GDI 2017 - Hegemony Core - DRMC

GDI 2017 - Hegemony Core -
DRMC
Notes
This file should be used as a supplement for various hegemony debates that youll have on a variety of affirmatives. The
focus of this file was to update the hegemony debate to assume Trumps America and hegemony.
Heg Good
Impacts
AT: Costs
US Hegemony through global security key to American strength the
benefits outweigh the costs
Brooks et al; Associate Professor of Government in the Department of
Government at Dartmouth College; 2012 [Stephen; 12/31/12; Dartmouth College; William
Wohlforth; 12/31/12; Dartmouth College; Gilford John Ikenberry; 12/31/12; Princeton University; Don't Come Home,
America: The Case against Retrenchment; 33;International Security 37:3;
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/gji3/.../dont_come_home_america.pdf; accessed 7/3/17; GDI NW]
Defining U.S. grand strategy Grand strategy is a set of ideas for deploying a nations resources to achieve its interests over
the long run. 7 For more than sixty years, the United States has sought to advance its core
interests in security, prosperity, and domestic liberty by pursuing three overlapping
objectives: managing the external environment to reduce near- and long-term threats to
U.S. national security; promoting a liberal economic order to expand the global economy
and maximize domestic prosperity; and creating, sustaining, and revising the global
institutional order to secure necessary interstate cooperation on terms favorable to U.S.
interests. The pursuit of these three core objectives underlies what is arguably the United States most consequential
strategic choice: to maintain security com - mitments to partners and allies in Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East. U.S.
administrations have consistently maintained that the security commitments in these regions are necessary to shape the
global environment and thus advance the grand strategys three core objectives.
During the Cold War, the
commitments served primarily to prevent the encroachment of Soviet power into
regions containing the worlds wealthiest, potentially most powerful, and most resource-
rich states. After the Cold War, the aim became to make these same core regions more
secure, and so make the world safer for the United States. The commitments also allow
the United States to shape the security environment facing potential rivals to induce
them to accommodate its core interests and, should that fail, constitute a hedge against
the need to contain a future peer rival. Woven through ofcial U.S. speeches and strategy
documents over the last six decades is a set of broader grand strategic arguments that the
security com - mitments are a necessary condition of U.S. leadership, and that leadership
is necessary to pursue the strategys three core objectives. Without the security
commitments, U.S. leverage for leadership on both security and nonsecurity is - sues
declines. Leadership facilitates cooperation to address security challenges and expand
the global economy, and moves the cooperative equilibrium closer to U.S. preferences.
The commitments and associated leverage, moreover, are necessary pillars of a larger
institutional and normative order whose mainte - Dont Come Home, America 11 7. See, for example,
Art, A Grand Strategy for America; Betts, American Force; and Terry L. Diebel, Foreign Affairs Strategy: Logic for
American Statecraft (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). nance will make the United States more secure and
prosperous over the long term. Embedding U.S. leadership in these institutions has major benets for Washington and its
partners: functional benets (reduction of transaction costs, establishment of credible commitments, facilitation of
collective action, creation of focal points, monitoring, etc.) as well as political and legitimacy benets (mitigation of
politically awkward aspects of hegemony). Because the United States is not strongly constrained by
its institutional commitments, the benefits far outweigh the costs.
China Rise
China is using Trumps entrenchment to gain more leverage in IR.
Ikenberry-Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University in the
Department of Politics and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Lim- ANU College of
Arts and Social Sciences: Lecturer in International Relations 2k17(G. John and Darren "What Chinas institutional
statecraft could mean for the international order" published 5/13/17 accessed 7/11/17
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/04/13/what-chinas-institutional-statecraft-could-mean-for-
the-international-order/ GDI- XRL)
From the perspective of the United States, Chinas institutional statecraft poses three
challenges. In a narrow sense, Chinas record of bilateral development lending suggests the
AIIB may build pressure for changes to the rules, practices, and norms of development
finance that are at odds with the standards developed within the Bretton Woods
framework. The AIIB could also alter the institutional balance of power within this issue
area if existing institutions like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank recede in
importance.
In a broader sense, the AIIB could alter the balance of power between the United States and
China if it is able to raise real doubts among the international community regarding
whether the U.S.-created system is best able to meet states needsor whether a Chinese
model of international political economy (some kind of Beijing consensus) can do better.
[I]t simply is not in Chinas interests to radically upend an order that has, to a significant extent, served its interests so
well in recent decades.
Yet early evidence already highlights the constraints China faces in building new
institutions. Non-coercive regimes require buy-in from participating states, and the price
of legitimacy is multilateralism. The rush of European governments to join the AIIB came
with their assurances that they would preserve best practices, and further saw Beijing
agree to reduce its formal voting authority. Global financial markets are another constraintlike the
World Bank, the AIIB is funding its loans by itself selling debt. Loans for projects that are opaque, politically motivated, or
fall short of best practices are less likely to be repaid, and would raise AIIBs future cost of financing. Finally, at the
broadest level, the entrenched nature of liberal internationalism means that, short of major
war, alternative orders must out-compete by providing states with greater functional
benefits and/or enhanced legitimacy. It is far from clear how either could be achieved.
Perhaps most importantly, it simply is not in Chinas interests to radically upend an order that
has, to a significant extent, served its interests so well in recent decades. Indeed, Beijing typically
positions itself as a stout defender of Westphalian sovereignty and the United Nations. Furthermore, amid Trumps
nationalist economic rhetoric, Xi has personally defended the free trade system. Trumps
seeming hostility to liberal internationalism may require China to become one of the
biggest champions of the status quo over the next few years. This would be leadership, though
perhaps not what one might have predicted prior to the 2016 US election. Nevertheless, where Beijing views the existing
institutional framework as harmful to its interests, strategies of institutional statecraft designed to modify, undermine, or
avoid the current order will now have greater prospects for success.
Predictability
Prefer the devil you know to the devil you dont
Ikenberry, theorist of international relations and United States foreign
policy, and a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University,
2017; [John; May/June; Forigen Affairs; The Plot Against American Foreign Policy; Can the Liberal Order Survive?;
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/.../united-states/.../plot-against-american-foreign-polic...; accessed 7/11/17; GDI NW]
Trumps dark narrative of national decline ignores the great American accomplish - ment
of the twentieth century: the build - ing of the liberal international order. Constructed in
the years following World War II, the order is complex and sprawling, organized around
economic openness, multilateral institutions, security cooperation, democratic solidarity,
and internationalist ideals. For decades, the United States has served as the systems first
citizen, providing leadership and public goodsanchoring the alliances, stabilizing the
world economy, fostering cooperation, and championing the values of openness and
liberal democracy. Europe and Japan helped build the order, tying their fortunes to multilateral organizations and
enlightened U.S. leadership. The bilateral alliance with the United States is enshrined in Japans constitution. Nato played
a critical role in Germanys postwar rebirth and, half a century later, its peaceful reunification. Over time, more states
signed up, attracted to the fair-minded rules and norms of the order. A system of alliances now stretches
across the globe, linking the United States to Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East.
Compared with past ordersimperial and anarchic systems of various sorts, from the
Greek and Chinese worlds of the classical era to the nineteenth-century European
imperial systemthe liberal order stands alone. Choose your metric. But in terms of
wealth creation, the pro vision of physical security and economic stability, and the
promotion of human rights and political protections, no other international order in
history comes close. The liberal order may have its shortcomingscostly and ill-advised
wars have been fought in its name, and vast economic and social injustices remainbut
it has empowered people across the world who seek a better life within a relatively open
and rules-based global system.
Economy
Hegemony Key to U.S. Economic Benefits
Deep engagement is based on a premise central to realist scholarship from E.H. Carr to Robert Gilpin: economic orders do
not just emerge spontaneously; they are created and sustained by and for powerful states.86 To be sure, the sheer
size of its economy would guarantee the United States a significant role in the politics of
the global economy whatever grand strategy it adopted. Yet the fact that it is the leading
military power and security provider also enables economic leadership. The security role
figures in the creation, maintenance, and expansion of the system. In part because other
statesincluding all but one of the world's largest economieswere heavily dependent
on U.S. security protection during the Cold War, the United States was able not only to
foster the economic order but also to prod other states to buy into it and to support plans
for its progressive expansion.87 Today, as the discussion in the [End Page 40] previous section
underscores, the security commitments of deep engagement support the global economic
order by reducing the likelihood of security dilemmas, arms racing, instability, regional
conflicts and, in extremis, major power war. In so doing, the strategy helps to maintain a
stable and comparatively open world economya long-standing U.S. national interest.
U.S. Hegemony in Security is beneficial to the global and domestic economic

prosperity
U.S. security leverage is economically beneficial in a second respect: it can facilitate
"macrolevel structuring" of the global economy. Macrolevel structuring is crucial because
so much of what the United States wants from the economic order is simply "more of the
same"it prefers the structure of the main international economic institutions such as
the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund; it prefers the
existence of "open regionalism" 99; it prefers the dollar as the reserve currency; and so
on. U.S. interests are thus well served to the extent that American allies favor the global
economic status quo rather than revisions that could be harmful to U.S. economic
interests. One reason they are often inclined to take this approach is because of their
security relationship with the United States. For example, interviews with U.S. officials
stress that alliance ties give Washington leverage and authority in the current struggle
over multilateral governance institutions in Asia. As one official noted, "On the economic
side, the existence of the security alliance contributes to an atmosphere of trust that
enables the United States and Japan to present a united front on shared economic
goalssuch as open markets and transparency, for example, through APEC [Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation]."100 Likewise, Japan's current interest in the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, the Obama administration's most important long-term economic initiative
in East Asia, is widely understood to be shaped less by specific Japanese [End Page
44]economic interests than by the belief of Yoshihiko Noda's administration that it will
strengthen alliance ties with the United States.101 As one former administration official
stressed, this enhanced allied interest in supporting U.S. favored economic frameworks
as a means of strengthening security ties with the United States helps to ensure against
any shift to "a Sino-centric/ nontransparent/more mercantilist economic order in
Asia."102 The United States' security leverage over its allies matters even if it is not used actively to garner support for
its conception of the global economy and other economic issues. This is perhaps best illustrated by the status of the dollar
as the reserve currency, which confers major benefits on the United States.103 For many analysts, the U.S. position as the
leading superpower with worldwide security commitments is an important reason why the dollar was established as the
reserve currency and why it is likely to retain this status for a long time.104 In the past, Washington frequently used direct
security leverage to get its allies to support the dollar.105 There are a number of subtler mechanisms, however, through
which the current U.S. geopolitical position serves the same end. First, Kathleen McNamara builds on the logic of focal
points to argue that the U.S. global military role bolsters the likelihood that the dollar will long continue to be the currency
that actors converge upon as the "'natural' dominant currency."106 Second, Norrlof emphasizes the significance of a
mechanism that U.S. officials also stress: the United States' geopolitical position gives it the ability to constrain certain
forms of Asian regionalism that, if they were to eventuate, could help to promote movement away from the dollar. 107
Third, Adam Posen emphasizes that the EU's security dependence on the United States
makes it less likely that the euro countries will develop a true [End Page 45] global
military capacity and thus "that the dollar will continue to benefit from the geopolitical
sources of its global role" in ways that the euro countries will never match.108 In sum,
the United States is a key pillar of the global economy, but it does not provide this service
for free: it also extracts disproportionate benefits. Undertaking retrenchment would
place these benefits at risk.
Institutions
Hegemony key to solve institutional problems
What goes for the global economy also applies to larger patterns of institutionalized
cooperation. Here, too, the leadership enabled by the United States' grand strategy
fosters cooperation that generates diffuse benefits for many states but often
disproportionately reflects U.S. preferences. This basic premise subsumes three claims.
First, benefits flow to the United States from institutionalized cooperation to address a
wide range of problems. There is general agreement that a stable, open, and loosely rule-
based international order serves the interests of the United States. Indeed, we are aware
of no serious studies suggesting that U.S. interests would be better advanced in a world
that is closed (i.e., built around blocs and spheres of influence) and devoid of basic,
agreed-upon rules and institutions. As scholars have long argued, under conditions of
rising complex interdependence, states often can benefit from institutionalized
cooperation.109 In the security realm, newly emerging threats arguably are producing a
rapid rise in the benefits of such cooperation for the United States. Some of these threats
are transnational and emerge from environmental, health, and resource vulnerabilities,
such as those concerning pandemics. Transnational nonstate groups with various capacities for violence
have also become salient in recent decades, including groups involved in terrorism, piracy, and organized crime.110[End
Page 46] As is widely argued, these sorts of nontraditional, transnational threats can be realistically addressed only
through various types of collective action.111 Unless countries are prepared to radically restrict their
integration into an increasingly globalized world system, the problems must be solved
through coordinated action. 112 In the face of these diffuse and shifting threats, the
United States is going to find itself needing to work with other states to an increasing
degree, sharing information, building capacities, and responding to crises.
American Leadership ensures U.S. global interests

Second, U.S. leadership increases the prospects that such cooperation will emerge in a
manner relatively favorable to U.S. interests. Of course, the prospects for cooperation are
partly a function of compatible interests. Yet even when interests overlap, scholars of all theoretical stripes
have established that institutionalized cooperation does not emerge effortlessly: generating agreement on the particular
cooperative solution can often be elusive. And when interests do not overlap, the bargaining becomes tougher yet: not just
how, but whether cooperation will occur is on the table. Many factors affect the initiation of
cooperation, and under various conditions states can and have cooperated without
hegemonic leadership.114 As noted above, however, scholars acknowledge that the
likelihood of cooperation drops in the absence of leadership.
Latin America
US primacy in Latin America fadingpartnerships key to stabilizing region
The Council on Foreign Relations, 2017 [U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a
New Reality Accessed 7/14/17, Published 5/16/08, https://www.cfr.org/report/us-latin-america-relations, GDI-MJR]
Latin America has never mattered more for the United States. The region is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the
United States and a strong partner in the development of alternative fuels. It is the United States' fastest-growing trading
partner, as well as its biggest supplier of illegal drugs. Latin America is also the largest source of U.S. immigrants, both
documented and not. All of this reinforces deep U.S. ties with the regionstrategic, economic, and culturalbut also deep
concerns. This report makes clear that the era of the United States as the dominant influence in
Latin America is over. Countries in the region have not only grown stronger but have
expanded relations with others, including China and India. U.S. attention has also focused
elsewhere in recent years, particularly on challenges in the Middle East. The result is a region shaping its
future far more than it shaped its past. At the same time Latin America has made
substantial progress, it also faces ongoing challenges. Democracy has spread, economies have opened,
and populations have grown more mobile. But many countries have struggled to reduce poverty and
inequality and to provide for public security. The Council on Foreign Relations established an
Independent Task Force to take stock of these changes and assess their consequences for U.S. policy toward Latin
America. The Task Force finds that the long-standing focus on trade, democracy, and drugs, while
still relevant, is inadequate. The Task Force recommends reframing policy around four critical areaspoverty
and inequality, public security, migration, and energy securitythat are of immediate concern to Latin America's
governments and citizens. The Task Force urges that U.S. efforts to address these challenges be
done in coordination with multilateral institutions, civil society organizations,
governments, and local leaders. By focusing on areas of mutual concern, the United
States and Latin American countries can develop a partnership that supports regional
initiatives and the countries' own progress. Such a partnership would also promote U.S. objectives of
fostering stability, prosperity, and democracy throughout the hemisphere.
South China Sea
The United States must project its primacy in the SCS to prevent
China from hurting alliances and limiting US political influence
Ratner, Maurice R Greenberg Senior Fellow in China Studies, July 2017 [Ely
Ratner, Course Correction: How to Stop Chinas Maritime Advance; Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol 96, No. 4, Pgs 64-65,
GDI-MJR]* We do not endorse potentially ableist language within this card *
The South China Sea is fast becoming the worlds most important waterway. As the main
corridor between the Indian and Pacific Oceans, the sea carries one-third of global maritime trade,
worth over $5 trillion, each year, $1.2 trillion of it going to or from the United States. The
seas large oil and gas reserves and its vast fishing grounds, which produce 12 percent of
the worlds annual catch, provide energy and food for Southeast Asias 620 million
people.
But all is not well in the area. Six governmentsin Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Taiwan, and Vietnamhave overlapping claims to hundreds of rocks and reefs that
scatter the sea. Sovereignty over these territories not only serves as a source of national pride; it also confers hugely
valuable rights to drill for oil, catch fish, and sail warships in the surrounding waters. For decades, therefore,
these countries have contested one anothers claims, occasionally even resorting to
violence. No single government has managed to dominate the area, and the United States has opted to remain neutral
on the sovereignty disputes. In recent years, however, China has begun to assert its claims more
vigorously and is now poised to seize control of the sea. Should it succeed, it would deal a
devastating blow to the United States influence in the region, tilting the balance of
power across Asia in Chinas favor.
Time is running out to stop Chinas advance. With current U.S. policy faltering, the Trump
administration needs to take a firmer line. It should supplement diplomacy with
deterrence by warning China that if the aggression continues, the United States will
abandon its neutrality and help countries in the region defend their claims. Washington
should make clear that it can live with an uneasy stalemate in Asiabut not with Chinese hegemony.
China has asserted indisputable sovereignty over all the land features in the South
China Sea and claimed maritime rights over the waters within its nine-dash line, which
snakes along the shores of the other claimants and engulfs almost the entire sea. Although China has long lacked the
military power to enforce these claims, that is rapidly changing. After the 2008 financial crisis, moreover,
the Wests economic woes convinced Beijing that the time was ripe for China to flex its
muscles.
Then, in early 2014, Chinas efforts to assert authority over the South China Sea went from a trot to a gallop. Chinese ships
began massive dredging projects to reclaim land around seven reefs that China already controlled in the Spratly Islands,
an archipelago in the seas southern half. In an 18-month period, China reclaimed nearly 3,000 acres of land. (By contrast,
over the preceding several decades, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam had reclaimed a combined total of less
than 150 acres.) Despite assurances by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September 2015 that
China had no intention to militarize the South China Sea, it has been rapidly
transforming its artificial islands into advanced military bases, replete with air fields,
runways, ports, and antiaircraft and antimissile systems. In short order, China has laid
the foundation for control of the South China Sea.
Should China succeed in this endeavor, it will be poised to establish a vast zone of
influence on its southern coast, leaving other countries in the region with little choice but
to bend to its will. This would hobble U.S. alliances and partnerships, threaten U.S.
access to the regions markets and resources, and limit the United States ability to
project military power and political influence in Asia.
Economic weakness in the West drive China to military action
Empirics prove
Ratner, Maurice R Greenberg Senior Fellow in China Studies, July 2017 [Ely
Ratner, Course Correction: How to Stop Chinas Maritime Advance; Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol 96, No. 4, Pg 65, GDI-
MJR]
China has asserted indisputable sovereignty over all the land features in the South
China Sea and claimed maritime rights over the waters within its nine-dash line, which
snakes along the shores of the other claimants and engulfs almost the entire sea. Although China has long lacked the
military power to enforce these claims, that is rapidly changing. After the 2008 financial crisis, moreover,
the Wests economic woes convinced Beijing that the time was ripe for China to flex its
muscles.
Terrorism
Engagement key to solve terrorism
Brands, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and History at Duke University
and Feaver, American professor of political science and public policy at
Duke University, 2017 [Hal; March/April; Foreign Affairs; and Peter; March/April; Foreign Affairs; Vol. 96
Number 2; 35 ;Trump and Terrorism: U.S. Strategy After ISIS; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-02-
13/trump-and-terrorism; accessed 7/11/17; GDI NW]
Like the second and third options, this strategy rests on the theory that Middle Eastern terrorism flows from political
illiberalism in the Muslim world. But it assumes that the United States must cure the disease, not
merely treat its symptoms. Failing to do so, the argument goes, would ensure that new
terrorist groups would arise as old ones were defeated. In a world of imperfect
intelligence, allowing new threats to survive risks exposing Americans to a catastrophic
attack. This diagnosis suggests a two-step response. First, destroy any terrorist
organization capable of global reach, using whatever means necessary, including major
military operations featuring tens of thousands of troops. Second, transform the underlying
sociopolitical dynamics that drive jihadist ideology. Doing so would require catalyzing political
liberalization in the Islamic world, so the United States would have to engage in nation
building and democracy promotion in all countries where it had intervened to root out
terrorism. The allure of this option is that it offers, in theory at least, the chance to win
the war on terrorism once and for all. This reflects a crucial insight from the Iraq war.
Even if U.S. officials blundered when they chose to invade Iraq, they made just as grave a
mistake in committing insufficient troops and resources to Iraqi reconstruction and in
pulling U.S. troops out so precipitously in 2011, which jeopardized U.S. soldiers hard-
won gains. Since half measures and premature withdrawal end only in long-term failure,
the logic goes, better to take a shot at winning decisively, despite the extremely high cost.
Hegemony is key to solve Terror problems in the Middle East

Brands, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and History at Duke University
and Feaver, American professor of political science and public policy at
Duke University, 2017 [Hal; March/April; Foreign Affairs; and Peter; March/April; Foreign Affairs; Vol. 96
Number 2; 30 ;Trump and Terrorism: U.S. Strategy After ISIS; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-02-
13/trump-and-terrorism; accessed 7/11/17; GDI NW]
Worst of all, disengagement would probably not actually reduce the terrorist threat.
Although U.S. interventionism is one source of jihadist fury, there are others, including
the United States liberal values and its nonmilitary support for repressive regimes, such
as those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And although inaction might mitigate anti-U.S. blowback, it would also
prevent the United States from disrupting incipient dangersas happened before 9/11, when U.S. officials failed to deal
with the growing threat posed by al Qaeda. Disengagement, then, might not take the United States out of the terrorists
bulls-eye, but it would deprive it of the tools needed to keep the threat at bay. And if a less aggressive posture
contributed to a mass-casualty attack, leaders who had gambled on disengagement
would likely face political ruin. Given these downsides, no U.S. president is likely to
embrace disengagement. It is telling that the Obama administration, despite showing
some sympathy for the logic of disengagement following Osama bin Ladens death in
2011, ultimately concluded that the strategy was neither practical nor politically viable.
Thucydides Trap
China rising above US leads to war
The Economist Staff, 7/6/17 ["Fated to fight?" Economist Magazine, Accessed 7/6/17,
https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21724790-big-foreign-policy-question-worrying-washington-will-
america-and-china-go GDI-MJR]
Graham Allison, a Harvard scholar, thinks the world underestimates the risk of a catastrophic clash
between China and the United States. When a rising power challenges an incumbent,
carnage often ensues. Thucydides, an ancient historian, wrote of the Peloponnesian war of 431-404 BC that It was the rise of
Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable. Mr Allison has examined 16 similar cases
since the 15th century. All but four ended in war. Mr Allison does not say that war between China and the United
States is inevitable, but he thinks it more likely than not. War would be disastrous for both sides, but that
does not mean it cannot happen. No one wanted the first world war, yet it started
anyway, thanks to a series of miscalculations. The Soviet Union and America avoided all-out war, but they came
close. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the Soviets tried to smuggle nuclear missiles onto Cuba, 90 miles (145km) from
Florida, there were at least a dozen close calls that could have led to war. When American ships dropped explosives around Soviet
When an
submarines to force them to surface, one Soviet captain thought he was under attack and nearly fired his nuclear torpedoes.
American spy plane flew into Soviet airspace, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader,
worried that America was scoping targets for a nuclear first strike. Had he decided to
pre-empt it, a third world war could have followed. China and America could blunder
into war in several ways, argues Mr Allison. A stand-off over Taiwan could escalate.
North Koreas dictator, Kim Jong Un, might die without an obvious heir, sparking chaos.
American and Chinese special forces might rush into North Korea to secure the regimes
nuclear weapons, and clash. A big cyber-attack against Americas military networks
might convince it that China was trying to blind its forces in the Pacific. American
retaliation aimed at warning China off might have the opposite effect. Suppose that
America crippled Chinas Great Firewall, as a warning shot, and China saw this as an
attempt to overthrow its government? With Donald Trump in the White House, Mr
Allison worries that even a trade war might turn into a shooting war.
Trump
Trump-led decline of US hegemony is a disaster
Ikenberry, theorist of international relations and United States foreign
policy, and a professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Woodrow
Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University,
2017; [John; May/June; Forigen Affairs; The Plot Against American Foreign Policy; Can the Liberal Order Survive?;
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/.../united-states/.../plot-against-american-foreign-polic...; accessed 7/11/17; GDI NW]
Is the world witnessing the demise of the U.S.-led liberal order? If so, this is not how it was supposed to happen. The
great threats were supposed to come from hostile revisionist powers seeking to overturn
the postwar order. The United States and Europe were supposed to stand shoulder to
shoulder to protect the gains reaped from 70 years of cooperation. Instead, the worlds
most powerful state has begun to sabotage the order it created. A hostile revisionist
power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of
the free world. Across ancient and modern eras, orders built by great powers have come and gonebut they have
usually ended in murder, not suicide. U.S. President Donald Trumps every instinct runs counter to the ideas that have
underpinned the postwar international system. Trade, alliances, international law, multilateralism,
environmental protection, torture, and human rightson all these core issues, Trump
has made pronounce - ments that, if acted on, would bring to an end the United States
role as guarantor of the liberal world order. He has broken with 70 years of tradition by
signaling the end of U.S. support for the European Union: endorsing Brexit and making
common cause with right-wing European parties that seek to unravel the postwar
European project. In his inaugural address, Trump declared, From this moment on, its
going to be America first, and he announced his intention to rethink the central
accomplishments of the U.S.-led orderthe trade and alliance systems. Where previous
presidents have invoked the countrys past foreign policy triumphs, Trump describes
horrible deals and allies that arent paying their bills. His is a vision of a dark and
dangerous world in which the United States is besieged by Islamic terrorism,
immigrants, and crime as its wealth and confidence fade. In his revisionist narrative, the
era of Pax Americanathe period in which the United States wielded the most power on
the world stageis defined above all by national loss and decline. Trumps challenge to the liberal
order is all the more dangerous because it comes with a casual disrespect for the norms and values of liberal democracy
itself. The president has questioned the legitimacy of federal judges, attacked the press, and shown little regard for the
Constitution or the rule of law. Facts, evidence, scientific knowledge, due dili - gence, reasoned discoursethe essential
elements of democratic political life are disparaged daily. One must look long and hard to find any
utterances by Trump about the virtues of the nations political traditions, the genius of
the Founding Fathers, or the great struggles and accomplishments of liberal democracy.
This silence speaks loudly.
K Answer
The alternative is not peaceful we need a strategy that promotes good
values
Kaine, Junior US Senator, July 2017 [Tim Kaine, A New Truman Doctrine: Grand Strategy in a
Hyperconnected World; Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol 96, No. 4, Pgs 37, GDI-MJR]
Trumps views on trade and the importance of international institutions are very different from those of Presidents Barack
Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Trump will prioritize immediate economic gains over
security and human rights. But like his immediate predecessors, Trump will probably
also make foreign policy in an executive-driven, reactive way, without a clear or lasting
strategic vision that he shares with Congress or the American people. Such an approach has
some advantages: in theory, its a good way to avoid blunders and unnecessary adventures. But its risks are even greater.
The country, and the world, needs a new, twenty-first-century version of the Truman
Doctrine: a sustained U.S. national security strategy that is proactive rather than reactive
and sets a course for this administration and those that follow it. At a time when
countries such as Russia are attempting to subvert other nations democratic
institutions, the world needs a reinvigorated campaign to peacefully and forcefully
promote the virtues of democracy over authoritarianism or extremism. The United States is best
suited to lead that campaign, and failure to do so will hurt both the United States and people around the world.
Uniqueness
Sustainable/AT: Trump
Trumps administration will follow a traditional foreign policy path
Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations, 2017 [Elliott, Trump the Traditionalist Accessed 7/14/17, Published February 2017, Journal of
Foreign Affairs Vol 96 No. 3 GDI-MJR]
The Trump administration has been in office for less than six months, and most jobs below the cabinet level still remain
unfilled, so one must tread carefully when making judgments about its approach or predictions about its future. But it
is already clear that this is not a revolutionary administration. The broad lines of its
policy fit easily within those of the last few decades. Trump might not be a conventional
president, but so far, his foreign policy has been remarkably unremarkable. It is
understandable that anyone who heard such statements or who read the scores of tweets that the president fired off
might conclude that the new administration would break sharply with tradition. In reality,
however, Trump has not deviated much from conventions. In February, Trump rearmed the
one China policy and abandoned his plan to label China a currency manipulator. After pledging to
eliminate the Export-Import Bank, Trump changed his mind. He has failed to follow through on his threat
to tear up the U.S.-led nuclear agreement with Iran. And after repeatedly disparaging
nato, Trump backtracked after a meeting with the organizations secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, in April. The
alliance, Trump now declared, was no longer obsolete. Perhaps most striking of all, despite
having said many times that he wanted to improve relations with Russia and to use
military force only when concrete U.S. interests were at risk, Trump launched a cruise
missile attack on Syria (whose dictatorial regime is heavily supported by Russia) in response
to the Syrian regimes use of sarin gasa crime against humanity that nonetheless did not directly threaten the United
States.
Trumps foreign policy is moving in the right direction

Kroenig, Associate Proffessor, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,
Georgetown University, 2017 [Matthew, The Case for Trumps Foreign Policy) Accessed 7/14/17,
Published February 2017, Journal of Foreign Affairs Vol 96 No. 3 GDI-MJR]
Like any new administration, the Trump team has made mistakes. It designed and rolled out the initial travel ban poorly,
an unforced error given the popular support for stronger border security and immigration reform. More broadly, the team
has struggled to stay on message. But taking a step back reveals that Trump has gotten much of the
big picture right. The world is changing rapidly, and the United States must adapt if it is to succeed. Trumps
comfort with disruptive change may make him particularly well placed to oversee a
creative reinvigoration of U.S. foreign policy.
Some have charged that Trumps America first approach signals the end of
international U.S. leadership. It doesnt. If the United States is not strong at home, it
cannot be strong abroad. Trumps calls for tax cuts, deregulation, and major infrastructure investments have
already boosted domestic economic confidence. From last years election to the beginning of March, U.S. stocks added
nearly $3 trillion to their value. Under Trump, the United States may finally break out of its
recent cycle of low productivity, low inflation, and low growth.
To maintain its international position, the United States will need a strong military. Trump has promised one of the
greatest military buildups in history. His first budget proposal includes a $54 billion down payment on this promise, and,
working with Republican majorities in Congress, the administration will likely improve on this opening bid. The
Department of Defense will finally get the funds Obama denied it.
Trump recognized that the U.S. military must modernize to face a new nuclear age when he
promised in an interview with Reuters in February that the United States would be at the top of the pack in nuclear
capabilities. Critics have called this goal reckless, but the United States must have a robust nuclear force
to protect its allies in Europe and Asia. Moreover, past U.S. presidents have expressed similar ambitions.
John F. Kennedy, for example, avowed in 1963 that it was essential that the United States in this area of national strength
and national vigor should be second to none.
Since Trumps inauguration, his administration has also shown strong support for U.S. allies.
Mattis made Seoul and Tokyo the first overseas stops by a Trump cabinet official, and Trump further solidified his
commitment to Asia by hosting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for an intimate weekend gathering at his Mar-a-Lago
estate, in Florida. As president-elect, Trump called nato obsolete, but since taking office, he
has repeatedly voiced his support for the alliance, a message that Pence and Mattis relayed in person at
the Munich Security Conference in February. Some have criticized Trump for suggesting that nato
members should increase their defense spending, but U.S. administrations from Dwight
Eisenhowers to Obamas have made this same request. The only difference is that Trumps approach
is working. As Germanys defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said at the Munich Security Conference, Our
traditional re ex of relying above all on our American friends vigor and ducking away when things really get tight . . . will
no longer be enough. . . . We must also carry our share of the burden. Others disparage Trump for saying that nato should
be updated to include terror, as he told The New York Times in March of last year. But alliance officials in Brussels are
the first to agree that nato must continue to adapt to meet twenty-first-century threats.
Trump follows Hegemonic Stability Theory

Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law
and Diplomacy at Tufts University, 4/27/17 [Daniel W, Donald Trumps big foreign policy
speech, explained, Accessed: 7/11/17, Published 4/27/17,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/04/27/donald-trumps-big-foreign-policy-speech-
explained/?utm_term=.0ad7223ea5e6, GDI-MJR]
If you squint, theres an underlying theory explaining how Trump thinks about foreign
policy. Hegemonic stability theory says that economic openness and stability is most
likely to occur when the world has a single superpower. There is a variant of that approach in which a
coercive hegemon uses its power to make sure that the global rules of the game provide stability but redistribute the
benefits so that the hegemonic actor benefits more than everyone else. In essence, thats what Trump is proposing when
he says that: I will be Americas greatest defender and most loyal champion. We will not apologize for becoming
successful again, but will instead embrace the unique heritage that makes us who we are. The world is most peaceful, and
most prosperous, when America is strongest. So, if Im being generous, Trumps logic is: Global
deals should be renegotiated to strengthen the United States, and the world benefits
from this by becoming safer.
Topic Links
Exporting Education
Exporting good education practices gains US soft power
Oxford Analytica 14 [2- 21 -2014; UNITED STATES: Education could export 'soft power' ; Oxford Analytica
Daily Brief Service; ProQuest; GDI- NW]
The US educational system has in recent years attempted to 'export' itself, us ing its
globally recognised brands on satellite campuses. New York University has degree-granting campuses
in Abu Dhabi and Sha nghai. As emerging markets attempt to move up the value-added chain, and elites in those countries
grow, the appeal of a US education grows. The growth of US-based charter school operators could build the credibility of
firms to enter non-US education al markets ( see SINGAPORE: 'Global schoolhouse' plan faces challenges - January 3,
2014 and see AFRICA: Higher education gr ows amid quality concerns - December 19, 2013). While the estimated
profits for these operations are uncertain, the impact on the US 'soft power' -- in
educating the children of the world's leaders -- could be of great medium-term benefit to
Washington. CONCLUSION: Recent political shifts in the US educational system -- most
noticeably, support for increased testing and greater involvement of the private sector
within the Democratic party -- will largely continue. Opposition to certain aspects of the
new educational regime, such as Common Core (CC), may grow in 2014; however, th at
is unlikely to halt the growing tide of the pri vate firms, which may export their charter
school model abroad.
Science
U.S. Economic stability and future innovation is dependent of Hegemony
Rief, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2017 [Rafael; June
2017; Foreign Affairs; How to Maintain Americas Edge: Increase Funding for Basic Science; Vol. 96 Number 3; 96;
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/.../how-maintain-america-s-edge; accessed 7/10/17; GDI NW]
The future of U.S. scientific, technological, and economic innovation depends on
increased federal funding for basic research and increased effort by the private sector to
move new technologies into the market - place. In 1964, at the height of the Cold War
and the space race, federal spending on research and development came to 1.9 percent of
gdp . Today it is less than half thateven in the face of threats such as ter - rorism,
cyberattacks, climate change, and potential pandemics. Given these challenges and the ratcheting up
of international competition, a recommitment to U.S. leadership in science and innovation is critical. Something more has
to be done, also, to ensure a steady progression from ideas to investment to impact. Many universities have created
incubators and accelerators to support start-ups emerging from their laboratories. At mit , we are particularly concerned
about the fate of tough technologies in fields such as clean energy, manufacturing, robotics, biotechnology, and medical
devicespromising ideas that could potentially yield game-changing answers to enormous challenges but whose
commercialization is too time- and capital-intensive to attract risk capital or strategic investment from a large corporation.
To help such technologies reach the marketplace, we recently launched an enterprise we
call The Engine. It will support up to 60 start-ups at a time by offering them affordable
space near the mit campus, access to specialized equipment and technical expertise, and
patient capital through a venture capital investment arm relying on private funds. If this
and similar projects elsewhere succeed, they could unleash waves of innovation that
could benefit everyone. How to Maintain Americas Edge May/June 2017 103 The benefits of public
investment in science and technology, finally, must be broadly shared by the citizens who
shoulder the cost, and the economic and social disruptions triggered by the resulting
advances must be addressed with systems that offer continuous training and retraining
to American workers throughout their professional lives. Increasingly smart and nimble
machines will eventually radically alter the workplace. Stopping such technological
progress is impossible so rather than wish the problem away, the public and private
sectors should focus on helping people adapt successfully.
U.S. Hegemony key to sustain economic and security advantage

To start with, the United States lead in technological innovation could fall to global
competition, just as the countrys domestic manufacturing base did, with major
geopolitical and economic consequences. Cutting-edge science is equally vital to national
security and the economy. Tellingly, other nations are already starting to catch up. As the
United States research-and-development spending stag - nated between 2008 and 2013,
Chinas grew by 17 percent annually, and South Koreas, by nine percent. Chinese nationals
now publish almost as many peer-reviewed scientific journal articles as Americans do, and the quality of Chinese research
is rising rapidly. (For as long as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been monitoring how many patents have been
granted to universities, mit has ranked as the single institution with the greatest number, followed by other distinguished
U.S. universities, such as Stanford and Caltech. In 2013, Beijings Tsinghua University suddenly leapt
ahead of Stanford.) Further cuts in research budgets will discourage the cultivation of
desperately needed young scientific and engineering talent. This is not merely an
academic issue, because a high proportion of U.S. science and All six of the 2016
American Nobel laureates in science and economics were immigrants. How to Maintain
Americas Edge May/June 2017 101 engineering Ph.D.s go into industry. As a result,
universities have a sig - nificant role in training the most sophisticated talent for U.S.
businesses, and a crucial feature of U.S. graduate education in science and engineer - ing
is the involvement of students in cutting-edge academic research. Projects such as ligo show
graduate students that they can pursue the boldest of ideas, leading to further innovation down the road. Continuing to
starve basic research will also hamper the countrys ability to attract top global talent, adding to the discouraging effect of
recent restrictions on immigration. U.S. universities have long been a magnet for the worlds most brilliant people, as both
students and faculty. All six of the 2016 American Nobel laureates in science and economics were immigrants, for
example, as have been 40 percent of the American Nobel laureates in chemistry, medicine, and physics in this century.
At mit , more than 40 percent of both the graduate students and the faculty were born
outside the United States including the Venezuelan-born author of this article. As
research funding dries up, so, too, will the influx of foreign talent.
A Lack of Scientific Hegemony is destructive for the U.S. Economy

While other nations are vigorously investing in scientific discovery, in recent years, total
research-and-development spending in the United States, both private and public, has
stagnated. Between 2008 and 2014, the entire U.S. research-and-development
enterprise grew by just over one percent annually in inflation-adjusted dollars. Most
concerning, however, is the decline in federally supported research. Between 2009 and
2015, federal spending on research and development of all kinds decreased by nearly 20
percent in constant dollars. Universities suffered the longest downturn in federal support since the nsf began
keeping track in 1972, and that has caused a great deal of promising work to stalljust when groundbreaking new tools,
such as the ligo detectors and CRISPR -Cas9 genome editing, have opened up enormous opportunities for new discoveries.
Such underinvestment in research and development is not merely a temporary effect of
the Great Recession. The federal government now spends a significantly lower
percentage of gdp on research than it did in the 1960s and 1970s and has particularly
stinted research in essential fields such as the physical sciences, mathematics and com -
puter science, and the environmental sciences. The result has been a shift over time in
the source of the majority of research-and-development investment from the federal
government to industry. Industrial research and development is necessary and valuable,
of course. But with some exceptions, it tends to focus on relatively narrow questions
directed at specific commercial outcomes. Only about six percent of industry funding goes to basic
researchto projects designed to expand humanitys store of knowledge rather than pass tests of immediate usefulness.
This is understandable.
Basic research is curiosity-driven, and the short-term returns from it
are often not obvious. Yet we cannot do without it, because it is from such fundamental
explorations that the world gets the startling breakthroughs that create entirely new
industries.
Without U.S. hegemony in science the economy cant improve

Why is U.S. government funding for fundamental scientific research drying up? In part
because sluggish economic growth since the end of the last economic downturn has
made it difficult to justify funding projects with no projected returns for decades to
come. There is also a sense that other countries will reap the profits of U.S. investment in
basic research without helping cover the costs. And there is a concern that, in
combination with globalization, innovation is contributing to the erosion of jobs. L.
Rafael Reif 100 foreign affairs But the process of scientific progress and technological
change will not stop because Washington refuses to participate. Moreover, the growth of
innovation clusters such as those around Silicon Valley and Kendall Square suggests that there is indeed a home-court
advantage to those places where discoveries are made and that businesses like to stay physically close to the source of
important ideas.
In such places, start-ups linked to university-based research stay in the
neighborhood to absorb talent and knowledge and are often joined by larger, more
established firms.
Leads to rising powers
As soon as the world heard the first chirp signaling a gravitational wave emanating from black holes 1.3 billion light-years
away, it was clear that the ligo project was a triumph and would usher in a new kind of astronomy that would reveal new
truths about the universe.
L igo shows that the United States still knows how to do truly bold
science and do it well. But the breakthroughs today were built on the hard work and
generous funding of past generations. If todays Americans want to leave similar legacies
to their descendants, they need to refill the research pipelines and invest more in the
nations scientific infrastructure. If they dont, Americans should not be surprised when
other countries take the lead.
Informal Engagement
To maintain hegemony US needs to work with allies and connections in
global markets
Feigenbaum, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central
Asian Affairs, 2017 [Evan A, China and the World Accessed 7/14/17, Published February 2017, Journal of
Foreign Affairs Vol 96 No. 3 GDI-MJR]
Another lesson is that the United States should not force its allies into a binary choice between Beijing and Washington on
issues that are not vital to U.S. national security or to the national security of its allies. In the South China Sea, where
China is challenging maritime law and customary practice, such pressure is necessary. But Chinas financing of a
commercial railway or power line is not a comparable threat. And ultimately, the United States needs to
be clear-eyed about where its vital interests dictate that it get more skin in the game. Trade
is the best example of an area where it should. With the election of Donald Trump, the United States seems almost certain
to abandon the tpp. So Washington should expect Asian countries to fill the vacuum and write
their own rules. To be sure, U.S. business will remain crucial in Asia; U.S. companies have invested more than $200
billion in Southeast Asian countries alone. But what is at stake is not business but rules, norms, and standards.
Washington will lose influence over regulations governing investment, technology
standards, labor, and environmental practices. What the United States should be encouraging is a
liberal, open, market- based economic order in the region. And the tpp by itself would not have been enough, in any case.
Rather than abandoning the deal, Washington should be supplementing it, by negotiating bilateral investment treaties
with China and India to open up their economies to U.S. rms and to support economic reformers in both countries;
pursuing public-private partnerships to get U.S. businesses involved in infrastructure development across Asia; striking
specific agreements to open up markets in the service and technology sectors, where the United States excels; and seeking
new pacts in areas such as fishing and environmental standards for Chinas Belt and Road project. Doing so would mean
that Washington was helping set the agenda, not merely reacting to Chinese proposals. But the use of this form of U.S.
economic statecraft now seems likely to wane. Thus, as its influence declines, the United States must
find ways to rely more on its allies to act as a counterbalance to China where the United
States cannot or will not do so itself. In Thailand, for example, Japans sway has grown as Washingtons has
receded because of Tokyos consistent pursuit of investment partnerships and political engagement with the military junta
in Bangkok. The final lesson is that the international system cannot function unless it incorporates the largest and
fastest- growing countries. If it fails to adequately include China, India, and other emerging economies, they will simply
turn elsewhere. That means formal European and, to a lesser extent, U.S. influence in most international institutions will
have to shrink in the years ahead. So if the United States is to preserve the systems liberal tilt, it
will need to rely more heavily on informal means. That will entail creating ad hoc groups
of states to work on specific issues outside the systems formal architecture and
extracting more from China in exchange for accommodating its growing stature. The recent
decision to accede to Beijings demand that the yuan be included in the imfs Special Drawing Rights, a basket of major
reserve currencies used by the fund, provides an example of how this could be done. If, instead of agreeing outright,
Washington and the imf had insisted on breaking the process up into successive steps, each pegged to specific reforms of
Chinas capital markets, they could still have brought China into the system while also bolstering Chinas own economic
reformers. China will no doubt continue to propose initiatives similar to the aiib that leverage the countrys strengths. It
makes no sense for U.S. officials to respond by wringing their hands. In addition to the advantages that its position at the
geographic heart of Asia confers, China can deploy trillions in state-backed finance, something the United States cannot
do. To reject every Chinese initiative outright, then, would require Washington to fight both geography and economics.
And doing so would cause it to miss opportunities to work with Chinafor example, in Central Asia, where U.S. interests
align more closely with Chinas than with Russias. The bottom line is that Washington spends far too
much time and energy reacting to Chinas moves. Instead, it should be active and exploit
U.S. strengths, such as technology, innovation, and connections to global capital
markets, as it works with a diverse array of Asian partners to help balance Chinas
growing influence. The best way to adapt to Chinas new activism is to mount a stronger
offense, not play perpetual defense.
Heg Bad
Uniqueness
Not Sustainable Trump
US heg will decline inevitably - Trump

Marchetti - senior assistant professor (national qualification as associate
professor) in International Relations at the Department of Political Science
and the School of Government of LUISS 2k17 (Raffele, "End of the American hegemonic cycle"
published: 2/12/17 accessed: 7/07/17 https://www.opendemocracy.net/raffaele-marchetti/end-of-american-hegemonic-
cycle GDI- XRL)
Trumps election marks the end of the long phase of American world hegemony. Despite
the electoral slogan Make America Great Again and the great expectations this may have generated, his
presidency will presumably be characterized by an overall retrenchment. Many different
interpretations have been provided on the reasons of Trumps success ranging from
populist framing to FBI support. Contrary to the mainstream debate, I see a more fundamental reason
underpinning his victory: the changed costs/benefits balance in the US role in the world.
The theory of hegemonic stability holds that at some point the hegemon will start to
decline due to the increased costs of the management of the system which outbalance the
benefits the hegemon gains out of it.
The costs of the management of the system have in fact been accumulating in the last 4
presidencies. During the Bush administrations, security costs due to the military
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have, among other damage, impacted negatively on the US
government. Equally, during the Obama presidencies costs due to economic stimuli have
increased the overall debt of the country.
As predicted by hegemonic theory, we finally come to a point in which the costs became
too heavy for the citizens, or rather their perception of this becomes more evident, so
that they start to protest and demand a change. This was intercepted by Trump much more
than by Clinton, with Trump stepping back to decrease the costs of international projection.
So-called imperial overstretch, formed much earlier, led Trumps electorate to seek less
international costs (and possibly, but less likely, more domestic benefits). Hence, the promised
withdrawal from a number of Free Trade Agreements, the discussion of the terms of
NATO participation, cancellation of the environmental deals etc.
From this perspective Trumps election has to do with a much longer trend of
international order rather than the specific time-lapse of the electoral campaign, a trend
of dis-engagement that had already begun during the Obama administration and will
now be more clearly visible with Trump.
Legitimacy
Trump means our heg isnt legitimate makes it ineffective
Braaten- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas Lutheran University 2k16 (Daniel "WPTPN: The
Legitimacy of American Hegemony in the Age of Trump" accessed: 7/8/17 published: 12/03/16
duckofminerva.com/2016/12/the-legitimacy-of-american-hegemony-in-the-age-of-trump.html GDI- XRL)
Legitimacy is rightful authority and is essential for the effectiveness of any political order whether domestic or
international. Hegemonic legitimacy then is the rightful authority accrued to the most
powerful state in the international system. A hegemonic state cannot exercise effective
leadership if its actions are viewed as illegitimate, and one might go so far as to say a powerful state
cannot become a hegemonic state without legitimacy. A powerful state without legitimacy is just that
a powerful state, which may be able to influence political outcomes to a certain degree through coercion and the
application of material power, but will never be able to order international politics because it lacks
the legitimacy of consent from the follower states. In previous academic work, my coauthor David
Rapkin and I argued that Americas hegemonic legitimacy is based on four factors: shared
values, open accessible decision-making procedures, strategic restraint, and the
provision of global public goods. Based on these four factors how might American legitimacy fare under a
Trump Presidency?
Before we can answer that question we need a rough idea of what a Trump foreign policy might look like. During
the
presidential campaign Donald Trump made many erratic and contradictory promises for
what he would do when he was President. Despite the many contradictions of the Trump campaign, as the
journalist Evan Osnos shows, he has been consistent on three main issues:
One of them is his belief that the United States is fundamentally being damaged by immigration.
Number two is his belief that trade deals have done more damage to the United States than
they have helped. And number three is his belief that the United States does too much for the
world. As he said in 2015, I want to take back everything that the United States has given
the world.
Needless to say, this America First foreign policy represents a radical departure from the
liberal internationalism of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and even the Neo-conservatism of
George W. Bush in each of the four areas that undergird US hegemonic legitimacy.
US legitimacy is going down- Trump creates an unpredictable world.

Braaten- Assistant Professor of Political Science at Texas Lutheran University 2k16 (Daniel "WPTPN: The
Legitimacy of American Hegemony in the Age of Trump" accessed: 7/8/17 published: 12/03/16
duckofminerva.com/2016/12/the-legitimacy-of-american-hegemony-in-the-age-of-trump.html GDI- XRL)
Trumps America first foreign policy does not bode well for American hegemonic
legitimacy. Assuming he is able to accomplish what he proposes, a Trump Presidency would likely spell a
significant reduction in U.S. engagement with the world coupled with flagrant violations of
international law and its treaty obligation when it does engage. Declining American
legitimacy will make it more difficult for the U.S. to achieve its foreign policy goals as
states will be less accommodating and less likely to support U.S. actions if they view these
actions as coming from an unrestrained superpower rather than a legitimate political actor that takes their interests (at
least to a certain degree) into consideration when taking action. This post is not meant as a blind defense of the
status quo as there are many inadequacies with the current international order and there are
many possible reforms that can and should be made to make it more fair and equitable.
However, nothing Donald Trump offers in the way of temperament, leadership, ideology, or policy portends any
positive reform of the system but rather an unraveling which opens up the possibility for a much more
dangerous world.
Multilateral Institutions
Trump disrupts international organizations.
cycle GDI- XRL)
The system in which we have been living in the last 70 years was created in large part by the
US leadership. The UN system, Bretton Woods Institutions, NATO, and WTO are all
institutional arrangements that have been strongly promoted by the post WWII
hegemon and that have been preserved in life thanks to continuous support by the USA.
Now all of this is put into question by the resistance of the newly elected president to
engage in and with these multilateral organizations. Trump will most likely have a more
unpredictable, possibly turbulent behaviour vis a vis all of these institutions and this will lead to
their transformation and perhaps for some, to their marginalization.
Soft Power
Balance of ideals is key to soft power Trump moving in the wrong
direction
Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served as
Director of Policy Planning for the US State Department (2001-2003), and
was President George W. Bush's special envoy to Northern Ireland and
Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan, 2017 [Richard; January/February 2017; Foreign
Affairs; World Order 2.0: The Case for Sovereign Obligation; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-12-
12/world-order-20; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
Back during the George W. Bush administration, in trying to articulate what the United
States really wanted from China, Robert Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, framed
the question as one of whether Beijing was prepared to act as a responsible stakeholder
in the international system. The concept is a useful one and applies now to the United
States, the founder and dominant power within that system. So what consti - tutes
responsible behavior for Washington in the world at large at this juncture? One element
is giving appropriate attention to both interests and ideals. The Trump administration
has shown a clear preference for not involving the United States in the internal affairs of
other countries. Such realism is often warranted, given Washingtons multiple priorities and limited leverage in such
matters. But there is a danger in taking this approach too far, since prudent
nonintervention can all too easily shade into active support for deeply problem - atic
regimes. Careless relationships with friendly tyrants, as such rulers used to be called,
have burned the United States often in the past, and so it is worrying to see Washington
take what look like the first steps down such a path again with Egypt, the Philippines,
and Turkey. Friends need to speak candidly to friends about the errors they may be
making. Such communi - cations should normally take place pri - vately and without
sanction. But they do need to occur, lest the United States tarnish its reputation,
encourage even worse behavior, and set back efforts to promote more open societies and
stabil - ity around the world. The president should also understand that what he says
about U.S. institutions, including the media, the judiciary, and Congress, is listened to
closely around the world and has the potential to reduce respect for the United States
while encouraging leaders elsewhere to weaken the checks and balances on their rule.
Inevitable
Heg is difficult to measure, but that doesnt mean its declining
Baker-VP of Strategic Analysis, Stratfor 2k17(Rodger Published: Jan 3, 2017 accessed:7/14/17 "Understanding
America's Global Role in the Age of Trump" ://worldview.stratfor.com/weekly/understanding-americas-global-role-age-
trump GDI- XRL)
Perhaps the biggest challenge currently is simply understanding just how to measure
American power in the modern world. During the Cold War, the intelligence community
produced so-called "net assessments" and National Intelligence Estimates for the president
and the administration to measure the net balance between different aspects of
American and Soviet power and those of their alliance structures. These included economic,
social, political and, of course, military comparisons, though the latter frequently defaulted to bean-counter comparisons
of the numbers of systems rather than providing a holistic look at their overall effectiveness. The dissolution of the
Soviet Union and the Communist bloc gave rise to a clear preponderance of U.S.
economic, cultural, political and militarily power.
But that massive gap is narrowing, not necessarily due to a decline in overall U.S.
strength, but rather to the rise of regional powers notably China and the re-emergence
of Russia, but also smaller regional groupings that have been growing economically and
militarily. Many worldwide argue that the United States should no longer be the default
global leader, that other countries have the right to take their turn at broader
international leadership, and that U.S. ideals are not universal and so should not be
asserted as such. The diffusion of global power is also creating a diffusion of global ideals. Global and
domestic resistance to perceived over-globalization is strong, and the ability of the United States
to assert its ideals and its right to lead the global system is increasingly challenged from
without and within.
In relative strength, the United States is losing ground, particularly by measures from the beginning of the
post-Cold War period. But that does not mean that any other single power will soon overtake
the United States. The United States remains the single largest economy and the single most powerful military force
in the world. The question is perhaps not whether the United States has strength, but how it intends to apply that
strength, and whether the United States has vision beyond itself.
Impact Defense
Not Effective Trump
Trump means hegemony is ineffective
Walt- the Robert and Rene Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University 2k17 (Stephen "The
World Is Even Less Stable Than It Looks" published: 6/26/17 accessed:7.14/17
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/26/the-world-is-even-less-stable-than-it-looks/ GDI- XRL)
In Asia, North Koreas nuclear and missile capabilities in defiance of global opinion
(surprise, surprise), and Trumps naive hope that China would ignore its own interests and
somehow persuade Pyongyang to do what Trump wanted has been exposed as the pipe
dream it always was. But this leaves the United States and its Asian allies with no attractive
options, and only the least-bad choice of reengaging with a country that just killed a U.S.
citizen over an alleged purloined poster. Islamist movements appear to be gaining
strength in Indonesia and threatening that countrys prior atmosphere of tolerance, and
the Philippine governments wars on drugs and terrorism are wreaking a fearsome
human cost with little to show for it. And Trumps bromance with Chinese President Xi Jinping has done
nothing to slow Beijings efforts to alter the territorial status quo in the South China Sea.
All things considered, its hard to see conditions in Asia as safer now than they were a year ago .
The same gloomy conclusion applies to the Middle East, only more so. The Islamic State may soon
be a thing of the past at least in terms of holding territory but the exceedingly
complex, multifaceted, and interrelated conflicts in Yemen, Syria/Iraq, and between
Qatar and Saudi Arabia create much more potential for trouble than was present back in 2016.
The impending defeat of the Islamic State has intensified its opponents efforts to control
its former territory, with outside powers ramping up their involvement while diplomatic
efforts languish. U.S. military involvement has risen steadily with scant input from Congress or
the American public and U.S. aircraft recently shot down Iranian drones and a Syrian fighter
plane. The latter act prompted Moscow to issue a direct warning against further U.S.
attacks and to suspend the communications channel created to minimize the risk of an
inadvertent clash between U.S. and Russian forces. And to make matters worse, an emboldened
Saudi Arabia is continuing its brutal military campaign in Yemen while simultaneously
trying to force neighboring Qatar to silence Al Jazeera, sever its contacts with Iran, and
basically accept Saudi predominance. Maybe you can see a silver lining in all these developments, but I cant.
The worst case for the United States would be involvement in another big Middle East
war arising from sheer incompetence and incoherence rather than by design, as Jim Lobe and Giulia McDonnell Nieto
del Rio put it.
Meanwhile, its dj vu all over again in Afghanistan, with the United States about to
reverse Barack Obamas drawdown and send more troops back into an unwinnable war. Exactly
why this step is in Americas national interest remains unclear, and at least nobody is trying to
pretend that this decision (which Trump has delegated to Secretary of Defense James Mattis) is going to
produce anything that might be termed victory. Instead, in a disturbing echo of the
Indochina war, the United States is operating a new version of the stalemate machine,
doing just enough to not lose. We know we cant win; at this point we cant break even, yet neither Democrats
nor Republicans will let us out of the game.
Last but not least, the institutional underpinnings of the present international system
continue to fray. The importance of such institutions is sometimes exaggerated, but even hard-nosed realists
understand that strong institutions can facilitate cooperation among like-minded states and
lend greater predictability to important international relationships. NATO is intact but
weaker than it was a year ago, and doubts about the U.S. role in Asia have been rising
following Trumps renunciation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and his erratic
responses to events in Korea and the Philippines. Instead of being able to count on help from close allies
in most circumstances, today the United States faces a Germany whose leader wants Europe to
chart its own course, and a Canada whose foreign minister says International
relationships that had seemed immutable for 70 years are being called into question,
adding that Americas decisions are forcing Canada to set our own clear and sovereign
course. Such sentiments are not a sign of the apocalypse, but they do not herald easier ties between
the United States and its most important neighbors and allies.
Trumps wishy-washy nature is creating much unrest and chaos.

Indeed, only six months into Trumps presidency, its becoming hard to keep track of all the
squirm-inducing moments. There was the brief sage of Trumps initial national security advisor,
Mike Flynn, who lasted in his job a mere 25 days, or the appointment of self-styled
terrorism expert Sebastian Gorka. There was Trumps bizarre speech at CIA headquarters
the day after he was inaugurated, in which he rambled on about the crowd size at his
inauguration ceremony and complained about media coverage. There was the armada he
said was heading toward North Korea when it was actually steaming in the opposite
direction, and his on-again, off-again, on-again attitude toward NATO and Article 5. There
were the press releases, tweets, and announcements that misspelled the names of foreign
leaders and the mini-crisis that erupted when Trump announced South Korea should pay
for the THAAD missile-defense system that the U.S. had insisted be deployed there.
(National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster had to call his South Korean counterpart and walk that one back, but the
damage had already been done.) And then theres Trumps weird decision to gut the State Department
(apparently with the full support of his secretary of state) and
to assign sensitive diplomatic tasks to his
son-in-law, despite the latters complete lack of foreign-policy experience and checkered
business career. And dont even get me started about Trump & Co.s handling of relations with
Russia and Kushners amateurish attempts to create some sort of backchannel to
Moscow. With a record like this to defend, its no wonder the White House is trying to keep the press and the public in
the dark about what its doing.
Why does any of this matter? Because the greatest achievements of U.S. foreign policy
since World War II has been its ability, when it chose, to keep wars from breaking out or to
end them quickly when they did occur. As Ive explained before, a peaceful world is very much in the
U.S. national interest, given how secure and well-off the United States already is. The
combination of military strength and skilled diplomacy helped keep the peace in Europe and in much of Asia throughout
the Cold War, and often (but not always) played a stabilizing role in the Middle East. It required not just
credible military power, but also politicians who understood how the world worked and
what the interests of others were, had a clear sense of Americas own interests, and were
sufficiently consistent that others could count on them to do what they had promised.
By contrast, Americas biggest foreign-policy failures occurred when U.S. leaders started
wars on our own (Iraq, 2003), escalated them for no good reason (Vietnam, 1965), or turned a
blind eye to simmering conflicts and missed opportunities for peace (Korea in 1950 and the
Middle East in 1966-67, 1971-72, and 1982). And many of these errors arose from impulsive and
ignorant leaders who knew relatively little about the situations they were trying to
manage.
The role of the US as being the mediator of global conflicts has been abandoned.
Today, the United States isnt disengaging from world affairs or adopting a new and well-
thought out grand strategy, such as offshore balancing, but it is hardly acting as a clear or
consistent defender of peace and the status quo. On the contrary, Washington is still
trying to determine the future fate of Afghanistan, still hoping for regime change in
several countries it doesnt like, encouraging its proxies in the Middle East to escalate
their local quarrels, and using increasing levels of military power to try to solve problems
such as terrorism and insurgency whose
roots are essentially political. The United States has
pretty much abandonedits role as a potential mediator in lots of potential hotspots, and it
would be naive to expect all of these conflicts will to simmer down on their own.
AT: Unipolarity Good
Unipolarity not responsible for peace
Fettweis; Tulane University, International Relations, Associate Professor,
5/8/17 [Christopher J; Unipolarity, Hegemony, and the New Peace, Accessed: 7/11/17, Published 5/8/17,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09636412.2017.1306394?journalCode=fsst20, GDI-MJR]
The New Peace does not appear to be the result of unipolarity or US hegemony. While that
conclusion might not sit well with many US analysts, the news is not all bad, for if the current generation of
declinists is right and unipolaritys days are numbered, the odds are good that the world
will not descend into the atavistic chaos that haunts the neoconservative imagination.
The United States can adjust its grand strategy without fear in the Trump years, perhaps
even letting the unipolar moment expire, because the New Peace may well be unrelated
to its dominance.6
The world is not entirely unipolar

Not everyone is as convinced. Two main objections have arisen to the suggestion that ours is a unipolar world. First, the
Russians are roughly the equal of the United States when it comes to nuclear weapons,
which strikes some as indicative of a bipolar structure.40 Rough nuclear parity is indeed a continuing
feature of the new order. Even though a credible case could be made that US nuclear weapons
are substantially more reliable and accurate than those of Russia, quantity has a quality
all its own. When it comes to nuclear weapons, the world is bipolar. Polarity is a reflection of power in the aggregate,
however, and unipolarity does not depend on asymmetry in every single category. Nuclear weapons are certainly one of
the most important measures of power, but only one, and their political utility is not necessarily obvious.41 In all other
categories, the US military has essentially achieved its long-standing dream of full-spectrum dominance. Its hard-power
capabilities are without peer. Second, some scholars argue that the economic and political
influence wielded by the United States is limited, and not indicative of a unipolar
structure.42 This objection highlights a longstanding debate in the literature on hegemony. If one examines only raw
US potential power, the world is unambiguously unipolar; if power is thought to be control over
outcomes, a bit more ambiguity appears to rise, since the United States certainly cannot
achieve all its goals.43 To suggest that power contributes to systemic structure only to the extent that it affords
influence is to conflate polarity with hegemony. This objection can therefore be addressed by making terms clear. As it
stands, the only evidence we have regarding the relationship between US power and
international stability suggests that the two are unrelated. The rest of the world appears
quite capable and willing to operate effectively without the presence of a global
policeman. Those who think otherwise have precious little empirical support upon which to build their case.
Hegemonic stability is a belief, in other words, rather than an established
fact, and as such deserves a different kind of examination.
AT: American Global Security Good
American security policies hurt other nations around the globe
Walt, Robert and Rene Belfer professor of international relations at
Harvard University, 2016 [Stephen; 4/25/16, Forigen Policy; Why is America So Bad at Promoting
Democracy in Other Countries?; http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/why-is-america-so-bad-at-promoting-
democracy-in-other-countries/; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
If youre a dedicated Wilsonian, the past quarter-century must have been pretty
discouraging. Convinced liberal democracy was the only viable political formula for a
globalizing world, the last three U.S. administrations embraced Wilsonian ideals and
made democracy promotion a key element of U.S. foreign policy. For Bill Clinton, it was
the National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement. For George W. Bush,
it was the Freedom Agenda set forth in his second inaugural address and echoed by top
officials like Condoleezza Rice. Barack Obama has been a less fervent Wilsonian than his predecessors, but he
appointed plenty of ardent liberal internationalists to his administration, declaring, There is no right more fundamental
than the ability to choose your leaders. And he has openly backed democratic transitions in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, and
several other countries. Unfortunately, a soon-to-be-published collection edited by Larry Diamond and Mark Plattner
suggests that these (and other) efforts at democracy promotion have not fared well. Success stories like the
recent end to military rule in Myanmar are balanced by the more numerous and visible
failures in Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, the obvious backsliding in Turkey, Hungary, Russia,
Poland, and elsewhere, and the democratic dysfunctions in the European Union and in
the United States itself. As Diamond points out in his own contribution to the book,
nearly a quarter of the worlds democracies have eroded or relapsed in the past 30 years.
U.S. hegemony through security doesnt work

Walt, Robert and Rene Belfer professor of international relations at
Harvard University, 2016 [Stephen; 4/25/16, Forigen Policy; Why is America So Bad at Promoting
Democracy in Other Countries?; http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/04/25/why-is-america-so-bad-at-promoting-
democracy-in-other-countries/; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
At the risk of stating the obvious, we do know what doesnt work, and we have a pretty
good idea why. What doesnt work is military intervention (aka foreign-imposed regime
change). The idea that the United States could march in, depose the despot-in-chief and
his henchmen, write a new constitution, hold a few elections, and produce a stable
democracy presto! was always delusional, but an awful lot of smart people bought
this idea despite the abundant evidence against it. Using military force to spread
democracy fails for several obvious reasons. First, successful liberal orders depend on a
lot more than a written constitution or elections: They usually require an effective legal
system, a broad commitment to pluralism, a decent level of income and education, and
widespread confidence that political groups which lose out in a particular election have a
decent chance of doing better in the future and thus an incentive to keep working within
the system. Because a lot of social elements need to line up properly for this arrangement to work and endure,
creating reasonably effective democracies took centuries in the West, and it was often a highly contentious even violent
process. To believe the U.S. military could export democracy quickly and cheaply
required a degree of hubris that is still breathtaking to recall. Second, using force to
spread democracy almost always triggers violent resistance. Nationalism and other
forms of local identity remain powerful features of todays world, and most people dislike
following orders from well-armed foreign occupiers. Moreover, groups that have lost
power, wealth, or status in the course of a democratic transition (such as Sunnis in post-Saddam
Iraq) will inevitably be tempted to take up arms in opposition, and neighboring states whose interests are adversely
affected by a transition may try to stop or reverse it. Such developments are the last thing a struggling democracy needs, of
course, because violence tends to empower leaders who are good at it, instead of those who are skilled at building effective
institutions, striking deals across factional lines, promoting tolerance, and building more robust and productive
economies. To make matters worse, foreign occupiers rarely know enough to pick the right local people to put in charge,
and even generous and well-intentioned efforts to aid the new government tend to fuel corruption and distort local politics
in unpredictable ways. Creating
democracy in a foreign country is a vast social engineering
project, and expecting outside powers to do it effectively is like asking someone to build a
nuclear power plant, without any blueprints, on an active earthquake zone. In either
case, expect a rapid meltdown.
AT: China Rise
China will not overtake US
Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean
of the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, 2017 [Joseph S. Nye Jr, Will the
Liberal Order Survive? Accessed 7/11/17, Published February 2017 GDI-MJR]
Contrary to the current conventional wisdom, China is not about to replace the United
States as the worlds dominant country. Power involves the ability to get what you want from others, and it
can involve payment, coercion, or attraction. Chinas economy has grown dramatically in recent decades, but it is still only
61 percent of the size of the U.S. economy, and its rate of growth is slowing. And even if China does surpass
the United States in total economic size some decades from now, economic might is just
part of the geopolitical equation. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the United
States spends four times as much on its military as does China, and although Chinese capabilities have
been increasing in recent years, serious observers think that China will not be able to
exclude the United States from the western Pacific, much less exercise global military
hegemony. And as for soft power, the ability to attract others, a recent index published by
Portland, a London consultancy, ranks the United States first and China 28th. And as
China tries to catch up, the United States will not be standing still. It has favorable demographics,
increasingly cheap energy, and the worlds leading universities and technology companies. Moreover, China
benefits from and appreciates the existing international order more than it sometimes
acknowledges. It is one of only five countries with a veto in the un Security Council and has gained from liberal
economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (where it accepts dispute- settlement judgments that go
against it) and the International Monetary Fund (where its voting rights have increased and it fills an important deputy
director position). China is now the second-largest funder of un peacekeeping forces and has participated in un programs
related to Ebola and climate change. In 2015, Beijing joined with Washington in developing new norms for dealing with
climate change and conflicts in cyberspace. On balance, China has tried not to overthrow the current
order but rather to increase its influence within it.
AT: Econ
Global econ. hegemony hurts Americans and only helps outside nations
Milanovic, lead economist of the World Banks Research Department and
Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, 2014 [Branko; December 2014;
Huffington Post; Globalization helps the Rich & Asia While Hurting the Middle Class in the West. Heres What Can Be
Done About It; www.huffingtonpost.com/branko.../globalization-west-middle-class_b_5655078.html; accessed 7/14/17;
GDI NW]
WASHINGTON Behind all the handwringing in the West about a declining middle class
and growing income gap lurks a stark fact while a new middle class has emerged in
resurgent Asia, middle classes in the West have seen no or very little improvement.
Globalization may have succeeded in creating wealth, but its failure to enrich the middle
class in the West risks pushing western governments to turn their backs on globalization
through trade barriers and anti-immigration policies. The period of globalization extending roughly
from the late 1980s to today can be described as a period of the two middle classes and their economic trajectories. One,
relatively poor, did well, and another, quite well off, did poorly. To see that in actual numbers, consider Figure 1. The
vertical axis shows the cumulative real income gain, in percent, between 1988 and 2008,
and on the horizontal axis global income percentiles, ranging from 1, the poorest 1
percent of the people in the world, to 100, the global top 1 percent. The middle group,
those between the 50th and 60th percentile on the horizontal axis, shows real gains with
income almost doubling in the two decades. The other group, those richer, around the
80th to 85th percentile registered almost no growth. The group that did very well was
much poorer than the group whose incomes stagnated. In effect, the first group the
winners of globalization had incomes ranging between $3 and $8 international
dollars, that is, dollars of equal purchasing power across the globe, per person per day,
amounts so low that in western countries virtually no people subsist on so little or
amounts that are barely in the territory of what, again using rich worlds standard, is
considered the lower middle class.
AT: Institutions
Multi-polarity and cooperation with other superpowers is good
W.W., Staff Writer from Iowa City, 2012 [W.W.; February 2012; The Economist; The World
Order: The stakes of American hegemony; https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/02/world-
order; accessed 7/10/17; GDI NW]
There is much to quibble with here. It may be that the current global dispensation to some extent "reflects American
principles and preferences". If it does, however, it's not because it "was built and preserved by American power", except in
a rather trivial sense. The American model of political economy has proved in many ways to be the world's most
successful. As the 20th century's main rivals to capitalist liberal democracy failed, polities worldwide looked to the
example of Western Europe and North America, and this led to a glad flowering of democracy and prosperity. But America
didn't cause the world's numerous socialist and/or authoritarian experiments to fail. Those regimes faltered first and
foremost because socialism and authoritarianism tend not to work out in the long run.
And America didn't
compel aspiring first-worlders to try market economies and democratic governance. The
nations of the world could see for themselves what was working and, in their own ways,
have mostly followed suit. If American power does wither, it will be due to America's
failure to maintain really first-rate institutions. The ensuing world order would indeed
become, as Mr Kagan has it, one "reflecting the desires and the qualities of other world
powers". But that's simply because the capitals of the world aren't full of blithering dopes
who wouldn't know what to do if Brookings senior fellows didn't tell them. Smart
countries will want to emulate those that remain or have become first-rate. And, as far as
I can tell, people who become accustomed to wealth and freedom don't have to be bullied
and cajoled into wanting to keep it. Because they have grown rich, they'll have the means
to keep it. Which is why it's absurd to think that if America loses its lustre, the peoples of
the world will inevitably suffer under the dark reign of Russian or Chinese bad guys. Other
wealthy, liberal democracies can have huge navies, too, if we'd let them. Mr Ikenberry's alleged "pleasant illusion" looks
pleasantly solid to me.
Unpopular interventions tradeoff with climate change and economic fixes

Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, and former Dean
of the Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, 2017 [Joseph S. Nye Jr, Will the
Liberal Order Survive? Accessed 7/11/17, Published February 2017 GDI-MJR]
The disappointing track record of recent U.S. military interventions has also undermined
domestic support for an engaged global role. In an age of transnational terrorism and refugee crises,
keeping aloof from all intervention in the domestic affairs of other countries is neither possible nor desirable. But regions
such as the Middle East are likely to experience turmoil for decades, and Washington will need to be more careful about
the tasks it takes on. Invasion and occupation breed resentment and opposition, which in turn
raise the costs of intervention while lowering the odds of success, further undermining
public support for an engaged foreign policy. At the same time, military force is a blunt
instrument unsuited to dealing with many situations. Trying to control the domestic
politics of nationalist foreign populations is a recipe for failure, and force has little to
offer in addressing issues such as climate change, financial stability, or Internet
governance. Maintaining networks, working with other countries and international institutions, and helping establish
norms to deal with new transnational issues are crucial. It is a mistake to equate globalization with trade agreements.
Even if economic globalization were to slow, technology is creating ecological, political, and social globalization that will
all require cooperative responses.
U.S. Hegemony leads to institutional problems and financial deficits

Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive
scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist; 2011 [Noam; 5/24/11; al-Akhbar;
American Decline: Causes and Consequences; https://chomsky.info/20110824/; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
The eminent American philosopher John Dewey once described politics as the shadow
cast on society by big business, warning that attenuation of the shadow will not change
the substance. Since the 1970s, the shadow has become a dark cloud enveloping society
and the political system. Corporate power, by now largely financial capital, has reached
the point that both political organizations, which now barely resemble traditional
parties, are far to the right of the population on the major issues under debate. For the
public, the primary domestic concern, rightly, is the severe crisis of unemployment.
Under current circumstances, that critical problem can be overcome only by a significant
government stimulus, well beyond the recent one, which barely matched decline in state
and local spending, though even that limited initiative did probably save millions of jobs.
For financial institutions the primary concern is the deficit. Therefore, only the deficit is under discussion. A large
majority of the population favor addressing the deficit by taxing the very rich (72% for, 21% opposed). Cutting health
programs is opposed by overwhelming majorities (69% Medicaid, 79% Medicare). The likely outcome is
therefore the opposite. Reporting the results of a study of how the public would eliminate
the deficit, its director, Steven Kull, writes that clearly both the administration and the
Republican-led House are out of step with the publics values and priorities in regard to
the budgetThe biggest difference in spending is that the public favored deep cuts in
defense spending, while the administration and the House propose modest
increasesThe public also favored more spending on job training, education, and pollution control than did either
the administration or the House. The costs of the Bush-Obama wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now estimated to run as
high as $4.4 trillion a major victory for Osama bin Laden, whose announced goal was to bankrupt America by drawing
it into a trap. The 2011 military budget almost matching that of the rest of the world combined is higher in real terms
than at any time since World War II and is slated to go even higher .
The deficit crisis is largely
manufactured as a weapon to destroy hated social programs on which a large part of the
population relies. Economics correspondent Martin Wolf of the London Financial Times
writes that it is not that tackling the US fiscal position is urgent. The US is able to
borrow on easy terms, with yields on 10-year bonds close to 3 percent, as the few non-
hysterics predicted. The fiscal challenge is long term, not immediate. Very significantly, he
adds: The astonishing feature of the federal fiscal position is that revenues are forecast to be a mere 14.4 percent of GDP
in 2011, far below their postwar average of close to 18 percent. Individual income tax is forecast to be a mere 6.3 percent of
GDP in 2011. This non-American cannot understand what the fuss is about: in 1988, at the end of Ronald Reagans term,
receipts were 18.2 percent of GDP. Tax revenue has to rise substantially if the deficit is to close. Astonishing indeed, but it
is the demand of the financial institutions and the super-rich, and in a rapidly declining democracy, thats what counts.
Though the deficit crisis is manufactured for reasons of savage class war, the long-term
debt crisis is serious, and has been ever since Ronald Reagans fiscal irresponsibility
turned the US from the worlds leading creditor to the worlds leading debtor, tripling
national debt and raising threats to the economy that were rapidly escalated by George
W. Bush. But for now, it is the crisis of unemployment that is the gravest concern.
AT: Latin America
U.S. Engagement with Latin America is uneven and not beneficial for each
party
Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst, 2005 [Stephen; 5/23/05; The Heritage Foundation; U.S.
Diplomacy Towards Latin America: A Legacy of Uneven Engagement; www.heritage.org/americas/.../us-diplomacy-
toward-latin-america-legacy-uneven-eng...; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
As the United States has become increasingly dependent on foreign oil and flooded by
migrating populations, troubles in Latin America take on greater importance. However,
our engagement with this region has been uneven-that is, guided less by strategy than by
tactical response. Perhaps Latin America is not as important as trade partners in Europe
and Asia, or the problematic Middle East. But it is a close and populous neighbor, and
one that teeters between stable self-sufficiency and chaotic menace. More significant, it
is being drawn into the orbits of other global actors. That doesn't mean we have to solve
the region's problems. Its peoples and leaders should bear the burden of making their
own choices, reaping the benefits of good ones and learning from the bad. But the United
States can be more consistent in cultivating relations that serve our own interests as well
as those of our neighbors. To stave off future problems, the United States should have a comprehensive plan of
engagement, practice hands-on diplomacy, and nurture enduring partnerships. The Monroe Doctrine and building the
Panama Canal were strategic decisions. Sending Marines to Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic
were tactical responses. In recent years, the best example of a strategic agenda toward
Latin America occurred during the Reagan Administration. Even so, it was focused
mainly on Central America and the Caribbean. It sought to roll back Soviet advances in
the hemisphere, establish stable democracies, and introduce economic reforms.
Previous Engagement has led to conflict

Johnson, Senior Policy Analyst, 2005 [Stephen; 5/23/05; The Heritage Foundation; U.S. Diplomacy
Towards Latin America: A Legacy of Uneven Engagement; www.heritage.org/americas/.../us-diplomacy-toward-latin-
america-legacy-uneven-eng...; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
Tactical decisions unguided by strategy have led to conflicts over goals. Since 9/11, the
United States wanted its hemispheric allies to participate in the global war on terrorism,
which is hard for small countries like Costa Rica with limited financial resources.
Washington could provide assistance to buy scanning equipment to enhance port
security and offer intelligence training, except that Costa Rica refuses to sign an Article
98 agreement. Named after a section of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal
Court (ICC), such a pact exempts U.S. service personnel from jurisdiction under the ICC.
America's reservations are justifiable since the court is accountable to no one and uses legal procedures incompatible with
U.S. law. Yet Congress and the White House approved a law that would bar crucial security assistance if governments
refused to sign-a shot in the foot. Short-term thinking has led to sudden impasses. In February 2004, mobs once loyal to
Haiti's president Aristide joined with thugs from previous governments, forcing him to resign. Rightly dissatisfied
with Aristide's despotic performance, the Bush Administration chose not to intervene.
Haitian Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre assumed the presidency, and on
March 13, former United Nations official Gerard Latortue replaced Aristide's prime
minister and named a new cabinet. Some 3,300 peacekeepers arrived to help reconstruct
Haiti's tiny police force, collect weapons, and secure humanitarian aid. Yet a year and a half
later, Haiti's interim authority lacks adequate supervision and promised aid from donor nations. Haitians are only
marginally better off and hardly prepared to elect a new government. Myopic insistence on coca crop eradication-to the
exclusion of help in dealing with growing political problems-contributed to the Bolivian government's breakdown in 2003.
Now populist agitators are rolling back democratic governance and market reforms
achieved over the past decade. Absent a new approach, America may lose influence on
coca eradication and access to Bolivian natural gas exports. Similarly, containing drug
trafficking and terrorism in Colombia are holdover issues that dominate U.S. relations
with Ecuador, despite its equally pressing governance troubles. U.S. programs to help
political parties in addressing these matters are inactive in both nations.
AT: Multipolarity Unstable
Better to let history take its course than to try and preserve heg.
cycle GDI- XRL)
Other significant elements in this jigsaw puzzle have to do with the phenomenon of
globalization. It is because of global transformation in production chains, the relocation of
multinational corporation abroad coupled with the possibility of (re-)importing goods,
and the subsequent loss of jobs that a component of the middle class has been badly
affected by unemployment.
But it is also thanks to globalization that China is rising fast and challenging the US
leadership in economic, but also increasingly in political and military terms. It is clear by now that the
policy choice for globalization taken by the US leadership in the 80s (republican) and
90s (democratic) was beneficial only at the beginning, but later turned out to be
detrimental to the power position of the USA in the world economy. It is widely recognised that
India and especially China are the real winners in the game of globalization, hence closing the gap with the west. Russia is
an additional element in this calculation.
This new would-be multipolar system, deprived of the overall western master plan, is left
to pure bargaining, pure transactionalism played with ad hoc games, which is very much in
line with Trumps overall attitude to socio-economic engagement.
And yet, this might have a de-polarizing effect, a de-escalating
consequence in terms of the
current world tensions that have grown in the last few years. Here I am thinking especially of the
west-Russia split. Without a hegemonic power pushing for a specific world order, a more
balanced system might emerge. We might end up with a Trump presidency that has
polarizing effects domestically and depolarizing effects internationally.
The line of march is clear: either new competition based on multipolar rivalry which might
possibly escalate into conflicts, or the opening of new channels for dialogue, might lead
to a foundational phase in which innovative rules of the international games are written
by western and non-western powers together.
AT: Retrenchment Bad
US overestimates influencecould retrench with little effect
To review, assuming for a moment that US leaders are subject to the same forces
that affect
every human being, they overestimate the amount of control they have over other actors,
and are not as important to decisions made elsewhere as they believe themselves to be.
And they probably perceive their own benevolence to be much greater than do others.
These common phenomena all influence US beliefs in the same direction, and may well increase the apparent explanatory
power of hegemony beyond what the facts would otherwise support. The United States is probably not as
central to the New Peace as either liberals or neoconservatives believe. In the end, what can be
said about the relationship between US power and international stability? Probably not much that will satisfy partisans,
and the pacifying virtue of US hegemony will remain largely an article of faith in some circles
in the policy world. Like most beliefs, it will remain immune to alteration by logic and evidence. Beliefs rarely change, so
debates rarely end. For those not yet fully converted, however, perhaps it will be significant that corroborating evidence
for the relationship is extremely hard to identify. If indeed hegemonic stability exists, it does so
without leaving much of a trace. Neither Washingtons spending, nor its interventions,
nor its overall grand strategy seem to matter much to the levels of armed conflict around
the world (apart from those wars that Uncle Sam starts). The empirical record does not contain
strong reasons to believe that unipolarity and the New Peace are related, and insights from political psychology suggest
that hegemonic stability is a belief particularly susceptible to misperception. US leaders probably exaggerate
the degree to which their power matters, and could retrench without much risk to
themselves or the world around them. Researchers will need to look elsewhere to explain why the world has
entered into the most peaceful period in its history.
AT: Terrorism Engagement
U.S. action doesnt resolve terrorism
Noormal and Valenzuela, Afghan diplomat currently working at the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan at the Office of the Deputy
Foreign Minister in Political Affairs and recent graduate of the Heller
School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and ,She
has a masters in Conflict Resolution and Coexistence with a specialization
in Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Management, 2013 [Ahmad and Karina; 2013; Huff
post; Counterterrorism Doesnt Need More Strategy, It Needs Action; www.huffingtonpost.com/the-heller...-
/counterterrorism-doesnt-n_b_11474870.html; accessed 7/14/17; GDI NW]
In the wake of recent ISIL attacks in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Turkey, France,
Germany and several other countries that claimed many innocent lives, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter were part of a meeting held
between the ISIL coalition defense and foreign ministers to hasten the multi-faceted
approach to counter the terrorist group. John Kerry started the meeting by saying We
are engaged in a historic effort. Nothing like this coalition has ever before been assembled. And were not
following a manual on antiterrorist coalition building, were writing it. Forming a coalition and writing such a manual
seem like positive steps towards fighting ISIL, however, several academic papers, formal declarations and international
agreements clearly state terrorism as one of the major threats to the world. To date, none of these documents
has helped the world to fight the safe havens of terrorism and give a tangible outcome to
those communities that lose lives on daily basis to terrorist acts. Counterterrorism
doesnt mean killing a few members of Taliban or ISIL. If we are sincerely committed to
fighting this phenomenon, we ought to fight the supporters of these groups, identify their
financing sources and safe havens and target them irrespective of our political interests
in those countries. Terrorism does not only target the citizens of a single country, it
targets humanity. According to Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies at American University, one of the main
reasons that immigrant youths are vulnerable to recruitment by ISIL is theyre not fully absorbed as citizens in their host
countries. With the amount of youth displaced by violence in host countries reaching
unprecedented numbers, their susceptibility to joining these terrorist groups is higher
than ever before.
AT: Thucydides Trap
Taking an aggressive stance on China would lead to war
Allison, Director of the Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science
and International Affairs, 2017 [Graham; 4/12/17; The National Interest; How America and China
Could Stumble to War; nationalinterest.org/feature/how-america-china-could-stumble-war-20150; accessed 7/14/17;
GDI NW]
Using military force to spread democracy fails for several obvious reasons. First,
successful liberal orders depend on a lot more than a written constitution or elections:
They usually require an effective legal system, a broad commitment to pluralism, a
decent level of income and education, and widespread confidence that political groups
which lose out in a particular election have a decent chance of doing better in the future
and thus an incentive to keep working within the system. Because a lot of social elements need to
line up properly for this arrangement to work and endure, creating reasonably effective democracies took centuries in the
West, and it was often a highly contentious even violent process. To believe the U.S. military could
export democracy quickly and cheaply required a degree of hubris that is still
breathtaking to recall. Second, using force to spread democracy almost always triggers
violent resistance. Nationalism and other forms of local identity remain powerful
features of todays world, and most people dislike following orders from well-armed
foreign occupiers. Moreover, groups that have lost power, wealth, or status in the course
of a democratic transition (such as Sunnis in post-Saddam Iraq) will inevitably be
tempted to take up arms in opposition, and neighboring states whose interests are
adversely affected by a transition may try to stop or reverse it. Such developments are the last thing
a struggling democracy needs, of course, because violence tends to empower leaders who are good at it, instead of those
who are skilled at building effective institutions, striking deals across factional lines, promoting tolerance, and building
more robust and productive economies. To make matters worse, foreign occupiers rarely know enough to pick the right
local people to put in charge, and even generous and well-intentioned efforts to aid the new government tend to fuel
corruption and distort local politics in unpredictable ways. Creating democracy in a foreign country is a vast social
engineering project, and expecting outside powers to do it effectively is like asking someone to build a nuclear power
plant, without any blueprints, on an active earthquake zone. In either case, expect a rapid meltdown.
The bottom
line is that there is no quick, cheap, or reliable way for outsiders to engineer a democratic
transition and especially when the country in question has little or no prior experience
with it and contains deep social divisions.
China and US are avoiding the Thucydides trap 5 reasons

Beijing Review, 2015
(10/15/15, Why China and the United States Can Avoid the Thucydides' Trap, Beijing Review,
https://search.proquest.com/pqrl/docview/1722342646/FC22C2435F124598PQ/3?accountid=1557, accessed 7/14/17,
GDI-PW)
Century of peace This is a world where peace, development, cooperation and mutual
benefit have become the dominant themes of political discourse in our times. The Cold
War mentality and zero-sum-game theory should be abandoned. Despite the persistence of
regional conflict, there is no sign of another world war breaking out. More and more
countries are choosing to solve their disputes through negotiation. With globalization
deepening, one country's loss will definitely not just be its own. "No conflict, no confrontation" will
serve as the bottom line for the relationship between the world's two largest economies in the new era. Historical
lessons It is important to remember the pledge made 70 years ago by the founders of the UN: "to save succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind."
Governments and societies of both countries have reflected on the historical lessons on the
100th anniversary of World War I and the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II (WWII). Hatred and
war can bring only disaster and distress, especially when both Chinaand the United States have
nuclear weapons. If war erupts, China's development would surely suffer a severe blow,
but the United States' leading role in the world would also be weakened. As allies during WWII,
the two countries shoulder responsibility to safeguard peace and prevent past tragedies from reoccurring. China's
peaceful rise "It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable,"
Thucydides wrote. China, however, is not Athens and the United States is not Sparta. It is true that China is rising,
but it is a peaceful rise. The country wishes only to bid farewell to its humiliating modern
history and realize its dream of national renewal through reform and opening up. As Xi
said in his Seattle speech on China-U.S. relations, development remains China's top priority. To people
charged with the governance of China, their primary mission is to focus all resources on improving
people's living standards and to gradually achieve common prosperity. China sees itself as a
member of a global community of common destiny. It does not seek to establish military alliances or
engage in hegemonic expansion. There is no cause for fear as China has neither the
intent nor the necessity to challenge the United States for leadership by launching a war.
Wide Pacific Both China and the United States are important members of the Asia-
Pacific region, which boasts the world's fastest economic growth and the greatest
potential for development. It is also a region of converging interests for both countries.
China and the United States are expected to abide by their shared responsibility to maintain peace, stability and prosperity
in the Asia Pacific. Economic interdependence Economic interdependence alone does not
guarantee peace, but it is
indeed a strong disincentive against war. It is in America's interest for
China to be successful, peaceful and prosperous and vice versa. The two country's $555 billion
annual trade volume and $120 billion two-way investment are fundamental to bilateral ties. It is estimated that by
2022, China will have become the world's largest importer and that U.S. exports to China
will have surpassed $530 billion, generating more than 3.34 million new jobs. It is the first
time in history that an existing power and a rising power have held so many
shared interests.
US and China will avoid the Thucydides trap 4 unique reasons

Beijing Review, 2015
(10/15/15, Why China and the United States Can Avoid the Thucydides' Trap, Beijing Review,
https://search.proquest.com/pqrl/docview/1722342646/FC22C2435F124598PQ/3?accountid=1557, accessed 7/14/17,
GDI-PW)
Global governance China supports the current international system and is a major
player in this system. The more developed China becomes, the more it needs a peaceful
and stable international environment. So too does the United States. As Xi put it, "If China and
the United States cooperate well, they can become a bedrock of global stability and a booster of world peace." China-
U.S. cooperation in international and regional affairs is at present expanding, including hot-
button issues such as Iranian and Korean nuclear tensions as well as global challenges ranging from climate change and
counterterrorism to peacekeeping, poverty reduction and development. Pragmatic cooperation in these
areas demonstrates that the two countries can successfully work together to improve
global governance. Leaders' interaction President Xi and President Barack Obama
have agreed to promote the China-U.S. relationship. The two leaders have maintained
frequent communication and had in-depth exchanges on major issues. Their interaction
could ensure that both sides understand each other's strategic intentions and avoid
making mistakes on fundamental questions. Xi's visit this year was the third such exchange in the past
three years. It showed just how much both sides value this relationship and how willing they are to bolster mutually
beneficial cooperation. People-to-people exchanges Forty-four years ago, the visit of a U.S. table tennis
team to China opened a new chapter in China-U.S. relations. Now a flight runs between the two countries
every 17 minutes. Over the next three years, China will support a total of 50,000 Chinese
and American students to study in each other's countries. A focal point of Xi's U.S. visit
was his extensive outreach to the American people. His visit will generate a new wave of interest in
China and take people-to-people exchanges between the two nations to new heights. Difference
management Differences in terms of history, culture and social systems as well as in
the stages of development the two countries respectively inhabit make it only natural for
China and the United States to have divergent opinions, but these do not by any means
represent the norm in their ties. Even if there are issues that are at present irresolvable,
they can be managed. Over 90 intergovernmental dialogue and cooperation mechanisms
have been set up, ensuring that when unhelpful comments or examples of narrow-minded strategic thinking arise,
they cannot prevent the two countries from cooperation. The two sides will continue to maintain
strategic communication in the areas of the military, open seas, outer space and cyber
domains so as to consolidate trust.

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GDI 2017 - Hegemony Core -

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