with consequentialism as a viable theory. Nielsen relied heavily on examples to
support his first premise that deontology makes mistakes. He discussed warfare to show how
it is not the case that one is necessarily morally corrupt if he or she knowingly kills the innocent
while making moves to kill combatants, but this point would not have been salient without having
seen the movie he referred to, The Battle of Algiers. Nielsen did present an effective example,
though, with the case of the innocent fat man. In this thought experiment, a fat man is
leading a group of people out of a cave when he gets hopelessly stuck in the
opening. There is a rising tide that will cause everyone inside the cave to drown
unless they can get out. The only option for removing the fat man is to blast him
out with dynamite that someone happens to have. Nielsen explains that the
deontologist would hold that the fat man must not be blasted and killed because
this would violate the prohibition against killing and it is only nature responsible for
everyone else drowning. Nielsen challenges this principle by declaring that anyone
in such a situation, including the fat man, should understand that the right thing to
do is blast the fat man out in order to save the many live s in the cave. Furthermore, the
deontologist exhibits moral evasion whenever he stands idly by and allows a
greater tragedy than is necessary to occur. Nielsen explains that this is the kind of
example that highlights the corrupt nature of deontology.
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Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive

Ethical action cannot be based on legality and the illegal
Sciences, 00
We might say that the ethical dimension of an action is supernumerary to the

conceptual pair legal/illegal. This in turn suggests a structural connection with the
Lacanian notion of the Real. As Alain Badiou has noticed, Lacan conceives of the
Real in a way that removes it from the logic of the apparently mutually exclusive
alternatives of the knowable and the unknowable. The unknowable is just a type
of the knowable; it is the limit or degenerate case of the knowable; where the Real
belongs to another register entirely. Analogously, for Kant the illegal still falls
within the category of legality they both belong to the same register, that of
things conforming or failing to conform with duty. Ethics to continue the analogy
escapes this register. Even though an ethical act will conform with duty, this by
itself is not and cannot be what makes it ethical. So the ethical cannot be situated
within the framework of the law and violations of the law. Again, in relation to
legality, the ethical always presents a surplus or excess.
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Ethical Action/Legality Mutually Exclusive

Ethical action and legality cannot be related
Sciences, 00
But then, what exactly is at stake, what is this pure form? First of all, it is clear that the form in
question cannot be the form of the matter, simply because Kant situates the legal and the ethical
in two different registers. Hence matter and form, the legal and the ethical, are not two different
aspects of one and the same thing. Despite this, several commentators have suggested the
following solution to the Kantian problem of form: every form has a content associated with it; we
are always and only dealing with a form and a content. So, in this view, if we are
to decide whether an act is ethical or not, we simply have to know which in fact
determines our will: if it is the form, our actions are pathological; if it is the form,
they are ethical. This indeed, would rightly be called formalism but it not what Kant is aiming
at this his use of the concept of pure form.
First of all we should immediately note that the label formalism is more appropriate for what Kant
calls legality. In terms of legality, all that matters is whether or not an action conform with
duty the content of such an action, the real motivated for this conformity, is
ignored; it simply does not matter. But the ethical, unlike the legal, does in fact present
a certain claim concerning the content of the will. Ethics demands not only that
an action conform with duty, but also that this conformity be the only content or
motive of that action. Thus Kants emphasis on form is in an attempt to disclose a possible
drive for ethical action. Kant is saying that form has to come to occupy the position formerly
occupied by matter, that form itself has to function as a drive. Form itself must be appropriated as
a material surplus, in order for it to be capable of the will. Kants point, I repeat, is not that all
traces materiality have to be purged from the determining ground of the moral will but, rather, that
the form of the moral law has itself become material, in order for it to function as a motive force of
action.
As result of this we can see that there are actually two different problems to be resolved,
mysteries to be cleared up, concerning the possibility of a pure ethical act. The first is the one
we commonly associate with Kantian ethics. How is it possible to reduce or eliminate all the
pathological motives or incentives of our actions? How can a subject disregard all self-
interest, ignore the pleasure principle, all concerns with her own well-being and
the well-being of those close to her? What kind of a monstrous, inhuman subject does
Kantian ethics presuppose? This line of questioning is related to the issue of the infinite
purification of the subjects will, with its logic of no matter how far you have come one more effort
will always be required. The second question that must be dealt with concerns what we might call
the ethical transubstantiation required by Kants view: the question of the possibility of converting
a mere form into a materially efficacious drive. This second question is, in my view, the more
pressing of the two, because answering it would automatically provide an answer to the first
question as well. So how can something which is not in itself pathological (i.e. which
has nothing to do with the representation of pleasure or pain, the usual mode of subjects
casuality) nevertheless become the cause or drive of a subjects actions? The question
here is no longer that of a purification of motives and incentives. It is much more

radical: how can form become matter, how can something which, in the subjects universe,
does not qualify as a cause, suddenly become a cause?
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This is the real miracle involved in ethics. The crucial question of Kantian ethics is thus not how
can we eliminate all the pathological elements of will, so that only the pure form of duty remains?
but rather, how can the pure form of duty itself function as a pathological element ,
that is, as an element capable of assuming the role of the driving force or incentive of
our actions?. If the latter were actually to take place if the pure form of duty were actually to
operate as a motive (incentive or drive) for the subject we would no longer need to worry about
the problems of the purification of the will and the elimination of all pathological motives. This,
however, seems to suggest that for such a subject, ethics simply becomes second
nature, and thus ceases to be ethics altogether. If acting ethically is a matter of drive, if it is as
effortless as that, if neither sacrifice, suffering, nor renunciation is required, then it also seems
utterly lacking in merit and devoid of virtue. This, in fact, was Kants contention: he called such a
condition the holiness of the will, which he also thought was an unattainable ideal for human
agent. It could equally be identified with utter banality the banality of the radical good to
paraphrase Hannah Arendts famous expression. Nevertheless and it is one of the fundamental
aims of this study to show this this analysis moves too quickly, and therefore leaves something
out. Our theoretical premiss here is that it will actually be possible to found an ethics on the
concept of the drive, without this ethics collapsing into either the holiness or banality of human
actions.
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**AT EGAL**
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Egalitarianism Frontline (1/2)

1. Distributive justice leads to global poverty
Carl Knight P.h.d International Studies 2008, 34, 713733, British International
Studies Association A pluralistic approach to global poverty
But Rawls masterpiece also presents some obvious obstacles to global poverty
alleviation. A Theory of Justice explicitly states that the theory is only to be applied
within a society. Furthermore, in those few places where the book offers some tangential discussion of
transdomestic justice, it is characterised as a question of the justice of the law of nations and of relations between
states.16 Hence, in a discussion occasioned by his analysis of conscription and conscientious refusal, Rawls
suggests that one may extend the interpretation of the original position and think of the parties as representatives
of different nations who must choose together the fundamental principles to adjudicate conflicting claims among
states.17 He comments that this procedure is fair among nations, and that there would be no surprises in the
outcome, since the principles chosen would . . . be familiar ones ensuring treaty compliance, describing the
conditions for just wars, and granting rights of self-defence and self-determination the latter being a
right of a people to settle its own affairs without the intervention of foreign
powers.18 This is, then, a thoroughly nationalist conception of justice: social justice
applies only within a state or nation. Rawlss radical principles of distributive justice, such as the
difference principle, would only hold transdomestically where, improbably, states had signed
treaties to this effect.
Given that such wide ranging internationally redistributive treaties have never
been signed, A Theory of Justice provided a rationale for the Western general
publics impression that their duties to the global poor are, at most, those of
charity. Rawls full expression of his views in this area came nearly three decades later in The Law of Peoples.19
Here Rawls again uses the notion of a transdomestic original position, arguing that it is an appropriate
instrument for selecting laws to govern relations between both liberal societies and decent
non-liberal societies, especially those which are decent hierarchical societies, being non-aggressive, recognising
their citizens human rights, assigning widely acknowledged additional rights and duties, and being backed by
genuine and not unreasonable beliefs among judges and other officials that the law embodies a common good idea
of justice.20 This Society of Peoples would agree to be guided by eight principles constituting the basic charter of
the Law of Peoples.21
2. Focusing exclusively on the poor stigmatizes the issueno solvency

Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana State,
January 1999 Misfortune, welfare reform, and right-wing egalitarianism
Yet nobody in the welfare debate, as far as I know, invoked the Charles Murray of The Bell Curve rather than the
Murray of Losing Ground. Moreover, while many right-wing arguments are neutral about questions of class
distinctions, others actually seem to be grounded in a kind of relational egalitarianism. For example, conservatives
sometimes argue that welfare stigmatizes recipients. As we have already heard Gingrich (1995, 71) say, "The
welfare state reduces the poor from citizens to clients." This argument raises a
serious issue for relational egalitarians : How can the poor be given material aid without others
thinking less of them? The stigma of being on the receiving end of welfare may create the
very divisions in society that the relational egalitarian seeks to avoid. If
government programs designed to help the poor stand in the way of citizens
relating to each other non-hierarchically, maybe we should abolish such programs in
the interest of a society in which citizens stand as equals.
3. Egalitarianism does not equate society

Jan Narveson P.hD @ Harvard University 1997 Egalitarianism: Partial,
Counterproductive and Baseless Blackwell
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Egalitarianism forces persons who exceed the average, in the respect deemed by the
theorist to be relevant, to surrender, insofar as possible, the amount by which they exceed
that average to persons below it. On the face of it, therefore, egalitarianism is
incompatible with common good, in empowering some people over others: roughly,
the unproductive over the productive. The formers interests are held to merit the
imposition of force over others, whereas the interests of the productive do not. Yet producers,
as such, merely produce; they dont use force against others. Thus egalitarianism denies
the central rule of rational human association. What could be thought to justify this
apparent bias in favour of the unproductive, the needy, the sick, against the productive
the healthy, the ingenious, the energetic? What are the latter supposed to have done to the
former to have merited the egalitarians impositions? The answer cant be, Oh, nothing
theyre just unlucky! or We dont like people like that! A rational social theory
must appeal to commonvalues. By definition, those have not been respected when
a measure is forced upon certain people against their own values.
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Egalitarianism Frontline (2/2)

4. Principles of justice cement the political sphereerode the
possibility for real change
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 Between Justice
and Legality: Derrida on Decision, Political Research Quarterly,
http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
In Rawlss (1993: 157) universe, consensus is cemented into the political founding
and overrides all other issues. 26 Anything that triggers political conflict is excluded
from the public sphere: A liberal view removes from the political agenda the most
divisive issues, serious contention about which must undermine the bases of social
cooperation. Difficult issues may be interesting but, for Rawls, they are not the stuff of
politics. They threaten consensus and must be excluded or contained in the private
sphere. Politics is about tinkering, not controversy. The only truly political moment in
Rawlss work, then, is laying the ground for justice as fairness in the original position. Once
the principles of justice as fairness are established, however, the political sphere is
essentially closed. Efforts to re-open the foundation are a threat to political stability. The
range of acceptable political issues is framed by principles that are not up for
debate. Hence, citizens are prevented from pursuing those modes of civic involvement that
would open the political sphere to real contestation. Given the imperative of consensus, the
regime must protect its political founding from interrogation. Narrowing the range of
acceptable political issues exacts a high cost from citizens. Space for dissent is
eliminated. The range of political possibilities is restricted to one (and only one) that
will be fixed once and for all (Rawls 1993: 161). Once the principles of justice are
instituted, only the support of the status quo is possible (Alejandro 1998: 144). For
Rawls, all citizens affirm the same public conception of justice (1993: 39). Public discussion
about alternative political possibilities is not necessary.31 Since a critical disposition
toward the founding moment of justice as fairness would risk destroying consensus, it is
better to treat it as a monument before which one genuflects. Rawls, however, does not purge
all conflict from his model of politics in the name of consensus. Some level of reasonable
disagreement is permitted in his liberal utopia. It arises from the burdens of judgment. The
causes of these burdens are formidable:
5. Inequality inevitablecapitalism
Stuart White 2k, ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract
Political Theory and the New Welfare Politics Cambridge University
Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30, 50753
How Much Equality of Opportunity Does Fair Reciprocity Require? I have presented only a
very intuitive account of the conditions of fair reciprocity; I have not formally presented a full
conception of distributive justice and demonstrated how each condition follows from this
conception, something one might attempt in a lengthier analysis. However, I do wish to
examine one general philosophical issue that arises when we come to think about the
conditions of fair reciprocity. Assume that distributive justice is centrally about some
form of equal opportunity. The notion of equality of opportunity can, of course, be
understood in a number of different ways. But assume, for the moment, that we understand
it in the radical form defended in contemporary egalitarian theories of distributive
justice.40 Equal opportunity in this sense requires, inter alia, that we seek to prevent
or correct for inequalities in income attributable to differences in natural ability and for
inequalities in capability due to handicaps that people suffer through no fault of their own.
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The question I wish to consider can then be put like this: How far must society satisfy the
demands of equal opportunity before we can plausibly say that all of its members
have obligations under the reciprocity principle? One view, which I shall call the full
compliance view, is that the demands of equal opportunity must be satisfied in full
for it to be true that all citizens have obligations to make productive contributions to the
community under the reciprocity principle. The intuition is that people can have no obligation
to contribute in a significant way to a community that is not (in all other relevant respects)
fully just at least if they are amongst those who are disadvantaged by their societys
residual injustices. Reciprocity kicks in, as it were, only when the terms of social co-operation
are fair, where fairness requires (inter alia) full satisfaction of the demands of equal
opportunity. If equal opportunity is understood in our assumed sense, however, then this
full compliance view effectively removes the ideal of fair reciprocity from the domain
of real-world politics. For there is no chance that any advanced capitalist (or, for that
matter, post-capitalist) society will in the near future satisfy equal opportunity, in our
assumed sense, in full. And so, following the full compliance view, we should, if we are
egalitarians in the assumed sense, simply abandon the idea that there can be anything
like a universal civic obligation to make a productive contribution to the community.
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Public Sphere Ext Arg Plurality

As an intellectualerr on the side of protecting argument plurality
Martha C. Nussbaum 01 P.h.D @ Harvard Political Objectivity Vol. 32,
No. 4, Objectivity in Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics (Autumn, 2001), pp.
883-906
But the project of political liberalism constrains the search for objectivity. One of the
things about which people reasonably disagree is what type of objectivity we are able to
attain in judgments about fundamental ethical/political matters. Different comprehensive doctrines give different verdicts on this matter. The comprehensive doctrine of Roman Catholic
Christianity, for example, gives a very different answer from that supplied by postmodernism,
Utilitarianism, Kantianism, and, even, Protestant Christianity. I shall explore the implications of
this fact for the role a concept of objectivity can and should play in the political sphere. I shall
argue that respect for pluralism indeed constrains us here. Although each of us in our ethical
and scientific lives will have some view about the issues addressed in the present symposium,
we ought not to build our fundamental political principles around a particular
contested conception of objectivity, for example Allen Woods conception, or the
conception of self-evident truth used in the U.S. Declaration of Independence. On the other
hand, we are not entirely at a loss: for we can articulate and defend a specifically political
conception of objectivity that can itself be the object of an overlapping consensus among
comprehensive doctrines. To indicate the direction of my argument very briefly, think what it
would be like to live in a nation that built its fundamental political principles around the view
that Allen Woods view of objectivity is correct, and that anyone who holds otherwise is simply
mistaken. I admire Woods arguments. I think that something close to this is probably true.
But still, to build basic political principles on Woods view10 seems problematic. Even if the
doctrine did not have any specific consequences for political life, as it probably would, still its
public recognition itself poses a problem. All those Americans who hold to some revealed
religion, and ground their understanding of objectivity on the idea of revelation, as well as all
those skeptical or relativist or neo- Humean Americans who think that Wood is wrong on other
grounds, would be put in the position of second-class citizens.11 Because they donot share the
true doctrine, their vision of truth and objectivity does not get to count in what shapes the
polity, even though, let us suppose, it is a liberal regime and their freedom of speech
would in no way be curtailed. We would not like such a way of proceeding even in the
classroom: we philosophers think that all the major positions should be studied and
debated, and treated with respect, and none should be an unexamined cornerstone
for the entire enterprise. How much worse, then, if the foundations of a nation itself
were built in ways that show disrespect for the views of many people about what
truth is and where it lies. Although I disagree with more or less everything Richard Rorty
says, and think that on the matters where he and Wood disagree Wood is right and Rorty is
wrong, still, I would not like to live in a nation built around the denial of Rortys
epistemological and metaphysical view, any more than in one built around the denial of my
own. He is a reasonable man, and a fellow citizen; the disagreements we have are reasonable
disagreements. Political respect for his reason requires respecting his comprehensive
doctrine, and that, in turn, requires not building the polity on the contradiction of that
doctrine.12
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Hierarchies Inevitable
Hierarchies are inevitable even after the redistribution of wealth
Egalitarians can only defend their view by reference to values that many or most
people do not have. People below the mid-point of the proposed redistributional
scale will, of course, have some reason to rejoice at their unearned egalitarian
windfalls temporarily. Meanwhile, people from whom they are wrested have the
opposite motivation, so common good is out the window from the start. Nor can
equality relevantly be held to be an objective or an absolute value a value in
itself, that doesnt need to be held byanybody (except the theorist himself, of
course). That is intuitional talk, which has already been dismissed. Do real people (as
opposed to theorists) care about equality as such? No. They want better and more
reliable food on the table, nicer tables to put it on, TVs, theatres, motorcars, books,
medical services, churches, courses in Chinese history, and so on, indefi- nitely.
Equality is irrelevant to these values: how much of any or all of them anyone has is
logically independent of how much anyone else has. People are rarely free of envy,
to be sure. Most people would like to be better than others in some way and some
will pay others to let them look down on them. But few will make themselves worse
off in order to make some other people equally badly off. Values that can be
improved by human activity are not independent in any other way, though, for
production is cooperative, requiring arrangements agreed to by a great many people
workers, financiers, engineers, customers. Nobody can attain to wealth, insofar as
the free market obtains, without others likewise benefiting. These are truisms,
though I am aware that they will be seen by many readers as ideological even at
the present time, when the absurdities of alternative views of economics have been
so completely exposed.13
Equality is impossibleenvy
Jon Mandle 2k Reviwed: Liberalism, Justice, and Markets: A Critique of
Liberal Equality by Colin M. Macleod The Philosophical Review, Vol. 109,
No. 4 (Oct., 2000), pp. 601-604 Duke University Press. Jstor
Here, I can only illustrate one of Macleod's many distinct criticisms of Dworkin's use of
idealized markets. Dworkin argues that the initial division of resources (prior to adjustments
made in light of differences in individual ambition) should satisfy an "envy test": "No division
of resources is an equal division if, once the division is complete, any [person]
would prefer someone else's bundle of resources to his own bundle" (Dworkin 1981b,
285). And the mechanism he proposes to satisfy this test is a hypothetical auction in which
individuals bid on resources using some counter (itself without value and equally distributed).
This market-based solution values resources entirely in terms of the preferences
that individuals express in the auction. Macleod recognizes that a great strength of
Dworkin's auction is that it is sensitive to the opportunity costs to others of giving some resource to a particular individual. As Macleod helpfully points out, "The resources a person
can acquire are a function not only of the importance she attaches to them but also
of the importance attached by others to them .... Phrased in the language of opportunity
costs, the auction ensures that aggregate opportunity costs are equal" (26).
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Egal = Envy
Distribution of benefits to equalize the impoverished is indefensible
encourages envy and moral disorientation.
Page 2007
Edward. Justice Between Generations: Investigating a Sufficientarian
Approach. Journal of Global Ethics. Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2007, pgs 3-20.
Suppose, again, that the sufficiency level for all was 50. Whereas intrinsic egalitarianism seems,
other things being equal, to favour outcome (3) and prioritarianism would favour allocation (1),
sufficientarianism would favour outcome (2) since this would be the only outcome in which at least
some people had enough. For the sufficientarian, the distribution of benefits and burdens
to achieve equality or priority in such circumstances is indefensible. It would be analogous
to the tragedy involved in a famine situation of giving food to those who cannot possibly survive at
the cost of those that could survive if they received extra rations. In this sense, the ideal of
sufficiency is related to the medical concept of triage according to which, when faced with more
people requiring care than can be treated, resources are rationed so that the most needy receive
attention first. However, because the category of most needy is defined in terms of the
overarching aim that as many people as possible should survive a given emergency, triage
protocols often lead to the very worst off being denied treatment for the sake of benefitting those
who can be helped to survive. Frankfurts view is that all distributive claims arise in some way from
an analysis of where people stand relative to the threshold of sufficiency, or as he puts it the
threshold that separates lives that are good from lives that are not good (Frankfurt 1997, p. 6).
Egalitarianism, by contrast, posits a relationship between the urgency of a persons claims and their
comparative well-being without reference to the level at which they would have enough. Since
allocating people enough to lead decent lives exhausts our duties of distribution, sufficientarians
argue that egalitarianism recognizes duties that do not exist. In fact, in linking ethical duties to the
comparative fortunes of people, egalitarianism encourages envy and thereby contributes
to the moral disorientation and shallowness of our time (Frankfurt 1987, pp. 2223;
Anderson 1999, pp. 287ff.).
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Egal = Infinite Redistribution

Egalitarian and Prioritarian thinking flawed no standard baseline for
equality guarantees never-ending redistribution.
Page 2007
Although Frankfurt focuses his critique of rival distributive views on intrinsic egalitarianism, it can
be readily extended to cover prioritarianism. While the priority view is grounded in the badness of
absolute rather than comparative disadvantage, it is also inclined to divert resources to the worst
off even if this would mean sacrificing substantial benefits to other, slightly better off, persons who
could be helped to lead a decent life. Frankfurt argues that: It is true that people in the lowest strata
of society generally live in horrible conditions, but this association of low social position and dreadful
quality of life is entirely contingent. There is no necessary connection between being at the bottom of
society and being poor in the sense in which poverty is a serious and morally objectionable barrier to life.
(Frankfurt 1997, p. 2) The problem with prioritarianism, then, is not that it fetishizes comparative
wellbeing but rather that it fetishizes absolute well-being with the result that it mandates constant
interference in peoples lives to benefit the worst off. By doing so, prioritarianism is inclined to
generate just as much envy and pity as its egalitarian rival and to mandate a range of
redistributions that do not help their recipients to lead decent lives. Consider the following example.
There are two groups in society, where one enjoys a considerably lower level of well-being than the
other, where both groups enjoy a far better than decent life, and where the inequalities are
undeserved. We can call these groups the very happy and the extremely happy. Egalitarians
claim that, if we could do something about it, the very happy group should be compensated for
their relative well-being deficit. This is because this theory regards undeserved inequality as bad
even if everyone is at least very happy; that is, it makes no ethical difference that the inequality is
between groups, or persons, who are very well off. Prioritarians, by contrast, regard the very happy
in isolation of their relative happiness as they are only interested in absolute levels of well-being.
Nonetheless, the very happy, as the worst off, deserve our attention even if their lives are so good
they want for nothing. According to sufficientarians, however, the egalitarian and
prioritarian claims are absurd. How can there be a duty to help the worst off, they ask,
when they already lead lives of such a high standard?
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Egal Biased
Egalitarian claims are biased
Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against egalitarianism : that it is
essentially certain to be counterproductive as well to defeat the very values whose
equalization is required by the theory. Forced transfers from rich to poor, from capitalists to
proletarians, will worsenthe lot of the poor even as it decreases the wealth of the rich. Not
only is egalitarianism biased, but the particular people against whom it is biased
are the productive the source of what the people it is biased in favour of hope to
receive in consequence. It is not too much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a
conspiracy against those it claims to be trying to help.
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Rejection of Egal K2 Check Abuse

Acceptance of egalitarianism dominates the political sphere and makes
us powerless to the abuses of elites
William W. Sokoloff -- PhD Candidate @ Amherst. 2005 Between Justice
and Legality: Derrida on Decision, Political Research Quarterly,
http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/58/2/341
If Rawlss appeal to the burdens of judgment seems disingenuous insofar as the founding
moment of justice as fairness is somehow protected from them, his underlying notion
of citizenship also leaves much to be desired. Even though he claims citizens learn and profit
from conflict and argument (Rawls 1993: lvii), he methodically closes spaces for the
types of dissent, conflict and argument that nurture democratic citizenship. If
citizens with competing comprehensive doctrines happen to meet on the street in Rawlss
liberal utopia, they nervously grimace at each other and then retreat to the private sphere,
simply shrugging shoulders in silence during encounters. Both the immediate impact and
the intergenerational effect of Rawlss neutralization of public dialogue will produce a
society of inarticulate shoppers on Prozac: By taking Prozac, they may be able to
alleviate their angst, which might be a disruptive force to the liberal order (Alejandro 1998:
13). Citizens will not only be unable to contest abuses of power but they will be
incapable of negotiating encounters with others in substantive ways. Rawlss
allergy to even mild modes of political conflict results in a de-politicization of politics
under the banner of neutrality.35 He evacuates all political content from public
discussion: We try to bypass religion and philosophys pro- foundest controversies so as to
have some hope of uncover- ing a basis of a stable overlapping consensus (Rawls 1993:
152).36Much to his credit, Rawls acknowledges the great deal of indeterminacy of decision in
the burdens of judgment but this indeterminacy is somehow absent from his image of political
society. The indeterminacy of decision in Rawls is mitigated by his de-politicization of
political foundations. The indeterminacy of politics is precisely what Rawls seeks to expel
from the political horizon. Political liberalism purges politics from politics and encloses
the political field under the terror of uniformity.37The value Rawls ascribes to pluralism
is disingenuous. It is incompatible with the imperative of unanimity on basic principles.
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AT: Moral Egal

Moral calls for egalitarianism are self defeating
Patrick Boleyn-Fitzgerald Assistant Professor of Philosophy @ Louisiana
State, January 1999 Misfortune, welfare reform, and right-wing
egalitarianism
How will democratic decision makers choose which welfare policy to endorse? They
will speculate. The average voter, for example, will have no option other than guessing
which policy has the best long- term consequences, and the average elected
representative is probably in no better position. In speculating about long-term
consequences they may be inordinately swayed by any number of prejudices or preconceived ideas. When the truth does not present itself clearly, it is easy to seize
on the evidence that supports one's ideological presuppositions. The consequence
of applying equality of fortune to the welfare debate is not usefully neutral in the
sense that it avoids blind ideological presuppositions or commitments. It is
tragically neutral in the sense that it provides democratic voters and their
representatives with no reason to challenge their blind ideological commitments.
For equality of fortune would focus the debate on the empirical questio n that did, in
fact, command the lion's share of attention: Which policy is best for the poor?
Answers to this question will be determined by prejudice and mood more than
reasoned deliberation or real debate. If this consequence is inevitable, then the
implications for the ideal of equality are dismal : it would appear impotent as a
political ideal, for it requires democratic bodies to make decisions based on
speculation about economic effects over the course of decades or even generations.
Err on the side of combining political consequences with humanitarianism

Thomas Weiss 99, Presidential Professor of Political Science @ CUNY
Graduate Center, "principles, politics, and humanitarian action"
Political actors have a newfound interest in principles, while humanitarians of all stripes are
increasingly aware of the importance of politics. Yet, there remain two distinct
approachespolitics and humanitarianism as self-contained and antithetical
realities or alternatively as overlapping spheres. Nostalgia for aspects of the Cold War or
other bygone eras is perhaps understandable, but there never was a golden age
when humanitarianism was insulated from politics. Much aid was an extension of the
foreign policies of major donors, especially the superpowers. Nonetheless, it was easieq
conceptually and practically, to compartmentalize humanitarianism and politics before the
present decade. Then, a better guide to action was provided by an unflinching respect for
traditional principles, although they never were absolute ends but only intermediate
means. In todays world, humanitarians must ask themselves how to weigh the
political consequences of their action or inaction; and politicians must ask themselves
how to gauge the humanitarian costs of their action or inaction. The calculations are
tortuous, and the mathematics far from exact. However, there is no longer any need to
ask whether politics and humanitarian action intersect. The real question is how this
intersection can be managed to ensure more humanized politics and more effective
humanitarian action. To this end, humanitarians should be neither blindly principled
nor blindly pragmatic.
Moral views of egalitarianism are self serving
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2. Our subject concerns normative political theory, which I take to be part of
morality. The subject is not depiction of a way of life, a formula for individual
happiness, or a view of the meaning of life, but rather, rules for the (large)
community, or better (as assumed henceforth), everybody. In the words of Aquinas, a
moral theory imposes a uniformity. It proposes a set a single set , however
complicated of rules, declaring that all should adhere to it. But this uniformity
need not be egalitarian in the sense defined above. The one basic set of directives
to which everyone ought to adhere, and by reference to which the conduct of
anyone may be called to account, could be wildly inegalitarian (as with slave
moralities.) Universality sameness of rules for all is a defining feature of morals;
egalitarianism is not.
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AT: Democratic Egal

Egalitarianism isnt democraticinevitable dilemma
Fabienne Peter Ph.D. in Economics 13 November 2006 The Political
Egalitarians Dilemma Springer Link
The dilemma is the following. If, on the one hand, the substantive constraints on the
deliberative process are kept to a minimum, only a weak criterion of political equality can be
imposed on the deliberative process. This criterion may fail to ensure the effective equality of
participants in the deliberative process, which undermines the legitimacy of the outcomes of
such a process. If, on the other hand, political equality is interpreted comprehensively,
many substantive judgments will be packed into the conditions imposed on the
deliberative process. They will be treated as exempt from deliberative evaluation. The
stronger the criterion of political equality, the more emphasis is placed not just on
general political resources, but on peoples abilities to make effective use of these
resources, the narrower the scope for democratic scrutiny. This, again, jeopardizes
democratic legitimacy. Thus, a strong criterion of political equality, which focuses
on peoples possibilities to participate in the deliberative process as effectively
equals, will fail to ensure democratic legitimacy because it will exempt too many
value judgments from deliberative democratic scrutiny. A weak criterion of political
equality will fail to ensure democratic legitimacy because many will not have been able to
participate in the deliberative process as effectively equals. In other words, the political
egalitarians dilemma reveals a clash between the attempt to ensure equal
possibilities to participate in the democratic process and the requirement of
subjecting substantive judgments to deliberative evaluation.
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AT: Radical Egal

Forced attempts at equality perpetuate inequality
The conclusion stands, then, that egalitarians propose measures incompatible with
Common Good, conceived in liberal terms. Appeals to equity that are not simply
question-begging fail; appeals to moral intuitions are useless; appeal to the
arbitrariness of nature is irrelevant; appeals to marginal utility are of questionable
basic relevance, and exactly wrong insofar as they are relevant. Society , I conclude,
should make no interference in the free actions of individuals in using their
resources as they see best, by their own lights, within the constraints of a no-harmto-others rule. There is no socially acceptable case for forced equality .
Egalitarianism hurts the poor

Further reflection on this leads to an important further point against
egalitarianism: that it is essentially certain to be counterproductive as well to
defeat the very values whose equalization is required by the theor y. Forced
transfers from rich to poor, from capitalists to proletarians, will worsen the lot of the
poor even as it decreases the wealth of the rich. Not only is egalitarianism biased,
but the particular people against whom it is biased are the productive the source of
what the people it is biased in favour of hope to receive in consequence. It is not too
much to say, even, that egalitarianism is a conspiracy against those it claims to be
trying to help. There is a reason for this, whose incomprehension by philosophers
even to this day should be a matter of astonishment. A free economy is one in which
no one forcibly intervenes against the property rights of any other all are free to
use their resources as they judge best, including engaging in commercial exchanges.
In such a system, the only ways to achieve wealth are by means which improve the
situations of others. Successful businesspeople become so by organizing or
financially supporting the production of things that other people want, and want
more than the existing alternatives since those people, having no obligation to buy,
would not otherwise buy them. The only other possibilities are fairly uninteresting:
gift, and the discovery or original acquisition of valuable things. But gift, as such, is
pure transfer and does not create wealth, except in the form of good will . We may
praise occasional acts of charity, but if everyone were only charitable and
unproductive, all, including the poor and sick, would quickly die. And as to
acquisition, if we would attain to wealth, those items must be harnessed to human
use nature does not afford a free lunch any more than our fellows. Even someone
who acquired a natural beauty spot, say, and keeps it natural, will be able to make a
decent living thereby only if he is able to charge others for the right to enjoy that
spot. And so on.
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AT: Egal = Util

No such thing as a utilitarian defense of egalitarianism
An immensely popular argument, thought to provide a clear utilitarian defense for
egalitarianism, appeals to a principle of diminishing marginal utility . The idea is
that the marginal return from possession of some measurable good decreases as a
function of the amount one already has money being the most familiar and obvious
case in point. From this it is inferred that general utility will be promoted by
transferring such goods from those above the midpoint to those below, where the
marginal utility of unit increments is much greater. Two major flaws destroy this
argument. The first is fundamental:general (aggregate) utility simply isnt a
common value, and therefore cannot be appealed to. Individuals are not necessarily
concerned to promote the aggregate sum of good. They are mostly concerned to
promote the goods of certain particular persons themselves, friends, countrymen,
whatever and not the sum of utility, even if that sum could be objectively determined. It is therefore inadmissible to appeal to it. Only if the particular individual
addressed can be shown that what matters to himwill be forwarded if the
aggregate of utility grows sometimes plausible, to be sure is he rationally
interested in its growth. That special case apart, utilitarian arguments are
dismissed. Second, and more important for present purposes, the argument suffers
from myopia: it focuses only on the consumptionutil- ity of money. But all good
things come from somewhere: namely, human effort and know-how. Allocation of
those requires investment. But the poor, obviously, do not invest the better-off
do that. A well-invested dollar yields goods and services in the future greatly
exceeding the stock of consumption goods one could buy with the same money. The
marginal utility of dollars in the upper incomes is therefore greater, not less, than
the marginal utility of dollars for the poor.
Utilitarian calculus not egalitarian doesnt act on the principle of

intrinsic equality.
Page 2007
Perhaps the simplest theory of the pattern of justice is that benefits and burdens should be
distributed across some population so that inequality is minimized. We might call this view intrinsic
egalitarianism as it holds that inequality is bad or unjust (I use these terms interchangeably) in
itself and not because of its consequences. As Temkin has put it, the essence of intrinsic equality is
that it is bad for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their own (Temkin 2003, p.
62). It is worth contrasting intrinsic equality with some closely associated views. Utilitarians hold
that acts and social policies should be evaluated only in terms of their consequences and that these
consequences ought to promote the maximum amount of welfare possible. Depending on the
circumstances the utilitarian may prefer an equal distribution of well-being because this coincides
with the desire to maximize welfare. The reason for this is that it is generally easier to help the
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worse off than othersone only has to give them a little for their welfare level to improve a lot. In
this sense, utilitarians are accidental, rather than intrinsic, egalitarians.
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Inegal Solves
In-egalitarianism solves benefits trickle down

In short, successful investment enhances the lot of others in society. When people
are employed, this enhances their real incomes, more than any other opportunities
they may have had. And when they spend their money, it is because they judge
that expenditure to contribute maximally to their well-being. Thus, if we wrest the
gains from investment or well-paid work from the investors and workers in
question, we take from the productive and transfer to the unproductive. This takes
money that would have produced more and ensures that it will be used in less
productive ways. A large society that undertakes this kind of activity extensively
decrees poverty for itself, in comparison with what it could have done instead in a
freed-up market. And it is the poor, above all, who benefit, relatively speaking, from
commercial activity activity that, if unimpeded, continually drives down prices,
continually finds new employment for available labour, and continually real- locates
resources in the way that does most good for most people, as indicated by the
actual choices and preferences of those people.11
Egalitarianism is distinct from liberalism

I argue that egalitarianism is wrong, or at least incompatible with liberalism. Recent
writers alleging to be liberals dont often bother about defining what they believe, but in fact
it is not particularly difficult to do so. It may be sufficiently identified by just two theses: First,
liberalism denies that government or morality is justified by its tendency to benefit
those in power. Justice is not the interest of the stronger party. Both liberals and
conservatives hold instead that the only justificatory purpose of legislation is the
good of the ruled those whose behaviour is to be controlled. Second, there is the question
how the good of the people is to be understood. Here lies the special feature of liberalism. It
denies the very natural-sounding idea of Plato, Aristotle, and perhaps most people, that if
government is for the good of the people, surely the rulers should find out what is good for
people and then use the laws to make them good rather than bad. Liberalism, on the
contrary, holds that it is the preferences, the values held by those very peoplet hat is to
guide legislation, whether or not those preferences accord with others notion(s) of
the good. We may discuss the good with people, of course, and urge them to do things our
way; but we may not force them to do so: individuals may live their lives as they see best.
Rules for the community are justified exclusively by their conduciveness to that
end or rather, that very diverse set of ends.
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Econ Turns Egal

Economic collapse crushes egalitarian legitimacy
Stuart White 2k, ReviewArticle: Social Rights and the Social Contract Political
Theory and the New Welfare Politics Cambridge University Press, B.J.Pol.S. 30,
50753
Respect for reciprocity is instrumentally important in so far as obvious violations of the
principle will undermine the legitimacy of economic arrangements and the willingness
of individuals to maintain these arrangements. This is perhaps especially true of
egalitarian arrangements which involve significant amounts of redistribution. If
egalitarian objectives are pursued in a way that is inattentive to economic freeriding and parasitism, there is a clear risk that the egalitarian institutions in question
will provoke feelings of alienation and resentment and so undercut the very spirit
of solidarity on which they depend. In this vein, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have
recently argued that popular resistance to the American welfare state derives not froman
opposition to egalitarian redistribution per se, but to redistribution that enables citizens to
evade the contributive responsibilities that derive from a widely shared norm of strong
reciprocity.11 Bowles and Gintis start with the observation, confirmed in a variety of
experimental settings, that individuals tend not to conform to the standard model of Homo
economicus, who rationally pursues his/her self-interest without regard to any norms of
fairness. People tend not to be rational egotists, nor unconditional altruists, but conditional
co-operators, willing to do their bit in co-operative ventures to which they belong so long as
they can be assured that others will also make a reasonable contribution: Homo reciprocans.
Commitment to the norm of reciprocity is such that people are often willing to accept costs to
themselves rather than see this norm violated with impunity. Widespread adherence to the
norm may be explicable in evolutionary terms: communities in which Homo reciprocans
predominates may find it easier to solve important problems of trust and collective action
than communities in which Homo economicus predominates. 12 If, however, commitment to
the reciprocity norm is so deep-rooted, then egalitarians must frame their reform proposals in
a way that explicitly acknowledges and upholds the norm rather than being indifferent to it. A
very similar argument concerning the necessary conditions under which citizens will grant
their contingent consent to egalitarian social policy is made by Bo Rothstein in relation to
European universalistic welfare states. Where social policies are universalistic in the sense
that there is an inclusive share-out of both benefits and contributions, these policies have
greater perceived legitimacy and, Rothstein argues, will thus be relatively resistant to the
politics of welfare state retrenchment.13
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Sufficientarianism Good
The goal of the judge should not be to make sure each person is equal
rather ensure each person is sufficient
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005
What Matters is Absolute Poverty, Not Relative Poverty http://www.cdams.kobeu.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf
Therefore, sufficientarianism is an alternative to economic egalitarianism.
Sufficientarianism presents the idea of sufficiency as an alternative to the idea of economic
equality. The essence of sufficientarianism is to show that the idea of economic equality has
no intrinsic value. According to sufficientarianism, when people consider what is important for
their own lives, the amount of goods owned by other people becomes irrelevant. Instead,
comparison with the amount of goods owned by others prevents people from seeking what
they consider valuable for themselves. It is unnecessary to attach moral significance to
economic egalitarianism. While Frankfurt enumerates some reasons for the failure of
economic egalitarianism, he indicates that egalitarians do not actually defend the idea of
equality, as indicated by the priority view. In other words, egalitarians objections are not
based on their moral aversion to a person holding a smaller amount of goods as
compared to other people. In reality, their objection is to the fact that the person
owns only a remarkably small amount of goods.
This naturally gives rise to the
following questions. What does sufficiency imply? What is the standard of sufficiency?
Although Frankfurt does not define the meaning of sufficiency in concrete terms, it does not
imply that sufficientarianism is pointless. Indeed, the meaning of sufficiency can be defined
in various ways. However, the essence of sufficientarianism is to seek what one finds
valuable in his/her life and not compare the amount of goods one owns with that of
others; this is crucial to judge sufficiency.
Everything is relativethe goal should not be to carve everyone into the

same statuerather ensure each person is sufficientthis is distinct from
economic egalitarianism
Yuko Hashimoto --ph.d. Japanese. Associate Professor of Economics. June 2005
What Matters is Absolute Poverty, Not Relative Poverty http://www.cdams.kobeu.ac.jp/archive/dp05-10.pdf
Irrespective of the definition of sufficiency selected, sufficientarianism cannot justify
distribution to those whose circumstances are above the standard of sufficiency. Therefore, it
does not lead to the implausible conclusion that goods should be distributed to
millionaires in a society that comprises only billionaires and millionaires.
Sufficientarianism, which rejects economic egalitarianism and simultaneously
requires distribution to those below the standard of sufficiency, is consistent with
moderate libertarianism or classical liberalism, which rejects distribution aimed at reducing
income disparity and admits the necessity of distribution that guarantees a minimum
standard of living. Indeed, the interpretation of sufficientarianism that I present in this paper
might conflict with the original intention of sufficientarians. As we have seen, I support
sufficientarianism. Despite differences between
sufficientarianism and the priority view, I re-emphasize the fact that they have a common
crucial viewpoint regarding egalitarianism. They share the belief that being worse off than
others does not have moral significance in terms of the ethics of distribution. While the idea
of equality that emphasizes relativity with others is set as a default position in the argument
on distribution, both theories demand criticism of the above assumption. Egalitarians often
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confuse equality with priority or sufficiency; however, it is important to bear in

mind that the apparent plausibility of egalitarianism is derived from its
humanitarian appeal. The point I wish to emphasize is that absolute poverty, and not
relative poverty, is important. Next, before turning to an examination of the connection
between sufficientarianism and libertarianism, I shall consider the necessity of highlighting
the abuse of egalitarianism.
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Sufficientarianism Good
Egalitarianism fosters never-ending comparison and obligation a
sufficientarian framework should take precedence.
Page 2007
In contrast to egalitarians and prioritarians, some theorists, such as Harry Frankfurt, hold that
benefits and burdens should be distributed in line with the doctrine of sufficiency. This states that
as many people as possible should have enough (of the currency of justice adopted) to pursue the
aims and aspirations they care about over a whole life; and that this aim has lexical priority
over other ideals of justice (Frankfurt 1987, pp. 2143; 1997, pp. 314). Attaining what we really
care about, for Frankfurt, requires a certain level of well-being, but once this level is reached there
is no further relationship between how well-off a person is and whether they discover and fulfil what
it is that they really care about. Frankfurt holds that, above the level of sufficiency, it is neither
reasonable to seek a higher standard of living nor expect, as amatter of justice, any additional
allocation of some currency of justice to further improve their prospects. It is important to add that
having enough is not the same as living a tolerable life in the sense that one does not regret
ones existence. Rather it means a person leads a life that contains no substantial dissatisfaction.
According to Frankfurt, the flaw in intrinsic egalitarianism lies in supposing that it is
morally important whether one person has less than another regardless of how much
either of them has (Frankfurt 1987, p. 34). What matters, Frankfurt argues, is not that everyone
should have the same but that each should have enough. If everyone had enough it would be of no
moral consequence whether some had more than others (Frankfurt 1987, p. 21; original emphasis).
This does not mean, however, that egalitarian and prioritarian concerns will always frustrate
sufficiency since each and every person should be helped to the threshold of sufficiency if possible,
and those who can be helped to lead a decent life are often among the worst off in a population.
But the aim of reducing inequality, or of improving the position of the worst off, has no intrinsic
value for sufficientarians.
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Sufficientarian Perm
Moderate sufficentarianism offers a pluralist approach to justice which
maximizes contextual equality.
Page 2007
One way of responding to the problems raised by these two examples would be to construct a
pluralist approach to distributive justice. Pluralism, in this context, means that we would appeal to
contrasting ideals in different contexts (Daniels 1996, p. 208). There are three possibilities, which I
can only sketch here. First, the ideals could apply in different distributive circumstances. For
example, we might give lexical priority to sufficiency when at least some can be brought up to the
threshold, but appeal to equality or priority when all are above, or all below, the threshold (Crisp
2003, pp. 758ff.). Second, sufficiency might be allocated non-lexical priority over other values so
that large gains in these values will sometimes outweigh lesser gains in sufficiency. Arneson has
usefully labeled this moderate sufficientarianism (Arneson 2006, p. 28). The strength of this view
is that it can explain why we should opt for (2) over (1) since it offers tremendous gains in both
equality and priority with no adverse impact on sufficiency. Similarly, though more
controversially, moderate sufficientarians have at least some reason to opt for (4) over (3) since
great benefits arise, in terms of equality and priority, if we ignore the sufficiency of the few for the
prize of giving major benefits to the many. Third, we might subsume one ideal under another while
attributing some degree of intrinsic value to the subsumed ideal. Sufficientarians generally view
inequality as regrettable because of its consequences, such as the way in which it inhibits economic
growth, undermines political processes, or is a malign influence on cultural life. Yet, there is a more
subtle way that inequality matters. This is that some people might fail to reach the standards of a
decent life if they are continually faced with the discomfiture that many others are far better off.
Similarly, some people might fall below the threshold of sufficiency if they begin to enjoy life less as
a result of identifying with the resentment of others who are worse off (Marmor 2003, pp. 127ff).
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**AGENCIES**
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Generic Agencies Fail

Regulatory agencies empirically failinherent problems
Tibor Machan, Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's
Argyros School, research fellow @ Pacific Research Institute & Hoover Institution
6/29/09The reality of regulatory agencies
The confidence shown in regulators in the first statement seems to me to be plainly
undermined by the historical claim in the second, one that seems to follow from a certain
plausible understanding of public choice theory, actually ignoring rather than investigating
warnings would come naturally to those who are, whether consciously or not, embarking upon
vested interest dealing, in this instance working for regulations to continue instead of doing what
might make them unnecessary in time. Regulators have a good job, and it is no surprise that
they might work not so much to fix problems they perceive in the marketplace but to
keep working at what keeps them employed and well fed. In free markets, to the extent that
they exist, such vested interest dealings are checked by competition and budgetary
constraints (to the extent these are not thwarted by government policies that often produce
monopolies). A shoe repairer may be tempted to fix shoes not quite as well as they need to be fixed
but just enough that they will last a while but need to be returned for further repair. Indeed,
automobile repairers are often suspected of this. What, apart from conscientiousness, keeps such
folks on the straight and narrow is competition, the knowledge that if they don't do the work well
enough someone else will jump in to do so. One main reason that bureaucracies are generally
sluggish and unenthusiastic about serving the public as distinct from private vendors is
this element of constant competition, combined with the fact that bureaucrats gain their
income from taxes, which can often be raised with impunity by those who hire them. What public
choice theorists claim is that bureaucrats have a far better opportunity to yield to the
temptation of malpractice than are those in the private sector. The theory does not claim
that all bureaucrats are cheats and all those in the private sector are professionally responsible. But
it identifies an evident tendency and shows it to exist through the study of economic and political
history. Common sense supports this, as well, when most people notice that if they go to, say, the
Department of Motor Vehicles (one of the more visible government outfits), they mostly get a
reluctant, bored, at times even curmudgeonly treatment, whereas in the private sector
the routine tends to be eagerness to serve, to generate and keep business. There is an
element about public choice theory that economists do not emphasize often enough, namely that
the objectives of regulators are often very obscure, unclear, even contradictory. For
example, governments often embark on historical preservation but at the same time they are
supposed to make sure that building and other facilities are properly managed, kept safe, etc. But
historical preservation mostly require keeping things in their original form, while the pursuit of
safety involves making use of the most up-to-date technology and science. One can generalize
this kind of conflict within government policies all over the place which is what accounts
for vigilant propaganda against smoking while tobacco farmers keep receiving government
subsidies.
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NGOs Key Federal Sucess

NGOs the number one internal to federal government success
Booz Allen Hamilton, leading consulting firm, helps government clients solve
problems
The
Role
of
Mission
Integration
in
the
Federal
Government
their toughest
Nov
5,
2008
http://www.acuf.org/issues/issue121/081201news.asp
An Increasingly Complex Environment Federal agencies are no longer communities unto
themselvestechnology and globalization have created
greater interdependence
between NGOs and the private sector. Respondents in every federal sector, from
agriculture and energy to defense, describe their mission as very complex. Furthermore, 88
percent of respondents
report that the complexity of their missions requires collaboration with other federal agencies or third parties
outside the government
structure. The need for increasingly integrated and complex misions will increase in the
coming years. More than 84 percent of respondents believe that their missions complexity has
increased dramatically since 2000. Furthermore, they recognize complexity and mission
integration as vital to mission success. According to respondents, joint missions will be
increasingly critical in the future for agencies to meet mission goals. Nearly three quarters
of respondents (73 percent) believe that by 2012 joint missions will play a greater role in their
agencys ability to achieve mission success. A full 50 percent of respondents believe their
missions will become significantly more integrated over time. The Need for Mission Integration
In an era of pervasive complexity, mission success is increasingly dependent on mission
integration. Federal agencies need to draw on a diverse mix of specialties and
capabilities, work across organizational boundaries, and operate from deliberate plans
with accountability for clear, measurable results.
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Administration for Children and Families

Administration for Children, has jurisdiction over asylum children
Chriss McGann June 19, 2003 U.S. gives harsh welcome to children seeking asylum
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/127345_juv19.html.
Responsibility of care for unaccompanied immigrant children was transferred in March
from the INS to the Office of Refugee Relocation a division of the Administration of Children
and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services.
ACF fails at implementation

GAO December 2002 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d039.pdf
ACF conducts much of its work through nonfederal service providers, which often limits
the extent to which ACF can influence national performance goals and can seriously
complicate data collection. To address this, ACF has successfully collaborated with providers to
develop national performance goals and build data collection capacity. This has also raised
awareness of the importance of collecting and reporting performance data uniformly
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Agriculture Department
Agriculture department has internal problems and performance gaps
GAO-09-650T 6/29/09 U.S. Department of Agriculture: Recommendations and Options
Available to the New Administration and Congress to Address Long-Standing Civil Rights
Issues Summary
ASCR's difficulties in resolving discrimination complaints persist--ASCR has not achieved
its goal of preventing future backlogs of complaints. At a basic level, the credibility of
USDA's efforts has been and continues to be undermined by ASCR's faulty reporting of
data on discrimination complaints and disparities in ASCR's data. Even such basic information
as the number of complaints is subject to wide variation in ASCR's reports to the public and the
Congress. Moreover, ASCR's public claim in July 2007 that it had successfully reduced a backlog of
about 690 discrimination complaints in fiscal year 2004 and held its caseload to manageable levels,
drew a questionable portrait of progress. By July 2007, ASCR officials were well aware they had not
succeeded in preventing future backlogs--they had another backlog on hand, and this time the
backlog had surged to an even higher level of 885 complaints. In fact, ASCR officials were in the
midst of planning to hire additional attorneys to address that backlog of complaints including some
ASCR was holding dating from the early 2000s that it had not resolved. In addition, some steps
ASCR had taken may have actually been counter-productive and affected the quality of its work. For
example, an ASCR official stated that some employees' complaints had been addressed without
resolving basic questions of fact, raising concerns about the integrity of the practice. Importantly,
ASCR does not have a plan to correct these many problems. USDA has published three annual
reports--for fiscal years 2003, 2004, and 2005--on the participation of minority farmers and
ranchers in USDA programs, as required by law. USDA's reports are intended to reveal the gains or
losses that these farmers have experienced in their participation in USDA programs. However,
USDA considers the data it has reported to be unreliable because they are based on USDA
employees' visual observations about participant's race and ethnicity, which may or may not be
correct, especially for ethnicity. USDA needs the approval of the Office of Management and Budget
(OMB) to collect more reliable data. ASCR started to seek OMB's approval in 2004, but as of May
2008 had not followed through to obtain approval. ASCR staff will meet again on this matter in May
2008. GAO found that ASCR's strategic planning is limited and does not address key steps needed
to achieve the Office's mission of ensuring USDA provides fair and equitable services to all
customers and upholds the civil rights of its employees. For example, a key step in strategic
planning is to discuss the perspectives of stakeholders. ASCR's strategic planning does not address
the diversity of USDA's field staff even though ASCR's stakeholders told GAO that such diversity
would facilitate interaction with minority and underserved farmers. Also, ASCR could better
measure performance to gauge its progress in achieving its mission. For example, it counts the
number of participants in training workshops as part of its outreach efforts rather than access to
farm program benefits and services. Finally, ASCR's strategic planning does not link levels of
funding with anticipated results or discuss the potential for using performance
information for identifying USDA's performance gaps.
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Department of Health and Human Services

Conscience rule acts as a bureaucratic barrier to health care
Medical News Today, 22 Dec 2008 HHS 'Conscience' Rule Creates 'Huge
Bureaucratic
Barrier,'
Opinion
Piece
Says
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/133861.php
The HHS "conscience" rule is "a huge bureaucratic barrier to health care -- a barrier the
incoming Obama administration will find difficult to remove," a Philadelphia Daily News
editorial says. The editorial notes that several state laws " already protect the 'right
to conscience' of doctors and nurses not to perform abortions. But federal laws also
protec[t] the rights of patients to legal health care." It continues that the new rule
would "choose the former over the latter, and also remove protections for the
584,294 federally funded medical entities -- hospitals, doctors' offices and
pharmacies -- that might find it an 'undue burden' to pay employees who refuse to
do the work for which they were hired." According to the editorial, it will cost about
$44 million annually for medical entities to certify compliance with the rule, which
"doesn't include the cost in pain and confusion, and maybe litigation, that would
come with allowing health care workers to decide who is worthy of receiving what
care." The editorial continues that the rule demonstrates that the Bush
administration "doesn't care about the objections of doctors or hospitals or
patients -- but what about the approximately 70 million Americans who voted Nov.
4 to let Barack Obama lead the nation? Apparently, they don't matter either." To
undo the regulation, Congress could "resort" to using the Congressional Review Act,
"which has been used only once," the editorial says. The other option would be for
incoming HHS Secretary Tom Daschle to "restart the rule-making process," which
would "take months," according to the editorial. It adds, "The Obama team has
signaled that it is ready to go this route, with the inevitable political divisiveness -and who knows how many individuals who won't get the health care or information
they need?" The editorial concludes that the HHS rule provides "[m]ore proof that
George W. Bush's historic unpopularity is the only thing he's ever earned"
(Philadelphia Daily News, 12/18).
HHS is to large to be effective
GAO, March 18, 1997 Department of Health and Human Services: Management
Challenges and Opportunities
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/he97098t.pdf
In summary, the first challenge HHS faces is its ability to define its mission, objectives, and
measures of success and increase its accountability to taxpayers. Because of the size and
scope of its mission and the resulting
organizational complexity, managing and
coordinating HHS programs so that the public gets the best possible results are
especially difficult. The Department has eleven operating divisions responsible for more
than 300 diverse programs. HHS has not always succeeded in managing the wide range
of activities its agencies carry out or fixing accountability for meeting the goals of its
mission. Another complicating factor is that HHS needs to work with the governments
of the 50 states and the District of Columbia to implement its programs, in addition to
thousands of private- sector grantees. Developing better ways of managing is essential if HHS
is to meet its goals.
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HHS is too vulnerable to exploitation

GAO, March 18, 1997 Department of Health and Human Services: Management
Challenges and Opportunities
http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/he97098t.pdf
Finally, HHS responsibilities require it to constantly combat fraud, waste, abuse, and
mismanagement. HHS has several programs that are vulnerable to such exploitation.
For example, the size and nature of Medicare, which accounts for over half of HHS total
budget, make this program particularly vulnerable. HHS needs to be vigilant now and in the
future because its programs will probably continue to be the targets of fraud and abuse and
because waste and mismanagement can have such serious effects on taxpayers and
program beneficiaries.
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Department of Education
The DOE is a total failure
Cato
Cato
Handbook
for
http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/index.html
Congress
2003
The inevitable pattern of bureaucracy is to grow bigger and bigger. The Department of
Education should be eliminated now, before it evolves into an even larger entity
consuming more and more resources that could be better spent by parents themselves.
7. The $47.6 billion spent each year by the Department of Education could be much better spent if
it were simply returned to the American people in the form of a tax cut. Parents themselves could
then decide how best to spend that money. 8. The Department of Education has a record of
waste and abuse. For example, the department reported losing track of $450 million
during three consecutive General Accounting Office audits. 9. The Department of
Education is an expensive failure that has added paperwork and bureaucracy but little
value to the nations classrooms.
The DOE is inefficient and wasteful

Cato
Cato
Handbook
for
Congress
2003
The NCLBA provides the Department of Education with $26.5 billion for spending on the
program and perpetuates most of the old federal education programs, most of which are
ineffective and wasteful. The total could climb to $37 billion a year by the end of the six-year
authorization period. If past experience is any guide, those dollars will go primarily to
feeding the hungry bureaucracy and will have little positive impact on public school
students. Instead of decreasing the role of the federal government in education, the NCLBA allows
the federal government to intervene more than ever in what should be strictly a local and state
matter. While the act provides school districts with increased flexibility in spending some of their
federal subsidies, mandated testing and staff restructuring represent an unprecedented
usurpation of the authority of local communities to run their own schools. During his presidential
campaign, Bush emphasized that he did not want to become the federal superintendent of
schools. But the NCLBA gives the president and the federal government far too much power over
local schools and classrooms. Instead of proposing more top-down fixes for education, the
president should use his position to push for the return of control of education to states
and localities and urge state-level reforms that return the control of education to
parents.
Federal action deters key state and local governments

Cato
Cato
Handbook
for
Congress
2003
2. No matter how brilliantly designed a federal government program may be, it creates a
uniformity among states that is harmful to creativity and improvement. Getting the
federal government out of the picture would allow states and local governments to
create better ways of addressing education issues and problems.
Congress is to far away from local needs

Cato
Cato
Handbook
for
Congress
2003
Since most information about the problems and challenges of education is present at the
local level, Congress simply does not have the ability to improve learning in school
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classrooms thousands of miles away. These problems are best understood and
addressed by local authorities and parents.
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States Solve Education

State action solves beststates model other states
Cato
Cato
Handbook
for
Congress
2003
The way for Congress to improve American education is to step aside and let the states
experiment with choice in a variety of ways. Some will expand charter schools or experiment
with private management. Others will institute scholarship tax credits, parental tax credits, or
vouchers either on a limited basis or open to all students. The most successful policies and
programs will be emulated by other states.
State programs have better educational effectiveness

Cato
Cato
Handbook
for
Congress
2003
3. If education were left at the local level, parents would become more involved in
reform efforts. Differences in school effectiveness among states and communities
would be noted, and other regions would copy the more effective programs and policies.
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Department of Interior
Infrastructure problems prevent DOI productivity
GAO Department of Interior Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Interior also faces a challenge in adequately maintaining its facilities and infrastructure.
The department owns, builds, purchases, and contracts services for assets such as visitor centers,
schools, office buildings, roads, bridges, dams, irrigation systems, and reservoirs; however, repairs
and maintenance on these facilities have not been adequately funded. The deterioration of
facilities can impair public health and safety, reduce
employees morale and
productivity, and increase the need for costly major repairs or early replacement of structures
and equipment. In November 2008, the department estimated that the deferred maintenance
backlog for fiscal year 2008 was between $13.2 billion and $19.4 billion (see table 1).
Interior is not alone in facing daunting maintenance challenges. In fact, we have identified the
management of federal real property, including deferred maintenance issues, as a government
wide high-risk area since 2003.23
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Department of Interior (Natives Link)

The aff falls under the department of interior
BIA is the primary federal agency charged with implementing federal Indian policy and
administering the federal trust responsibility for about 2 million American Indians and Alaska
Natives. BIA provides basic services to 562 federally recognized Indian tribes throughout the United
States, including natural resources management on about 54 million acres of Indian trust lands.
Trust status means that the federal government holds title to the land in trust for tribes or
individual Indians; land taken in trust is no longer subject to state and local property taxes and
zoning ordinances. In 1980, the department established a regulatory process intended to provide a
uniform approach for taking land in trust.14 While some state and local governments support the
federal governments taking additional land in trust for tribes or individual Indians, others strongly
oppose it because of concerns about the impacts on their tax base and jurisdictional control. We
reported in July 2006 that while BIA generally followed its regulations for processing land
in trust applications from tribes and individual Indians, it had no deadlines for making
decisions on them.15 Specifically, the median processing time for the 87 land in trust
applications with decisions in fiscal year 2005 was 1.2 yearsranging from 58 days to almost 19
years. We recommended, among other things, that the department move forward with adopting
revisions to the land in trust regulations that include (1) specific time frames for BIA to make a
decision once an application is complete and (2) guidelines for providing state and local
governments more information on the applications and a longer period of time to provide
meaningful comments on the applications. While the department
agreed with our
recommendations, it has not revised the land in trust regulations.
BIA is the department of interior

FCC Federal Communications Commision 11/26/08 Department of Interior (DOI)
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) http://www.fcc.gov/indians/internetresources/bia.html.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs (www.doi.gov/bia) is responsible for the administration of federal
programs for federally recognized Indian tribes, and for promoting Indian self-determination. In
addition, the Bureau has a trust responsibility emanating from treaties and other agreements with
Native groups. Indian Affairs (IA) is the oldest bureau of the United States Department of
the Interior. Established in 1824, IA currently provides services (directly or through contracts,
grants, or compacts) to approximately 1.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives. There are
562 federally recognized American Indian tribes and Alaska Natives in the United States. Bureau of
Indian Affairs (BIA) is responsible for the administration and management of 66 million acres of land
held in trust by the United States for American Indian, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives. Bureau of
Indian Education (BIE) provides education services to approximately 44,000 Indian students. The
mission of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) is to: " enhance the quality of life, to promote
economic opportunity, and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of
American Indians, Indian tribes, and Alaska Natives."
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Department of Interior (U.S. Territories DA)

A. Department of interior has jurisdiction over U.S. territories
The Secretary of the Interior has varying responsibilities to the island communities of
American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin
Islands, all of which are U.S. territoriesas well as to the Federated States of Micronesia, the
Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau, which are sovereign nations linked
with the United States through Compacts of Free Association. The Office of Insular Affairs (OIA),
which carries out the departments responsibilities for the island communities, is to assist the
island communities in developing more efficient and effective government by providing financial
and technical assistance and to help manage relations between the federal government and
the island governments by promoting appropriate federal policies. The island governments
have had long-standing financial and program management deficiencies.
B. Not only is federal aid insufficient, but it creates dependency and ruins
local economies
In December 2006, we reported on serious economic, fiscal, and financial accountability
challenges facing American Samoa, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,
and the U.S. Virgin Islands.16 The economic challenges stem from dependence on a few key
industries, scarce natural resources, small domestic markets, limited infrastructure, shortages of
skilled labor, and reliance on federal grants to fund basic services. In addition, efforts to
meet formidable fiscal challenges and build strong economies are hindered by financial
reporting that does not provide timely and complete information to management and
oversight officials for decision making. As a result of these problems, numerous federal
agencies have designated these governments as high- risk grantee s. To increase the
effectiveness of the federal governments
assistance to these island communities, we
recommended, among other things, that the department increase coordination activities with other
federal grant-making agencies on issues of common concern relating to
the insular area
governments. The department agreed with our
recommendations, stating that they were
consistent with OIAs top priorities and ongoing activities. We will continue to monitor OIAs actions
on our recommendations.
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Housing and Urban Development

HUD policies get co-opted by financial regulators
Ralph Nader, April 26, 2004 Bureaucratic Impediments to a Much Needed Integrated
Urban Policy
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0426-04.htm
HUD has been looked on as the "urban department," but the ills and the needs of urban
communities cut across a wide swath -- health, transportation, education, business
development, the environment. HUD remains essentially a housing agency and even this
responsibility has been scattered across the federal government. Similarly, on Capitol Hill
urban policies land under the jurisdiction of multiple standing committees, not just the Senate and
House Banking Committees with jurisdiction over HUD.
The giants of housing finance -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- and the financial regulators like
the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
and the Office of Thrift Supervision - exercise immense power over housing and urban
policy - probably more so than HUD. The Community Reinvestment Act, for example, requires
banks and thrifts to help meet the credit needs of their communities. It's requirements are
enforced by financial regulators interested in safety and soundness of federally insured
institutions, not urban policy. As a result, only a handful of institutions fail to get
passing and outstanding grades on their efforts to help finance housing. And HUD has no
role despite the myth that it holds all the keys to urban policy.
HUD has no authoritytrapped in bureaucratic hurdles

Ralph Nader, April 26, 2004 Bureaucratic Impediments to a Much Needed Integrated
Urban Policy
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0426-04.htm
HUD has to be an important cog in any new efforts to establish a workable urban-metropolitan
policy, but it is folly to look on the department as the centerpiece. Urban needs extend
beyond affordable housing. Jimmy Carter was wise in broadening the scope to include other Cabinet
offices in the urban policy mix, but he left HUD as the key decision maker. In the end the other
Cabinet offices began to worry that their funds, staff and power would be eroded. And in such
situations, the officeholders always decide to scuttle the ship. This bureaucratic hurdle has to
be removed if we truly are interested in developing and managing an urban policy which
stretches across the interconnected problems of housing, health, transportation, education, jobs
and livable wages. With nearly 80 percent of the nation's citizens living in urbanmetropolitan areas, it is time to establish a new office that recognizes the real world in the
21st Century-an office with the authority to coordinate the disparate facets of federal programs
which affect the overwhelming number of our citizens. An Urban-Metropolitan Coordinator should
be established under the President in a manner similar to that of the Council of Economic Advisors
and the Office of Management and Budget with the authority to recommend, review and coordinate
programs and budgets with a direct impact on urban-metropolitan areas. Only with such a
structure can we place the full force of the federal bureaucracy behind an urban policy
worthy of the name.
HUD mismanages funds

GAO June 09 PUBLIC HOUSING HUDs Oversight of Housing Agencies Should Focus
More on Inappropriate Use of Program Funds GAO-09-33
Further, HUD has stated that its analysis of housing agency financial data is primarily intended to
ensure the accuracy of the information that is used to calculate the housing agencies PHAS scores
and not to identify at-risk housing agencies. Our analysis of housing agency financial data
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illustrates how such data could be leveraged to identify housing agencies at greater risk
of inappropriate use or mismanagement of public housing funds that neither PHAS nor
the departments current approach to analyzing financial data would detect. For example,
our analysis of PHAS and financial data from 2002 through 2006 found that 200 housing agencies
had written checks that exceeded the funds available in their bank accounts (bank overdrafts) by
$25,000 or moreindicating a potential that these housing agencies could have serious cash and
financial management problems and could be prone to increased risk of fraudulent use of funds.
However, 75 percent of these agencies received passing PHAS scores. Although HUD has
focused its efforts on the challenges of improving the quality of single audits, the
department has not taken steps to develop mechanisms to mitigate the limitations of
its oversight processes. Without fully leveraging the audit and financial information it
collects, the department limits its ability to identify housing agencies that are at
greater risk of inappropriately using or mismanaging program funds.
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Department of labor
Falls under the department of labor
Department of Labor July 6, 2009 III. DOL Mission and Agency Functions
http://www.dol.gov/osbp/pubs/dolbuys/mission.htm
The Department's many activities affect virtually every man, woman, and child in our country. Such
activities include protecting the wages, health and safety, employment, and pension
rights of working people; promoting equal employment opportunity; providing job
training, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation; strengthening free
collective bargaining; and collecting, analyzing, and publishing labor statistics. Although created to
help working people, the Department's services and information benefit many other groups such as
employers, business organizations, civil rights groups, government agencies at all levels, and the
academic community. Its enforcement activities and job training services, in particular, affect
large numbers of people who are not currently working. As the Department seeks to
assist all Americans who need and want work, special efforts are made to meet the unique job
market requirements of older workers, youths minority group members, women, the disabled, and
other groups.
The DOL is massively incompetent GAO sting operations prove

Steven Greenhouse 5/25/09 Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says New
York Times
The federal agency charged with enforcing minimum wage, overtime and many other
labor laws is failing in that role, leaving millions of workers vulnerable, Congressional
auditors have found.
In a report scheduled to be released Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office found
that the agency, the Labor Departments Wage and Hour Division, had mishandled 9 of the 10
cases brought by a team of undercover agents posing as aggrieved workers. In one case,
the division failed to investigate a complaint that under-age children in Modesto, Calif., were
working during school hours at a meatpacking plant with dangerous machinery, the G.A.O., the
nonpartisan auditing arm of Congress, found. When an undercover agent posing as a dishwasher
called four times to complain about not being paid overtime for 19 weeks, the divisions office in
Miami failed to return his calls for four months, and when it did, the report said, an official told him
it would take 8 to 10 months to begin investigating his case. This investigation clearly shows
that Labor has left thousands of actual victims of wage theft who sought federal
government assistance with nowhere to turn, the report said. Unfortunately, far too
often the result is unscrupulous employers taking advantage of our countrys low-wage
workers. The report pointed to a cavalier attitude by many Wage and Hour Division investigators,
saying they often dropped cases when employers did not return calls and sometimes told
complaining workers that they should file lawsuits, an often expensive and arduous process,
especially for low-wage workers. During the nine-month investigation, the report said, 5 of
the 10 labor complaints that undercover agents filed were not recorded in the Wage and
Hour Divisions database, and three were not investigated. In two cases, officials recorded that
employers had paid back wages, even though they had not. The accountability office also
investigated hundreds of cases that it said the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled. In
one, the division waited 22 months to investigate a complaint from a group of restaurant workers.
Ultimately, investigators found that the workers were owed $230,000 because managers had made
them work off the clock and had misappropriated tips. When the restaurant agreed to pay back
wages but not the tips, investigators simply closed the case.
Employees have no motivation

Steven Greenhouse 5/25/09 Labor Agency Is Failing Workers, Report Says New
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York Times
The report concluded that the Wage and Hour Division had mishandled more serious cases
19 percent of the time. In such cases, the accountability office said, the division did not begin an
investigation for six months, did not complete an investigation for a year, did not assess back
wages when violations were clearly identified and did not refer cases to litigation when
warranted.When you have weak penalties and weak enforcement, thats a deadly
combination for workers, said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, who, as
chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, asked the accountability office to do the
report. Its clear that under the existing system, employers feel they can steal workers
wages with impunity, and that has to change.
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Department of Justice
Lack of data sharing hampers effectiveness
Office of the Inspector General , March 2009 The Department of Justices
litigation
case
management
system
http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/plus/a0922/final.pdf.
Audit
Report
09-22
Each of the Departments litigating divisions currently maintains its own case
management system, which is not able to share information with other systems in the
Department. As a result, these divisions cannot efficiently share information or produce
comprehensive reports among the divisions. separate systems also hamper the ability of the
litigating divisions to collaborate and limit the timeliness and quality of case information
available to Department leadership.
Courts are clogged

Mary Mack, Corporate Technology Counsel,. 4/9 2009 Total Revamp of Federal Rules
of Civil Procedure? http://www.discoveryresources.org/library/case-law-and-rules/totalrevamp-of-federal-rules-of-civil-procedure/.
Two and a half years after the amendments to the FRCP took effect, the trial lawyers
overwhelmed by clogged courts as a result of increased litigation, discovery in general and
e-discovery in particular are calling for change to fix a broken system. While the starting
point of their analysis was focused on discovery, the reports recommendations ultimately upend
current procedure in many significant ways.
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Environmental Protection Agency

EPA has staff and resource allocation problems
GAO
March
2009
Environmental
Protection
Agency
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09434.pdf
Addressing human capital issues. EPA has struggled for several years to
identify its
needs for human resources and to deploy its staff throughout the country in a manner
that would do the most good. We found that EPAs process for budgeting and allocating
resources does not fully consider the agencys current workload, and that in preparing
requests for funding and staffing, EPA makes incremental adjustments, largely based on
an antiquated workforce planning system that does not reflect a bottom-up review of the
nature or distribution of the current workload. 6
Moreover, EPAs human capital
management systems have not kept pace with changes that have occurred over the
years as a result of changing
legislative requirements and priorities , changes in
environmental conditions in different regions of the country, and the much more active
role that states now play in carrying out day-to-day-activities of federal environmental
programs.
EPAs lack of data hampers effectiveness

GAO
March
2009
Environmental
Protection
Agency
Improving development and use of environmental information. Critical, reliable environmental
information is needed to provide better scientific understanding of environmental
trends and conditions and to better inform the public about environmental progress in
their locales. We found substantial gaps between what is known and the goal of full,
reliable, and insightful representation of environmental conditions and trends to provide
direction for future research and monitoring efforts. 7 EPA has struggled with providing a focus
and the necessary resources for environmental information since its inception in 1970.
While many data have been collected over the years, most water, air, and land programs lack the
detailed environmental trend information to address the well- being of Americans. EPA program
areas have also been hampered by deficiencies in their environmental data systems. For
example, the quality of environmental data constrains EPAs ability to assess the effectiveness of
its enforcement policies and programs throughout the country and to inform the public about the
health and environmental hazards of dangerous chemicals.
Performance problems
GAO
March
2009
Environmental
Protection
Agency
While EPA has made some progress in improving its operations, many of the same
issues still remain. EPAs mission is, without question, a difficult one: its policies and programs
affect virtually all segments of the economy, society, and government, and it is in the unenviable
position of enforcing myriad inherently controversial environmental laws and maintaining a
delicate balance between the benefits to public health and the environment with the cost to
industry and others. Nevertheless, the repetitive and persistent nature of the shortcomings
we have observed over the years points to serious challenges for EPA to effectively
implement its programs. Until it addresses these long-standing challenges, EPA is
unlikely to be able to respond effectively to much larger emerging challenges, such as
climate change. Facing these challenges head-on will require a sustained commitment by agency
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leadership. As a new administration takes office and begins to chart the agencys course, it will be
important for Congress and EPA to continue to focus on the issues we have identified.
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Office of National Aids Policy

Sorry, its exclusively international
Jeff Gow 2002 The HIV/AIDS Epidemic In Africa: Implications For U.S. Policy
http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/57
In response, the focus of U.S. government activities toward HIV/AIDS has shifted away
from a domestic orientation toward an increasingly international focus. The Office of
National AIDS Policy now has an explicit international focus. Although the African epidemic
is now the worst, the potential exists for an epidemic of similar magnitude in Asia over the next
decade. Emerging epidemics in the Caribbean and Latin America are smaller in scale but closer to
home.
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Social Security Administration

SSA funds get wasted
GAO-07-986 August 31, 2007 Social Security Administration: Policies and Procedures
Were in Place over MMA Spending, but Some Instances of Noncompliance Occurred
SSA spent the $500 million in MMA funds from December 2003 through January 2006 to implement
activities outlined in MMA. The majority of costs paid with MMA funds consisted of
personnel-related expenses, contractors, and indirect costs. More than half of the
funds were spent on payroll for staff hours used on MMA activities in SSA headquarters and
field offices (see table). Once the $500 million was spent, SSA began to use its general
appropriation to fund the remaining costs of implementing MMA activities. SSA used its
cost analysis system to track the total costs of its implementation of MMA activities. As of
February 20, 2007, SSA had completed implementation of 16 of the 22 tasks for the six provisions
under the act.
SSA funds dont get enforced

GAO-07-986 August 31, 2007 Social Security Administration: Policies and Procedures
Were in Place over MMA Spending, but Some Instances of Noncompliance Occurred
SSA had agency wide policies and procedures in place for its cost tracking and allocation,
asset accountability, and invoice review processes. It also established specific guidance to assign
and better allocate SSAs costs in implementing MMA. There were some instances though
where SSA did not comply with these policies and procedures. SSA did not effectively
communicate the specific MMA-related guidance to all affected staff. SSA subsequently
identified and corrected at least $4.6 million of costs that initially were incorrectly allocated to
MMA, but had not corrected
approximately $313,000 misallocated credit card purchase
transactions. In addition, GAO found instances where accountable assets purchased with MMA
funds, such as electronic and computer equipment, were not being properly tracked by
SSA in accordance with its policies and instances where purchase card transactions were not
properly supported. Although purchase card transactions and accountable asset purchases
represented a small percentage of total MMA costs, proper approval and support for these types of
transactions is essential to reduce the risk of improper payments.
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ICE
Immigration courts are brutally unfair and clog the system
Brad Heath 3/29/2009 Immigration courts face huge backlog USA TODAY
WASHINGTON The nation's immigration courts are now so clogged that nearly 90,000
people accused of being in the United States illegally waited at least two years for a
judge to decide whether they must leave, one of the last bottlenecks in a push to more strictly
enforce immigration laws. Their cases identified by a USA TODAY review of the courts' dockets
since 2003 are emblematic of delays in the little-known court system that lawyers, lawmakers
and others say is on the verge of being overwhelmed. Among them were 14,000 immigrants whose
cases took more than five years to decide and a few that took more than a decade. "It's an
indication that they just don't have enough resources," says Kerri Sherlock Talbot of the American
Immigration Lawyers Association. Some immigration courts are now so backlogged that just
putting a case on a judge's calendar can take more than a year, says Dana Marks, an
immigration judge in San Francisco and president of the National Association of Immigration
Judges. "You could have a case that would take an hour (to hear). But I can't give you that hour of
time for 14 months," Marks says. In the most extreme cases, immigrants can remain locked
up while their cases are delayed. More often, the backlogs leave them struggling to exist
until they learn their fate, Marks and others say. The immigration courts, run by the Justice
Department, have weathered years of criticism that their 224 judges are unable to handle
a flood of increasingly-complicated cases. Justice Department spokeswoman Susan Eastwood
acknowledges some long delays, but says that's often the result of unusual circumstances. She says
the department has enough judges.
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Veterans Health Administration

VA misuses its budget
Randall B. Williamson -- Director, Health Care, March 12, 2009 Challenges in Budget
Formulation and Execution
VA also faces challenges executing its health care budget. These include spending and
tracking funds for specific initiatives and providing timely and useful information to
Congress on budget execution progress and problems. GAOs 2006 report on VA funding for new
mental health initiatives found VA had difficulty spending and tracking funds for initiatives in VAs
mental health strategic plan to expand services to address service gaps. The initiatives were to
enhance VAs larger mental health program and were to be funded by $100 million in fiscal year
2005. Some VA medical centers did not spend all the funds they had received for the
initiatives by the end of the fiscal year, partly due to the time it took to hire staff and
renovate space for mental health programs. Also, VA did not track how funding allocated for
the initiatives was spent. GAOs 2006 report on VAs overall health care budget found that VA
monitored its health care budget execution and identified execution problems for fiscal years 2005
and 2006, but did not report the problems to Congress in a timely way. GAO also found that VAs
reporting on budget execution to Congress could have been more informative. VA has not fully
implemented one of GAOs two recommendations for improving VA budget execution.
Sound
budget formulation, monitoring of budget execution, and the reporting of informative and timely
information to Congress for oversight continue to be essential as VA addresses budget challenges
GAO has identified. Budgeting involves imperfect information and uncertainty, but VA has
the opportunity to improve the credibility of its budgeting by continuing to address identified
problems. This is particularly true for long-term care, where for several years GAO work has
highlighted concerns about workload assumptions and cost projections. By improving its budget
process, VA can increase the credibility and usefulness of information it provides to Congress on its
budget plans and progress in spending funds. GAOs prior work on new mental health initiatives
may provide a cautionary lesson about expanding VA programsnamely, that funding availability
does not always mean that new initiatives will be fully implemented in a given fiscal year or that
funds will be adequately tracked.
VA inefficientfraud, waste, and abuse

GAO September 2008, Improvements Needed
in
Design
of
Controls
over
Miscellaneous Obligations
VHA recorded over $6.9 billion of miscellaneous obligations for the procurement of
mission-related goods and services in fiscal year 2007.
According to VHA officials,
miscellaneous obligations were used to facilitate payment for goods and services when
the quantities and delivery dates are not known. According to VHA data, almost $3.8 billion
(55.1 percent) of VHAs miscellaneous obligations was for fee-based medical services for veterans
and another $1.4 billion (20.4 percent) was for drugs and medicines. The remainder funded,
among other things, state homes for the care of disabled veterans, transportation of veterans to
and from medical centers for treatment, and logistical support and facility maintenance for VHA
medical centers nationwide.
GAO's Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government
states that agency management is responsible for developing detailed policies and
procedures for internal control suitable for their agency's operations. However, VA
policies and procedures were not designed to provide adequate controls over the authorization and
use of miscellaneous obligations with respect to oversight by contracting officials, segregation of
duties, and supporting documentation for the obligation of funds. Collectively, these control
design flaws increase the risk of fraud, waste, and abuse (including employees converting
government assets to their own use without detection). These control design flaws were confirmed
in our case studies at VHA Medical centers in Pi ttsburgh, Pennsylvania; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and
Kansas City, Missouri.
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Ineffective Agency Political Capital Link

The solvency deficit is our linkCongress reluctant to fund inefficient
agencies
Mark Wilson, Nina H. Shokraii, and Angela Antonelli August 7, 19 98 Labor-HealthEducation
Appropriations:
Eliminating
Waste
http://www.heritage.org/research/labor/bg1212.cfm
and
Enhancing
Accountability
Fortunately, the House of Representatives has become far less willing to continue to feed
the appetite of an ineffective, bloated federal bureaucracy. The House Appropriations
Committee has taken a bold first step by reporting an FY 1999 Labor-HHS-Education
appropriations bill that begins to hold agencies accountable for poor performance,
eliminates programs that are wasteful or no longer needed, and demands results from those
that continue. It would either terminate or reduce funding levels and reform many of the
following programs because of their poor track records:
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**INTERNATIONAL LAW**
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Intl Law Good

Accepting customary international legal norms is key to solving multiple global issues.
Charney 03 [10/03 Jonathan I. Charney, Of the Board of Editors. Support for
this paper was provided by the Vanderbilt University School of Law. Research
assistance was provided by Jennifer McGinty, J.D. Vanderbilt University,
1993. Universal International Law, Lexis]
To resolve such problems, it may be necessary to establish new rules that are
binding on all subjects of international law regardless of the attitude of any
particular state. For unless all states are bound, an exempted recalcitrant state
could act as a spoiler for the entire international community . Thus, states that are
not bound by international laws designed to combat universal environmental
threats could become havens for the harmful activities concerned. Such states
might have an economic advantage over states that are bound because they
would not have to bear the costs of the requisite environmental protection. They
would be free riders on the system and would benefit from the environmentally
protective measures introduced by others at some cost. Furthermore, the example
of such free riders might undermine the system by encouraging other states not to
participate, and could thus derail the entire effort. Similarly, in the case of
international terrorism, one state that serves as a safe haven for terrorists can
threaten all. War crimes, apartheid or genocide committed in one state might
threaten international peace and security worldwide. Consequently, for certain
circumstances it may be incumbent on the international community to establish international law that is
binding on all states regardless of any one state's disposition. Unfortunately, the traditions of the international
legal system appear to work against the ability to legislate universal norms. States are said to be sovereign,
thus able to determine for themselves what they must or may do. State autonomy continues to serve the
international system well in traditional spheres of international relations. The freedom of states to control their
own destinies and policies has substantial value: it permits diversity and the choice by each state of its own
social priorities. Few, if any, states favor a world government that would dictate uniform behavior for all.
Consequently, many writers use the language of autonomy when they declare that international law requires
the consent of the states that are governed by it. Many take the position that a state that does not wish to be
bound by a new rule of international law may object to it and be exempted from its application. If sovereignty
and autonomy prevailed in all areas of international law, however, one could hardly hope to develop rules to
bind all states. In a community of nearly two hundred diverse states, it is virtually impossible to obtain the
acceptance of all to any norm, particularly one that requires significant expenses or changes in behavior.
Complete autonomy may have been acceptable in the past when no state could take actions that would
threaten the international community as a whole. Today, the enormous destructive potential of some activities
and the precarious condition of some objects of international concern make full autonomy undesirable, if not
potentially catastrophic. In this article I explore the limits of state autonomy to determine whether some or all
of international law may be made universally binding regardless of the position of one or a small number of
unwilling states. To accomplish this objective, I begin by analyzing the secondary rules of recognition (the
doctrine of sources) used to establish primary rules of international law. While treaties may require the consent
of individual states to be binding on them, such consent is not required for customary norms. Finally, I explore
in greater depth the actual processes by which many customary law norms have come into being in the last
half of the twentieth century. The contemporary process that is often used is significantly different from that
described in the classic treatises on the formation of customary law. Contemporary procedural developments
place the international legal system closer to the more formal notions of positive law, facilitating the
development of universal international law. These procedural developments strengthen the argument that the
system may establish general international law binding on all states, regardless of the objection of a small
number of states. Like many others, I take the position that there exists an international legal system with
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standards and procedures for making, applying and enforcing international law. n6 As a jurisprudential matter,
the source of the obligation to abide by international law is a matter of debate. Perhaps the most popular
theory is that states become bound to the international legal system on the basis of a social contract, actual
consent or tacit consent. n7 Other theories dispense with consent as the source of a state's obligation to abide
by international law. The principal ones maintain (1) that natural law imposes a duty on those located within
the territorial scope of the legal system to abide by it, especially when it is legitimate and just; n8 (2) that
principles of fair play or gratitude bind those who benefit from the legal system to abide by its rules; n9 and (3)
that utilitarian considerations based on the value of the rule or of the system to individuals obligate them to
abide by the law. n10 Depending upon the theory, the consent of states may or may not be found at the root
of all international law. Be that as it may, the system of international law serves the practical interests of
states. As is true of all societies, the international community has a need for rules to
impart a degree of order, predictability and stability to relations among its

members. The rules of the system also permit members to avoid conflict and
injury, and promote beneficial reciprocal and cooperative relations. They may even
promote values of justice and morality. The international legal system is supported
not only by states' interests in promoting individual rules, but also by their
interests in preserving and promoting the system as a whole. Thus, states
collectively and severally maintain an interest in encouraging law-abiding behavior.
There is also an effective decentralized system for imposing sanctions on violators
of the law through individual state and collective acts of
Intl Law Good
disapproval, denial and penalties. Fear of sanctions, the desire to be viewed by

others as law-abiding, and domestic institutional inclinations to conform to rules
denominated as law further impel states to comply with international law. Despite
the decentralized nature of the international legal system, there are strong reasons
why states need international law and are compelled to abide by it. Its
decentralized structure places some limits on what can be accomplished, but
within those limits international law has an important role. Even though individual
states may find short-term advantages in violating the law in particular situations,
their long-term interests are likely to be served best by the system. Because the
decentralized international legal system is governed directly by the subjects of the
law, i.e., states, it inherently favors rules of law that optimize the interests of
states. Despite the differences in power and influence of states, no individual or
small group of states is now dominant. Decisions tend to reflect the power
relationships and the right of all states to participate in reaching them. When the
lawmakers themselves are the primary subjects of the law, the law should reflect
their collective interests.
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Intl Law Impact

The only alternative to international law is genocide and nuclear war.
Shaw 01 [10/3/01 Martin Shaw Professor of International Relations and Politics at

the University of
Sussex. The unfinished global revolution: intellectuals and the new politics of
international relations http://www.martinshaw.org/unfinished.pdf]
The new politics of international relations require us, therefore, to go beyond the anti-imperialism of
the intellectual left as well as of the semi-anarchist traditions of the academic discipline. We need to
recognize three fundamental truths. First, in the twenty-first century people struggling for
democratic liberties across the non-Western world are likely to make constant demands on our
solidarity. Courageous academics, students and other intellectuals will be in the forefront of these
movements. They deserve the unstinting support of intellectuals in the West. Second, the old
international thinking in which democratic movements are seen as purely internal to states no
longer carries conviction despite the lingering nostalgia for it on both the American right and the
anti-American left. The idea that global principles can and should be enforced worldwide is firmly
established in the minds of hundreds of millions of people. This consciousness will a powerful force
in the coming decades. Third, global state-formation is a fact. International institutions are being
extended, and (like it or not) they have a symbiotic relation with the major centre of state power,
the increasingly internationalised Western conglomerate. The success of the global-democratic
revolutionary wave depends first on how well it is consolidated in each national context but
second, how thoroughly it is embedded in international networks of power, at the centre of which,
inescapably, is the West. From on these political fundamentals, strategic propositions can be
derived. First, democratic movements cannot regard non-governmental organisations and civil
society as ends in themselves. They must aim to civilise local states, rendering them open,
accountable and pluralistic, and curtail the arbitrary and violent exercise of power. Second,
democratising local states is not a separate task from integrating them into global and often
Western-centred networks. Reproducing isolated local centres of power carries with it classic
dangers of states as centres of war.84 Embedding global norms and integrating new state centres
with global institutional frameworks are essential to the control of violence. (To put this another
way: the proliferation of purely national democracies is not a recipe for peace.) Third, while the
global revolution cannot do without the West and the UN, neither can it rely on them
unconditionally. We need these power networks, but we need to tame them too, to make their
messy bureaucracies enormously more accountable and sensitive to the needs of society
worldwide. This will involve the kind of cosmopolitan democracy argued for by David Held85. It will
also require us to advance a global social-democratic agenda, to address the literally catastrophic
scale of world social inequalities. This is not a separate problem: social and economic reform is an
essential ingredient of alternatives to warlike and genocidal power; these feed off and reinforce
corrupt and criminal political economies. Fourth, if we need the global-Western state, if we want to
democratise it and make its institutions friendlier to global peace and justice, we cannot be
indifferent to its strategic debates. It matters to develop international political interventions, legal
institutions and robust peacekeeping as strategic alternatives to bombing our way through zones of
crisis. It matters that international intervention supports pluralist structures, rather than ratifying
Bosnia-style apartheid.86 As political intellectuals in the West, we need to have our eyes on the ball
at our feet, but we also need to raise them to the horizon. We need to grasp the historic drama that
is transforming worldwide relationships between people and state, as well as between state and
state. We need to think about how the turbulence of the global revolution can be consolidated in
democratic, pluralist, international networks of both social relations and state authority. We cannot
be simply optimistic about this prospect. Sadly, it will require repeated violent political crises to
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push Western and other governments towards the required restructuring of world institutions.87
What I have outlined is a huge challenge; but the alternative is to see the global revolution splutter
into partial defeat, or degenerate into new genocidal wars - perhaps even nuclear conflicts. The
practical challenge for all concerned citizens, and the theoretical and analytical challenges for
students of international relations and politics, are intertwined.
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Intl Law K2 Rights

International law key to global human rights
Ignatieff April 4-7, 2000. The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Princeton
Univ. http://www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/lectures/Ignatieff_01.pdf
In If This Is a Man, Primo Levi describes being interviewed by Dr. Pannwitz, chief of the chemical
department at Auschwitz.1 Securing a place in the department was a matter of life or death: if Levi
could convince Pannwitz that he was a competent chemist, he might be spared the gas chamber. As
Levi stood on one side of the doctors desk, in his concentration camp uniform, Dr. Pannwitz stared
up at him. Levi later remembered: That look was not one between two men; and if I had known how
completely to explain the nature of that look, which came as if across the glass window of an
aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds, I would also have explained the essence
of the great insanity of the third German [reich]. Here was a scientist, trained in the traditions of
European rational inquiry, turning a meeting between two human beings into an encounter between
different species. Progress may be a contested concept, but we make progress to the degree that
we act upon the moral intuition that Dr. Pannwitz was wrong: our species is one and each of the
individuals who compose it is entitled to equal moral consideration. Human rights is the language
that systematically embodies this intuition, and to the degree that this intuition gains inuence over
the conduct of individuals and states, we can say that we are making moral progress. Richard
Rortys denition of progress applies here: an increase in our ability to see more and more
differences among people as morally irrelevant.2 We think of the global diffusion of this idea as
progress for two reasons: because if we live by it, we treat more human beings as we would wish to
be treated 1 Primo Levi, If This Is a Man, translated by Stuart Woolf (London: Abacus, 1987), pp.
11112. The signicance of the passage was pointed out to me by Alain Finkielkrauts LHumanit
perdue: essai sur le 20ime siecle (Paris: Seuil, 1996), pp. 711. 2 Richard Rorty, Truth and Moral
Progress: Philosophical Papers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 11. [287] 288 The
Tanner Lectures on Human Values ourselves and in so doing help to reduce the amount of
unmerited cruelty and suffering in the world. Our grounds for believing that the spread of human
rights represents moral progress, in other words, are pragmatic and historical. We know from
historical experience that when human beings have defensible rightswhen their agency as
individuals is protected and enhancedthey are less likely to be abused and oppressed. On these
grounds, we count the diffusion of human rights instruments as progress even if there remains an
unconscionable gap between the instruments and the actual practices of states charged to comply
with them. Calling the global diffusion of Western human rights a sign of moral progress may seem
Eurocentric. Yet the human rights instruments created after 1945 were not a triumphant expression
of European imperial self-conscience but a reection on European nihilism and its consequences, at
the end of a catastrophic world war in which European civilization very nearly destroyed itself.
Human rights was a response to Dr. Pannwitz, to the discovery of the abomination that could occur
when the Westphalian state was accorded unlimited sovereignty, when citizens of that state lacked
criteria in international law that could oblige them to disobey legal but immoral orders. The
Universal Declaration represented a return by the European tradition to its natural law heritage, a
return intended to restore agency, to give individuals the juridical resources to stand up when the
state ordered them to do wrong. 2. The Juridical, Advocacy, and Enforcement Revolutions
Historically speaking, the Universal Declaration is part of a wider reordering of the normative order
of postwar international relations, designed to create re-walls against barbarism. The juridical
revolution included the UN Charter of 1945, outlawing aggressive war between states; the Genocide
Convention of 1948, protecting religious, racial, and ethnic groups against extermination; the
revision of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, strengthening noncombatant immunity; and nally the
international convention on asylum of 1951 to protect the rights of refugees. Before the Second
World War, only states had rights in international law. With the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of 1948, the [Ignatieff] Human Rights 289 rights of individuals received international legal
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recognition.3 For the rst time, individualsregardless of race, creed, gender, age, or any other
statuswere granted rights that they could use to challenge unjust state law or oppressive
customary practice.
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Intl Law Bad

International law is vague and unenforceable sovereign nations can
interpret or ignore it
Casey et al. 06
(August 18, 2006, International Law and the Nation-State at the U.N.: A Guide for U.S.
Policymakers, Lee A. Casey and David B. Rivkin, Jr.)
At the same time, it is also fair to say that, beyond a few academics and activists, most Americans
do not look to international institutions or the international community for validation of their
governments actions or their own. One might well ask, in response to the German Foreign Ministry,
what is the international community? Does it, for example, include Chinas Communist rulers or
the Persian Gulfs divine right monarchs? And what obligations, exactly, might Americans have to
them? Law, in the United States, is made by our elected representatives, and the measure of its
legitimacy is the United States Constitution. As a result, of course, international law has never been
treated as a rigid and imperative code of con duct by U.S. policymakers. This attitude toward
international law transcends political ideology and party label. Nowhere was it better displayed than
in an exchange between then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her British counterpart,
Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, during the run-up to NATOs 1999 intervention in Kosovo. As reported
by Mrs. Albrights spokesman James Rubin, when Cook explained that British lawyers objected to
the use of military force against Serbia without U.N. approval, she replied simply get new
lawyers.[3]Mrs. Albrights suggestion was perhaps undiplomatic, but it revealed a firm grasp of the
essential genius of international law: It is a body of norms made by states for states, and its content
and application are almost always open to honest dispute. Moreover, and most important of all,
there is no global power or authority with the ultimate right to establish the meaning of
international law for all. Every independent state has the legal rightand the obligationto
consider and interpret international law for itself. In other words, when questions are asked about
the meaning and requirements of international law, the answers will probably, and properly, depend
on who the lawyers are. This does not mean that international law is illusory or that it can or should
be ignored by states in the day-to-day exercise of power. It does mean, however, that international
law is best viewed as a collection of behavioral normssome arising from custom and some from
express agreement, some more well-established and some less sothat it is in the interest of
states to honor. As Chief Justice John Marshall explained in 1812 in describing one important aspect
of international law:[4]The world being composed of distinct sovereignties, possessing equal rights
and equal independence, whose mutual benefit is promoted by intercourse with each other, and by
an interchange of those good offices which humanity dictates and its wants require, all sovereigns
have consented [to certain legal norms].The key, of course, is consent. Ultimately, the binding
nature of international law is a matter of the consent of sovereign states. They can interpret that
law in accordance with their understanding and interests, they can attempt to change it, and they
can choose to ignore itso long as they are prepared to accept the very real political, economic,
and even military consequences that may result. This is the essence of sovereignty, which itself is
the basis and guarantor of self-government.
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Intl Law K2 Democracy

IL is key to democracy and survival.
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Intl Law Bad

International law is un-American tyranny which the US must subvert
Casey et al. 06
(August 18, 2006, International Law and the Nation-State at the U.N.: A Guide for U.S.
Policymakers,
Lee
A.
Casey
and
David
B.
Rivkin,
Jr.,
http://www.heritage.org/Research/WorldwideFreedom/bg1961.cfm)
The reason is simple enough. A genuine system of international law, comparable to domestic legal
systems in its reach and authority, would require a universally accepted institution entitled both to
adjudicate the conduct of states and, by extension, their individual officials and citizens and to
implement its judgments through compulsory process with or without consent of the states
concerned. Such a universal authority, however, would be fundamentally at odds with the founding
principles of the American Republic. It would require the American people to accept that there is, in
fact, a legal power that has legitimate authority over them but is not accountable to them for its
actions.
Pending this revolution in American beliefs and principles, U.S. officials and diplomats should recall
two basic points in their approach to international law:
As an independent sovereign, the United States is fully entitled to interpret international law for
itself. The views of international organizations, including the United Nations, other states, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) may be informative, but they are not legally binding unless,
and only to the extent that, the United States agrees to be bound.
Any institution or individual invoking international law as the measure of U.S. policy choices is only
expounding an opinion of what international law is or should be. That opinion may be well or poorly
informed, but it is not and cannot be authoritative. There is no supreme international judicial body
with the inherent right to interpret international law for states.
In short, the United States, like all other states, is bound by international law; but,
like all other states, it is also entitled to interpret international law for itself.
Whether the U.S. or any other state has been reasonable in its interpretation is
ultimately a political determination.
504

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Dowling

AT: Dedev-No mindshift......................................60

So whats the impact?

**X TURNS CASE**...........................................171

So whats the impact?

Nuke War Not Likely Pakistan........................227

Precautionary Principle Good- AT Zero Risk.....278

So whats the impact?

Rights Violation Inev........................................336

So whats the impact?

might be transmissible through coughs.

Aids turns military readiness

Bioterror is the only impact that risks extinction

Biological Weapons must be Abolished

Immediately, June 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)

genetically engineered biological weapons, many

forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous

We have a moral obligation to prevent violations of the constitution

Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict 95

Democracy Good- Democide

South China Morning Post 96

preordained evolutionary programme. Abundant sources of genetic variation exist for

Drug resistant diseases threaten human extinction.

infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent

Old diseases such as cholera and measles

Disease turns military readiness

Disease turns military readiness

Aids kills military readiness

Disease turns military readiness

adversaries are then compelled to launch on perception of preparations by one's

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

Econ- developing countries

Economy- U.S. civil war and dissolution

Econ Collapse Bad

Econ interdependence prevents war

Impacts Economic Decline Nuclear War

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

bilateral trade agreements, varying degrees of capital mobility, and

the world the world has looked to the US consumer to lead

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

The US is key to the global economy.

The US accounts for 24% of Japan's total

concentrated growth dynamic especially difficult.'' As the US economy faltered in

Impacts U.S. Key to Global Economy

US key to global economy no other country comes close

Impacts Econ Turns Heg

Econ Collapse ends US Heg

Impacts Econ Turns Heg

Economy key to leadership

Impacts Econ Turns Prolif

Economic growth is the surest way to stop prolif

Impacts Econ Turns Disease

Impacts Econ Turns Warming/Environment

Strong economy is the best way to preserve a healthy

Economic decline no protection of the environment

Sanders 90 (Jerry, Univ of Cal Berkley, Academic Coordinator in Peace and

Impacts Econ Turns Famine

spectrum -- governments, multilateral organizations, companies -- to not do the

Impacts Econ Turns Racism

Growth solves racism

Poor economic conditions racism

X TURNS CASE...........................................171