Harvard Westlake
Harvard Westlake Mork Aff
Last modified by Alexandra Mork on 2019/04/28 19:51
Berkeley 6 Anderson SJ
Rathod, Manav
California Round Robin 4 Pinnacle KA
Paramo, Rodrigo and Fakorede, Adegoke
Emory 2 Newark Science SB
Stekl, Misa
Emory 4 Cambridge Ridge and Latin AG
Castillo, Chris
Greenhill 3 Holy Cross BZ
Randall, Chris
Greenhill 6 Westwood AZ
Torson, Adam
Loyola 2 Dougherty Valley TS
Kuffour, Julian
Loyola 1 Quarry Lane MD
Pickens, Jazmine
Loyola Doubles Cupertino HK
Stanford 3 Independent NG
Bawany, Aisha
Tournament of Champions 1 Southlake Caroll SM
Tournament of Champions 6 West Des Moines Valley JM
Opponent: Anderson SJ | Judge: Rathod, Manav
AC disclosed
NC t-arm sales Barber
1AR answers
NR T-arm sales
California Round Robin 4
Opponent: Pinnacle KA | Judge: Paramo, Rodrigo and Fakorede, Adegoke
NC new affs bad anti ethics afropess gendered language k
NR afropess
Emory 2
Opponent: Newark Science SB | Judge: Stekl, Misa
NC T-body politics anti-ethics ebonics
NR T-body politics anti-ethics
Opponent: Cambridge Ridge and Latin AG | Judge: Castillo, Chris
NC t-arm sales Nebel T Kant
NR Nebel T
Greenhill 3
Opponent: Holy Cross BZ | Judge: Randall, Chris
NC media race K
NR K
Opponent: Westwood AZ | Judge: Torson, Adam
NC test case theory democracy impact turns terror da
NR test case theory
Loyola 2
Opponent: Dougherty Valley TS | Judge: Kuffour, Julian
NC democracy impact turns abolish the electoral college cp terror da
NR democracy impact turns
2AR condo
Opponent: Quarry Lane MD | Judge: Pickens, Jazmine
NC constitutionality DA and base DA
2NR constitutionality DA and base DA
Loyola Doubles
Opponent: Cupertino HK | Judge: Panel
NC congress cp t-courts gerrymandering cp absolute cp legitimacy DA
2NR absolute CP
2AR condo bad
Opponent: Independent NG | Judge: Bawany, Aisha
NC kant fill-inheg DA
NR kant
2AR disclosed
Tournament of Champions 1
Opponent: Southlake Caroll SM | Judge: Randall, Chris
NC oil da saudi prolif da demining PIC
NR demining PIC
Opponent: West Des Moines Valley JM | Judge: Castillo, Chris
NC essentialism K bangladesh cp standard spec
1ARanswers
NR standard spec bangladesh cp
JANFEB Fem AC
Tournament: California Round Robin | Round: 4 | Opponent: Pinnacle KA | Judge: Paramo, Rodrigo and Fakorede, Adegoke
Contention 1: Masculine Aid
Military aid is based upon the myth of a masculine protector-ship where the US acts as the patriarchal father of the world to consolidate its power at home and abroad. Aid is used to "save" brown women from their authoritarian regime while the U.S. is the perpetrator of violence. This means no form of military aid can be separated from the masculine underpinnings that drive the U.S. to give aid in the first place.
Young '03 (Iris Marion– served as Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and was affiliated with the Center for Gender Studies and the Human Rights program there, PhD by Penn State. "The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State." Signs, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Autumn 2003), pp. 1-25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/375708)-JJN
War and feminism The logic of masculinist protection, I have argued, helps account for the rationale leaders give for deepening a security state and its acceptance by those living under their rule. There are two faces to the security state, one facing outward to defend against enemies and the other facing inward to keep those under protection under necessary control. So far I have concentrated on describing recent legislative and executive actions of the U.S. government in terms of the inward-looking face. Now I shall turn to the outward looking face, the United States as war maker. In fall 2001 the United States led a bombing campaign against Afghanistan. Even though that state had not taken aggressive action against the United States, the United States justified the war as a defensive reaction to the attacks of September 11. Perhaps because the claim that the state of Afghanistan actively supported al-Qaeda was weak, the United States quickly repackaged the war as a case of humanitarian intervention to liberate the Afghan people. The logic of masculinist protection appears in the claimed relationship of the United States to people outside the West, particularly in Islamic countries, ruled by brutal dictatorships. The United States will fight and sacrifice to save them. The Bush administration used the same discourse to justify a proposed war against Iraq. The United States defends not only itself in this scenario, but all the world's freedom for which the weapons Iraq might have are a threat. By saving ourselves we also save the Iraqi people from domination. So the United States is the protector of the world. Through this logic the American people and others who choose to identify with the actions of the United States can put themselves into the role of the protector, even as the state restricts our freedom for our own good. Packaging the war against Afghanistan as a humanitarian war to protect the Afghan people from domination was particularly effective because the Bush administration and journalists focused on women (cf. Tickner 2002). The women of Afghanistan constituted the ultimate victims, putting the United States in the position of ultimate protector. Use of the rhetoric of women's rights by the Bush administration during and after the war against Afghanistan should make feminists very uncomfortable. I wonder whether some seeds for such cynical appeals to the need to save women might not have been sown by some recent discourse and practice that positioned North American and European feminists as protectors of oppressed women in Asia and Africa. On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush became the first wife to give the president's Saturday morning radio address, which was devoted to condemning what she called the Taliban's war on women and justifying the U.S. war as an effort to free Afghan women (Stout 2001). After the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the Bush administration repeatedly invoked women's liberation to justify the war. In his 2002 State of the Union address, for example, George W. Bush said, "The last time we met in this chamber the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan's new government" (George W. Bush speech, January 29, 2002 Bush 2002c). On International Women's Day, Laura Bush spoke to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, linking the terrorist attacks with the oppression of women and thus, by implication, the war on terrorism with the liberation of women: The terrorist attacks of September 11 galvanized the international community. Many of us have drawn valuable lessons from the tragedies. People around the world are looking closely at the roles women play in their societies. Afghanistan under the Taliban gave the world a sobering example of a country where women were denied their rights and their place in society. Today, the world is helping Afghan women return to the lives they once knew. Women were once important contributors to Afghan society, and they had the right to vote as early as the 1920s. . . . This is a time of rebuilding— of unprecedented opportunity—thanks to efforts led by the United Nations, the United States, the new Afghan government, and our allies around the world. (Laura Bush speech to United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, March 8, 2002 L. Bush 2002) Years before the attacks of September 2001, U.S. feminists mounted a campaign directed at saving the women of Afghanistan from the Taliban. Although they lobbied the Clinton administration to put pressure on the Taliban government regarding women's rights, neither Clinton nor Bush evinced any concern for the situation of women under the Taliban before the war. Appeal to women's rights was thus a cynical attempt to gain support for the war among the citizens of the United States and other liberal countries. Some feminists jumped onto the war bandwagon. Shortly after the war began, for example, Eleanor Smeal, leader of the Feminist Majority, chatted cordially with U.S. generals: "'They went off about the role of women in this effort and how imperative it was that women were now in every level of the Air Force and Navy,' said Smeal, who found herself cheered by the idea of women flying F16s. 'It's a different kind of war' she says, echoing the President's assessment of Operation Enduring Freedom" (Lerner 2001). Certainly the Taliban should have been condemned for its policies, as should all the world's governments that perpetrate or allow systematic and discriminatory harms to and subordination of women. The Taliban stood with only a few other governments in the world in the degree of legally enforced restriction of women's freedom and horrible punishments. Even before the war it seemed to me, however, and still seems to me, that feminist focus on women under the Taliban constructed these women as exoticized others and paradigmatic victims in need of salvation by Western feminists, and it conveniently deflected attention from perhaps more intractable and mundane problems of gender-based violence, domination, and poverty in many other parts of the world, including the enlightened West. What is wrong with this stance, if it has existed, is that it fails to consider the women as equals, and it does not have principled ways of distancing itself from paternalist militarism. The stance of the male protector, I have argued, is one of loving selfsacrifice, with those in the feminine position as the objects of love and guardianship. Chivalrous forms of masculinism express and enact concern for the well-being of women, but they do so within a structure of superiority and subordination. The male protector confronts evil aggressors in the name of the right and the good, while those under his protection submit to his order and serve as handmaids to his efforts. Colonialist ideologies have often expressed a similar logic. The knights of civilization aim to bring enlightened understanding to the further regions of the world still living in cruel and irrational traditions that keep them from developing the economic and political structures that will bring them a good life. The suppression of women in these societies is a symptom of such backwardness. Troops will be needed to bring order and guard fledgling institutions, and foreign aid workers to feed, cure, and educate, but all this is only a period of tutelage that will end when the subject people demonstrate their ability to gain their own livelihood and run their own affairs. Many people living in Asian, African, and Latin American societies believe that not only U.S. military hegemony but also international trade and financial institutions, as well as many Western-based nongovernmental development agencies, position them in this way as feminized or infantilized women and children under the protection and guidance of the wise and active father. In its rhetoric and practice, according to some scholars, the British feminist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aligned itself with the universal humanitarian civilizing mission invoked as the justification for the British Empire. Feminists endorsed male imperial leaders' assessment of the status of women in other nations as a measure of their level of moral development. Such interest in the status of women was useful to feminists in pointing out the hypocrisy of denying women's rights in the center as one fought for them in the periphery. Providing services for Indian women and other oppressed women in the empire also offered opportunities for the employment of middle-class professional women (Burton 1994). Some contemporary feminists have worried that Western feminism today has had some tendency to express and act in similar ways in relation to non-Western women. In a well-known essay, Chandra Mohanty, for example, claims that Western feminists too often use an objectified general category of third-world women, who are represented as passive and victimized by their unenlightened cultures and political regimes (1991). Uma Narayan claims that much feminist discussion of the situation of women in Asian and African societies, or women in Asian immigrant communities in Western societies, "replicates problematic aspects of Western representations of Third World nations and communities, aspects that have their roots in the history of colonization" (1997, 43). Assuming that these criticisms of some of the discourse, attitudes, and actions of Western feminists have some validity, the stance they identify helps account for the ease with which feminist rhetoric can be taken up by today's imperialist power and used for its own ends. It also helps account for the support of some feminists for the war against Afghanistan. Sometimes feminists may identify with the stance of the masculine protector in relation to vulnerable and victimized women. The protector-protected relation is no more egalitarian, however, when between women than between men and women. According to some recent reports, the lives of women in Afghanistan have changed little since before the war, except that some of them have lost their homes, their relatives, and what little livelihood they had (Reilly 2002). The oppression of most of them remains embedded in social structure, custom, and a culture of warlord anarchism. I would not argue that humanitarian reasons can never justify going to war against a state. I think, however, that such protectionist grounds for military intervention must be limited to situations of genocide or impending genocide and where the war actually makes rescue possible (Young 2003). Even if the U.S. government is sincere in its conviction that its military efforts are intended to save the world from evil, its political and military hegemony materially harms many poor and defenseless people of the world and positions most of the world in a position of subordination that nurtures resentment. Democratic global citizenship The contemporary security state in the United States, like many security states, has two faces, one looking outward and the other inward. Each aspect reinforces the other. Both threaten democratic values in the institutions and practices of the United States, as well as globally. Citizens and residents who accept the security state because they fear attack allow them selves to be positioned as women and children in relation to paternal protector-leaders. At the same time, to the extent that we identify with a rhetoric of war for the sake of saving the victims of tyranny, we put ourselves in a position superior to those we construct as in need of our aid. Whether looking outward or inward, adopting a more democratic ethos entails rejecting the inequality inherent in the protector-protected logic. When leaders promulgate fear and promise to keep us safe, they conjure up childish fantasies and desires. We are vulnerable beings, and we want very much to be made safe by a being superior in power to all that might threaten us. Democratic citizens, however, should resist leaders' attempts to play father over us. We should insist that government do its job to promote security without issuing guarantees it cannot redeem or requiring subordination from the people it promises to protect. Democratic citizenship should first involve admitting that no state can make any of us completely safe and that leaders who promise that are themselves suspect. The world is full of risks. Prudence dictates that we assess risks, get information about their sources, and try to minimize them, and we rightly expect our government to do much of this for us. In a democracy citizens should not have to trade this public responsibility for submission to surveillance, arbitrary decisions, and the stifling of criticism. In making this claim I am extending recent feminist arguments against a model of citizenship that requires each citizen to be independent and self-sufficient in order to be equal and fully autonomous. Feminist theorists of care and welfare have argued that the rights and dignity of individuals should not be diminished just because they need help and support in order to carry out their chosen projects (Tronto 1994; Kittay 1999). Persons who need care or other forms of social support ought not to be forced into a position of subordination and obedience in relation to those who provide care and support; not only should they retain the rights of full citizens to choose their own way of life and hold authorities accountable but also they ought to be able to criticize the way in which support comes to them (Sevenhuijsen 1998; Hirschmann 2002, chap. 5; Young 2003). This feminist argument rejects the assumption behind a notion of self-sufficient citizenship that a need for social support or care is more exceptional than normal. On the contrary, the well-being of all persons can be enhanced by the care and support of others, and in modern societies some of this generalized care and support ought to be organized and guaranteed through state institutions. The organization of reasonable measures to protect people from harm and to make people confident that they can move and act relatively safely is another form of social support. Citizens should not have to trade their liberty of movement or right to protest and hold leaders accountable in return for such security. Democratic citizenship thus means ultimately rejecting the hierarchy of protector and protected. In the article I cited above, Stiehm argues that rejection of this hierarchy implies installing a position of defender in place of both that of the protector and the protected. A society of defenders is "a society composed of citizens equally liable to experience violence and equally responsible for exercising society's violence" (1982, 374). Modern democracies, including U.S. democracy, are founded partly on the principle that citizens should be able to defend themselves if they are also to defend the republic from tyranny. In the twenty-first century, in a world of organized and less organized military institutions and weapons capable of unimaginable destruction, it is hard to know what it might mean for world citizens to exercise collective self-defense. It certainly does not mean that every individual should amass his or her own weapons cache. Nor does it mean whole groups and nations engaging in arms races. The distinction between defender and protector invokes an ideal of equality in the work of defense, and today this may have at least as much to do with political processes that limit weapons and their use as with wielding arms. The United States claims to use its arms to do this, much as a 3 does in domestic life. In a democratic relationship, however, the policeman protector comes under the collective authority of the people whose neighborhood he patrols. Democratic citizenship at a global level, then, would constitute a relationship of respect and political equality among the world's peoples where none of us think that we stand in the position of the paternal authority who knows what is good for the still-developing others. To the extent that global law enforcement is necessary, it is only legitimate if the world's peoples together have formulated the rules and actions of such enforcement (cf. Archibugi and Young 2002)
U.S. military aid gets used to shut down feminist movements – anyone who disagrees with the system gets silenced.
Carr '90 (Irene Campos– women's studies department, Northeastern Illinois University. "Women's Voices Grow Stronger: Politics and Feminism in Latin America." NWSA Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Summer, 1990), pp. 450-463. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4316049)-JJN
These words reflect the collective ideas and feelings of a number of Latin American women who gathered in 1980 in the Dominican Republic to discuss community education (educacion popular).' Representing over a dozen feminist and women's grass-roots organizations from as many countries, they met to share their experiences and to define common work strategies. They noted the diversity of the perspectives regarding the work they carried out with women in Latin America and summarized two general feminist objectives: the liberation from the capitalist system that impedes the full realization of the human potential and the de- struction of the patriarchal system that dominates the relationship be- tween men and women in society and persists even after a change in the means of production.2 Feminism varies in its focus as it addresses the various needs of women around the world. In the United States and Europe, feminists direct their efforts primarily toward gender issues while in Latin America feminism often reflects the harsh political and socioeconomic reality pervasive in a class society. This, however, does not imply the existence of a single feminist perspective in Latin America. Women's attitudes are dictated by the political and economic situation of their own country, and Latin America is quite heterogeneous. In South America, for instance, the European ancestry and greater indus- trialization of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay sharply contrast with the large indigenous population and underdevelopment of the Andean re- gion. Mexico has both a high degree of industrialization and an extensive number of indigenous people. On the other hand, a strong African heritage influences Brazil, the Caribbean Islands, and many of the continent's coastal areas. Similarly, republican forms of government range from the socialist nations of Cuba and Nicaragua to the right wing dictatorship of Chile. Most prevalent are countries ruled by an oligarchy and/or the military, often referred to as "developing democracies" by the U.S. which sends massive military aid to be used against "subversives."
Military aid is the US's way to export patriarchy, colonialism and racism – violence is replicated against minorities in other countries under the guise of benevolence.
Connell '16 (R. W. - Professor Emerita at the University of Sydney, PhD, transwoman. "Men, Gender and the State." Among Men: Moulding Masculinities, Volume 1. Routledge, Dec 5, 2016. https://books.google.com/books?hl=enandlr=andid=HBSmDQAAQBAJandoi=fndandpg=PT26anddq=feminism+22military+aid22andots=Gi-3hG-dt-andsig=3o9S9fJClKzGWGQvPkqn4DmRsGE#v=onepageandq=military20aidandf=false)-JJN
The overwhelming predominance of men in positions of state power has always been a practical problem for feminism. Indeed, the modern movement for women's emancipation began with a struggle for the right to vote, that is for women's entry into the institutions of the liberal state. Contemporary feminism has a close practical engagement with the state, as Eisenstein (1991) wittily shows. A theory of the state, however, has been slower in coming. This has been difficult to produce, because it requires a radical shift in the perception of gender. In everyday discussion, gender (or "sex") is always taken to be the attribute of an individual. In social science too, reference to "masculinity" or "femininity" is usually taken as reference to differences in personal traits, temperament or desire, produced by interpersonal interaction along the lines of "sex roles." With such a conception of gender, there can only be an incidental connection with the institutional system we call the state. It has gradually come to be recognized that this view of gender is inadequate; gender is also an aspect of institutions and large-scale cultural processes (Connell, 1987). This can be seen clearly in the case of education. Schools have a gendered division of labor, and a curriculum marked by a history of gender division and patriarchal control of knowledge. Schools are settings for the drawing (and erasing) of gender lines in everyday interaction, for the creation of a hierarchy of masculinities, as well as for the contestation of gender subordination. To understand gender in public education it is necessary to "think institutionally," as Hansot and Tyack (1988) put it. And what is true for public education is true for other sectors of the state. Seeing gender as a social structure, one of the ways collective social processes are shaped, makes it possible to analyze the state as a gendered institution and inherently a site of gender politics. During the 1980s such a view spread among thinkers influenced by socialist and radical feminism, resulting in a series of attempts to define a feminist theory of the state, the best-known being the work of MacKinnon (1989) in the United States. A few years ago 1 suggested (Connell, 1990) that the perspective could be summarized in six theses about the gender—state: (1) The state is the central institutionalization of the power relations of gender (power relations being one of the major sub-structures of gender relations). Conversely the state is, at a fundamental level, constituted by gender relations. The state appears "masculine" because it is a condensation of men's gender power over women. Traditional state theory cannot see gender where only men are present. But where only men are present, we are dealing with a powerful gender effect (more powerful, indeed, than most effects discussed in social theory). (2) The state is a gendered institution, marked by its internal gender regime. The social relations within the state are ordered in tenns of gender through: (A) a gender division of labor among state personnel, (B) gendered power relations, for instance in the social definition of legitimate authority, (C) a structure of emotional relations, including the social construction of sexuality. It is typical of modern state structures that the centers of state power, such as the centers of military and economic decision-making, are heavily masculinized. Though women are not categorically excluded from the state, their interests tend to be represented in more peripheral state agencies, as Grant and Tancred (1992) point out. (3) Through its position in gender relations, and its internal gender regime, the state has the capacity to "do" gender (as ethnomethodologists put it), and also has reasons to do gender. Put more conventionally, the state develops agencies and policies concerned with gender issues, and acts to regulate gender relations in the society as a whole. Recent research on the welfare state, such as Quadagno and Fobes's (1995) study of the U.S. "Job Corps," shows in detail how state agencies reproduce the gender division of labor and promote gender ideologies. This is not a marginal aspect of state operations. It involves a whole range of policy areas, from housing through education to criminal justice and the military (Franzway et al, 1989). (4) State activity not only regulates existing gender relations. It also helps to constitute gender relations and the social categories they define. The best-analyzed example is the role of repressive laws and state- backed medicine in constituting the category of "the homosexual" in the late nineteenth century (Greenberg, 1988). "The prostitute" was a category constituted by similar processes; "the pedophile" is a category, once medical, now being constituted by law and electoral politics. In somewhat less dramatic fomi, the categories of "husband" and "wife" are also constituted by state actions ranging from the legal definition of marriage to the design of tax policy and income security systems (Shaver, 1989). (5) Because of these activities and capacities, the state is the key stake in gender politics. It is the focus of most political mobilization on gender issues. Indeed, the rise of the liberal state, with its characteristic legitimation through citizenship, was the focus of a historic change in the form of gender politics. Gender politics, formerly almost entirely local, became mass politics for the first time through the woman suffrage movement. (6) Since gender relations are historically dynamic, marked by crisis tendencies and structural change, the state as a gendered institution is liable to crisis and transformation. Current crisis tendencies center on problems of legitimation (often to do with violence), and on the tensions arising from the gender division of labor and the accumulation of wealth. The above points are drawn from the first wave of feminist theorizing on the state. Broadly speaking, that research took as its model the Marxist analysis of the state as a condensation of class relations. It identified men as a kind of ruling class, with a common interest somehow embodied in the institutions of the state. This gave the analysis of the gender-state a certain solidity and toughness. But that approach also had limitations, and has come under criticism. Watson (1990) questioned whether feminism needs a theory of the state at all; this is a category of patriarchal social theory, and feminism may be better suited by a more fluid understanding of power. There has been increasing recognition in sociology of the multiple forms of gender (Lorber, 1994), and feminist postmodernism has emphasized the shifting character of gender meanings and the lack of fixed gender identities. The attempts to construct a theory of the state have almost all been conducted in rich metropolitan countries; in developing countries, both gender issues and state structures may take very different shapes (Stromquist, 1995) In this essay I will reconsider the gendered character of states in the light of these arguments, focusing on issues about masculinity, power, and globalization. I think the initial feminist critique of gender—blind social theory was entirely justified. The feminist theorizing of the 1980s provided a good first approximation to the problem, but not a complete analysis. We can now move on to develop a more sophisticated alternative to gender-blind theory. Powers and genders Mainstream theories of the state tend to erase other powers. For instance, the famous Weberian definition of the state as the holder of the monopoly of legitimate force in a given territory ignores the force used by husbands toward wives. This is a widespread social pattern, whose legitimacy is only now being widely contested (Dobash and Dobash, 1992) Can we regard husbands as a power? To do so flies in the face of conventional political analysis. But in the context of gender relations, husbands may well be a group with definable interests and the capacity to enforce them. Where family structure is patriarchal, husbands' interests in their wives' sexual and domestic services are institutionalized on a society-wide basis. As shown by Hollway's (1994) study of employment practice in the Tanzanian civil service, state agencies may accommodate themselves to this power, to the extent of disrupting explicit equal-opportunity policy. Domestic violence commonly expresses husbands' claim to power over their wives. But as Segal (1990) observes, interpersonal violence is not usually the basis of power; rather, it is often a sign of its contestation or breakdown. Gender-blind political theory has recognized limits to state power mainly in economic institutions — in corporations and markets, especially multinational corporations and international markets. There has been, without doubt, an erosion of state power over the economy in the last two decades, in the face of capital flight, global sourcing (in manufacturing), and currency deregulation. Discussions of these issues almost never register the fact that global capital is gendered. International corporations are overwhelmingly controlled by men. They are institutionally gendered in the same ways as the state, and depend on gender divisions of labor in their workforce, for instance in "offshore" manufacturing plants with female workers and male supervisors (Enloe, 1990). World capitalism involves a gendered accumulation process, whose dimensions have been shown with great clarity by Mies (1986). Most of the documentation of these facts has come from research on "women and development"; we are in dire need of research on "men and development," that is research on the masculinity of world economic elites. Within the metropolitan countries, another power is emerging which might be called private states. There are said to be more private "security" employees in the United States than there are police. Corporations run surveillance programs to control their own employees, commonly using computer technology. Increasing numbers of the ruling class live in "gated communities," housing complexes with fences patrolled by security employees and designed to keep out the poor, the black and the card-less. These private states are gendered: controlled by men, mostly employing men, and in the case of the gated communities, en-gating women. (The motivating "threat" has its sexual dimension.) Because their legitimacy depends on property rather than citizenship, private states escape the political pressure of women which the public state encounters as demands for equal opportunity and affirmative action. The gender-state, then, operates in a complex field of powers. This helps explain the phenomenon so forcibly brought to our attention in the 19905, the disintegration of state structures — even apparently well developed ones such as the USSR. Seeing the interplay of states with other gendered powers also gives some grip on what has surprised many people, the emergence of ethnicity as a basis of successor states. Given the importance of patriarchy in state legitimation, it is relatively easy to ground a new state on patriarchal local powers. Ethnicity is constituted in large measure through gender relations. The notion of extended "kinship" is central to the rhetoric of ethnicity -"our kith and kin," in the old language of British racism. As Vickers (1994) notes, ethnic politics lay heavy emphasis on women's reproductive powers. Gender relations thus provide a vehicle for new claims to authority (all the leaders of the warring successor states in the former Yugoslavia and the former USSR are men), and define boundaries of the group to which loyalty is demanded. If we thus develop a more complicated picture of power, we must also recognize more complexity in the picture of gender. It has become common, in research on men and gender, to speak of "masculinities" rather than "masculinity" (Messerschmidt, 1993). In most situations there is a culturally dominant gender pattern for men; but this is a dominant pattern, not a universal one. Only a minority of men may actually live an exemplary masculinity, as defined, say, by Brahmin codes in India, or by Hollywood action—hero codes in the United States. Therefore we speak of "hegemonic masculinity," which means precisely that there are also subordinated masculinities (such as found among gay men), marginalized masculinities (for example in marginalized ethnic groups), and complicit masculinities, supporting the hegemonic code but not living rigorously by it (Connell, 1995). In the overall structure of gender relations, men are on top; but many men are not on top in terms of sexuality and gender, let alone class and race. This introduces important complexities into gender relations within and around the state. The men of oppressed ethnic groups may develop aggressive versions of hegemonic masculinity, which are criminalized when state elites perceive a problem of order — note, for instance, the very high rates of violence and imprisonment among African-American men in the United States. They may also be tapped for the purposes of the state: the same group has a high level of recruitment to the U.S. Army. The masculinization of the state identified in feminist theory is principally a relationship between state institutions and hegemonic masculinity. This relationship is a two-way street. While hegemonic masculinity is a resource in the struggle for state power, state power is a resource in the struggle for hegemony in gender (a fact clearly apparent to both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists in current struggles). Where some earlier formulations saw the link between masculinity and state power as a constant throughout history, we must see this as a historical relationship, which has taken different forms in the past and is open to further change now. The pattern of hegemonic masculinity altered, in the North Atlantic world, during the transition from Ancien Regime states controlled by a landowning gentry to liberal imperialist states controlled by alliances of capitalists and technocrats. Metropolitan states in the twentieth century have seen struggles between forms of masculinity whose claim to hegemony rested on expertise, and forms whose claim to hegemony rested on qualities of toughness and fitness to command (liberals versus hard-liners, professionals versus managers, and so on). Specific forms of masculinity, often exceptionally violent, emerged in the process of imperial conquest: the conquistador, the brawling frontiersman or miner, the pastoral worker (cowboys, guachos), posing changing issues for the colonial states concerned (Phillips, 1987). With increasing integration of world markets and mass communications, local gender orders are increasingly under pressure from a global culture centered in the North Atlantic countries. To some extent this makes for a standardization of gender categories. For instance, research on sexuality has shown, in countries as far apart as Brazil and Indonesia, diverse forms of same-gender sexual relationship among men being replaced by a "gay identity" patterned on the urban culture of the United States. Yet globalization is not flat-out homogenization. As Altman (1996) observes, the emerging homosexual identities of Asia are not all of one pattern; indeed the interplay between local and imported patterns creates a very complex array of sexualities and definitions of gender. Clearly, not all gender phenomena follow a masculine versus feminine polarity. There is also a colorful variety of inter-gender and cross-gender identities and practices (Epstein and Straub, 1991). These can pose difficulties for the state. If the police arrest someone of mixed or intermediate gender, where is she/he to be imprisoned: in the men's jail or the women's jail? Lawsuits have already been fought over this issue. Wherever the state attempts gender segregation, in fact, difficulties arise about policing the boundaries. States Much of the writing in this area (including my own) uses the singular universal, "the state." Recognizing the plurality of powers and genders suggests that we should also call this habit of thought into question. What is true of one state is not necessarily true of another, nor of the same state at another point of time. We need to speak of "states," and think plurally. As with genders, this does not mean that we have to think chaotically. The multiplicity of states in history is very definitely structured. In recent world history there are two over-arching structures of relations between states. The first is the competition and alliance of independent states, originating in the European system of sovereignty. This is the pattern analyzed by the academic discipline of "international relations." The second is the pattern of imperialism — the colonial empires, the successor system of neo-colonialism, and the world markets dominated by major states and giant corporations. Both structures have a gender dimension. This is documented for the first structure by feminist critiques of international relations theory (Peterson, 1992); for the second, by feminist critiques of development theory and world-systems theory (Mies, 1986; Ward, 1993). Let us consider the gender dynamics that arise from different situations in the history of these structures. Colonial states Colonial conquest often involved a direct assault on the gender orders of indigenous societies. The Portuguese conquerors of Brazil forced indigenous "indians" into slavery on plantations, or into village settlements rigidly controlled by the church, in which their pagan ways (and languages) would be lost (Bums, 1980). The Spanish conquerors of Mexico and neighboring central and north America did similar things, including a violent attack on "sodomy," nearly obliterating the intermediate gender category (the so-called "berdache") of indigenous society (Williams, 1986). Economic exploitation under settler colonialism in Africa also involved the "pulverization" of indigenous society, as Good (1976) put it. A major disruption of gender relations was required to produce labor forces for plantations and mines. The resulting pattern of poverty, labor migration, male labor forces living in barracks, family separation, urban sex work and long-distance travel, has provided ideal conditions for the HIV/AIDS epidemic, now a major disaster in central, western and southern Africa (Barnett and Blaikie, 1992). In constructing a social order after conquest, the colonizers produced racialized gender orders. Though initial conquest often meant widespread interracial sex (rape, concubinage, and sometimes marriage), by the high tide of colonialism in the late nineteenth century all the major empires were operating color bats connected to a gender division of labor. The colonial states were controlled by men, for whom wives were imported from the metropolis. The interpersonal relations of colonial society revolved around "white women" who directed labor forces of domestic servants but were forbidden political expression. (The resulting experience in Papua New Guinea is documented in a remarkable oral history by Bulbeck, 1988.) Post-colonial states The process of decolonization necessarily challenged the imperial gender order. Some anti—colonial movements mobilized women's support and contested traditional forms of patriarchy, the Chinese communist movement being the best known case (Stacey, 1983). It is common, however, for the establishment of a post-colonial or post—revolutionary regime to involve the reinstallation of patriarchy. Mies's (1986) sardonic observations on the cults of Marxist Founding Fathers are all too apt. The intimidation of women by Islamic revival movements in Iran and some Arab countries is a current example, where feminist attitudes among women are seen as evidence of the Western corruption of religion and culture (Tohidi, 1991). Yet the current is not all one way. Women have achieved a considerable level of influence within the Islamic republic of Iran. The post-colonial state in India has provided a political environment in which a feminist movement could develop, known internationally through the journal Manushi (Kishwar and Vanita, 1984). Of the five successor states to the British Indian Empire, three have had women Prime Ministers and a fourth nearly did. Metropolitan states Imperialism impacts society in the metropolis as well as in the colonies. The tremendous scale of the social surplus concentrated in the imperial centers, and now in the financial centers of the global economy, changes the conditions of gender politics. It supports, for instance, the rising expectation of life and the drastic drop in birth rate that has transformed the experience of married women. But global empire also raised the size of the patriarchal dividend, the volume of social assets controlled by men. This raised the stake of gender politics for men, and helped expand the public realm in which public masculinities were constructed (Heam, 1992). Women's political citizenship developed first on the frontier of European settler colonialism (in North America and Australasia), next in the metropolis. Citizenship, however, has been progressively emptied of political content and replaced by the status of consumer, as the commercialization of everyday life and culture intensifies. This has involved an extensive commodification of sexuality, constituting heterosexual men as collective consumers of women's sexual services (for example through advertising and pornography). Thus women's increased presence in the public realm has been counterbalanced by a decline of the public realm itself, and a relocation of power into market mechanisms dominated by men. The old form of state patriarchy, with masculine authority embedded in bureaucratic hierarchies, was vulnerable to challenge through equal rights campaigns. New forms of management which commodity state services (privatization, corporatization, program budgeting), and neo-liberal administrative reform agendas (Yeatman, 1990), have reconstituted state power in forms less open to feminist challenge. It is no accident that these organizational reforms coincided with a "taxpayers' revolt" and tax concessions to business, budgetary attacks on social services (which tend to benefit women), and higher military expenditure in major powers (benefiting mostly men). The international state A striking feature of twentieth-century political history is the attempt to overcome the anarchy of the system of sovereign states through permanent international institutions. Some of these agencies link territorial states without themselves having a territorial base. The International Labour Organization is one of the oldest, followed by the League of Nations, the United Nations and its various agencies, the World Bank and Intermational Monetary Fund, and the more selective club of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Other agencies follow the more traditional pattern of regional customs unions or trading blocs, gradually developing into federal states. The most important of these at present is the European Union. These agencies too are gendered, and have gender effects. For the most part their gender regimes replicate those of the territorial states that gave rise to them. The international agencies have, however, a specific importance in gender politics as means for the globalization of gender relations. As Stromquist (1995) notes, gender policies at the international level may be more progressive than their local realizations. In other respects international agencies have reinforced rather than challenged local patriarchy. The ''male bias" in most development aid is familiar — so scandalous, eventually, that aid agencies such as the World Bank were persuaded to set up special programs for women. But the general economic policies pursued by international financial agencies since the debt crisis of the 1980s has disadvantaged women, since the austerity programs forced on debtor governments have squeezed the welfare sector, on which women are generally more dependent than men, and has favored market mechanisms, which are mostly controlled by men. Realism demands that we should also acknowledge the size and importance of intergovernmental links in the realm of violence and espionage. Military aid is the largest single component of international aid. The resources transferred go overwhelmingly into the hands of men. In many cases the armed forces supported by these links became the main political power; these cases include Indonesia, the largest Islamic country in the world; Brazil and Argentina, the largest countries in South America; Afghanistan, where rival military forces are currently fighting for control. Military dictatorships are, without exception, patriarchal dictatorships. A case in point: the arms trade The gender meaning of weapons is familiar, and has deep historical roots. Fembach (1981) speaks of the "masculine specialization in violence" that can be traced from the first armies, in the first urban societies. Armed forces are overwhelmingly composed of men today. Recent research on civilians in the United States, which has probably the most heavily armed population in the world, shows gun ownership about four times as high among men as among women (Smith and Smith, 1994) The masculinization of weapons is not a natural fact, but a cultural pattern. (So far as natural difference goes, guns are aptly called, in Damon Runyon stories, "equalizers.") It must be constantly regenerated and reproduced. A recent study by Gibson (1994) provides a striking illustration. Gibson traces the hypermasculine cult of weaponry in "paramilitary culture" in the United States, the cult of the "new war" developed in the period since the U.S. defeat in Vietnam. This was dramatically brought to public attention by the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. What is worked out culturally in gun cults and violent "action movies" is also an economic reality in the forms of the arms trade. This ranges from government-to-government sales of high-technology weapons systems, to the private circulation of small arms in countries whose governments officially permit arms sales, or cannot prevent them. The largest part of the arms trade is the legal equipping of military and paramilitary forces. This is no small industry. United States arms exports in 1993 totalled $32 billion. The metal does not come naked: it comes clothed in social forms. The army is a patriarchal institution. It is no accident that civil wars, from Bangladesh (at its separation from Pakistan) to the current conflict in Bosnia, include rape in the spectrum of military operations; this is a familiar form in which armies assert dominance over conquered peoples. Recent social research inside armed forces in the United States (Barrett, 1996) reveals an oppressive but efficient regime designed to produce a narrowly defined hegemonic masculinity. It is hardly surprising that institutions with such gender regimes have difficulty incorporating women under equal opportunity rules, and difficulty with the concept (though not the reality) of gay soldiers. Because of the social forms in which armaments are embedded, the arms trade is a vector of the globalization of gender, much as the international state is. Indeed, the two overlap, since the arms trade is connected to the globally linked military and intelligence apparatuses of the major powers. The social forms of military masculinity are exported to post-colonial states by military aid and advice programs (the mechanism by which the United States became involved in the Vietnamese war in the 1960s, with U.S. advisers constantly urging greater aggressiveness on officers of the Saigon regime), and by the training of officers in the military schools of the metropolis. In a world perspective, the modest gains of women's representation in parliaments and bureaucracies at a national level may well be outweighed by the growth of the apparatuses of patriarchal violence at an international level.
Only unwavering commitment to feminist foreign policy can resolve current violence, otherwise neoliberal and patriarchal interests coopt the demand – violence is a continuum such that military aid is not distinct from intervention but the US plays language games to hide its violence.
True '15 (Jacqui is Professor of Politics and International Relations, and Australian Research Council Future Fellow at Monash University, Australia. "Why we need a feminist foreign policy to stop war." Open Democracy. 4/20/15. https://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/jacqui-true/why-we-need-feminist-foreign-policy-to-stop-war)-JJN
So far, so good – but is a feminist approach compatible with the use of military force and with increasing military budgets? With respect to Sweden's credibility in international affairs Wallström asserts that it is "not down to our military capacity but rather our stand on human rights, democracy, development assistance." She adds that Sweden will advocate for stronger international positions on disarmament and development if elected to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council in 2016 (2017-2019). Yet Wallstrom's embrace of feminist foreign policy has been forged against the reassertion of Russian aggression in Ukraine; with Vladimir Putin flexing his muscle abroad with threats of force in the Baltics and even sending submarines to Australia's northern coastline during the G20 meetings in a show of Russian machismo. With realpolitik at the border, Sweden's feminist foreign policy deploys both feminine 'soft' and masculine 'hard' power. A human rights-based foreign and security policy is advocated for alongside a 150-year tradition of Swedish neutrality and self-defence which is resourced by increasing military spending and a domestic arms industry that must export weapons to be viable. Herein lies a fundamental contradiction from a feminist perspective. How is it possible to sell arms (when, regardless of whom you first sell them to, they often end up perpetrating crimes) and at the same time promote a humanitarian, human rights approach to foreign policy? This conundrum applies to the United Kingdom and the United States as well: how can you be a force for good in the world supporting human rights and conflict-resolution but with a large trade including in arms with countries like Saudi Arabia? Sweden's answer to this conundrum has been unfolding in recent weeks in some "splendidly undiplomatic"- we might say, 'feminist' diplomacy towards Saudi Arabia. In March, Wallstrom declined to sign a cooperation agreement on arms exports with Saudi Arabia also following the blocking by Saudia Arabia of her speech to Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo in March that criticized the Kingdom's treatment of dissidents and women. In so doing, Wallström is the first foreign minister to seek to implement Article 7 of the UN Arms Trade Treaty ratified in 2013, which requires state parties to prohibit the export of arms if they will be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian or human rights law or to commit serious acts of gender-based violence or violence against women and children. Saudi Arabia is known to have an atrocious human rights record with respect to its own citizens. It is currently engaged in a military bombing campaign on Yemen which is having devastating effects on civilians. The country is also believed to be supplying weapons to the Syrian regime, where over 200,000 have been killed, many of them civilians. What more evidence could you need to legally rescind an arms deal? The ease of doing business to make war In revoking the arms export deal, Wallström is negotiating the tension between Sweden's human rights-based foreign policy with its self-defence military capacity. She is also righting past abuses of state power in the case of the Swedish Defence Research Agency's secret "Project Simoon" to help Saudi Arabia build an anti-tank missile arms factory, exposed in 2012 by Swedish radio. Soon after announcing Sweden's decision to revoke the export deal, Saudi Arabia retaliated by denying business visas to Swedes and recalling their ambassador. Meanwhile Wallström was the subject of public approbation in the Swedish media by the eons of Swedish multinationals concerned about the impact on their exports, the likes of Volvo, Ikea, HandM, so popular with especially female consumers globally. Wallström was also visited by King Olaf who tried to persuade her to renege on her decision, while the EU states have stood by, silent by all accounts. This is a feminist fable for our neoliberal times. Even with a "feminine" social democratic government in power, the fable shows just how hard it is to address the unregulated global arms trade - one of the root causes of conflict - when it is so lucrative and inseparable from most transnational business and global trading relationships. Moreover, the fable reveals the spontaneous solidarity of a diverse group of captains of industry and of state power, nearly all men, who support the accumulation of profits over people's lives and basic freedoms. This is patriarchy at work – and a feminist foreign policy worth its salt needs to confront regimes of masculine hegemonies and the unequal entitlements that hold such hierarchical political economic orders together at every level. As WILPF Secretary-General Madeleine Rees has argued on 50.50, Margot Wallström shows us what can be done when we put principles and human decency above "business as usual". She may have derailed an arms deal in undiplomatic circumstances, but feminist foreign policy must be undiplomatic if it is to be transformative. To stop wars, we need to hold to account transnational business power, because it increasingly shapes state policies more than it is shaped by them, and because it has the power to uphold human rights, to be ethical, responsible, and responsive to consumers. And we need to refocus our advocacy for international peace and security on state power. More than ever, states value masculine qualities of competitiveness, aggression and strategic rationality, with many governments turning their back on the security and wellbeing of citizens and non-citizens as the analysis on the growth in arms expenditures and tax breaks for multinational business relative to austerity in state budgets for public health and education shows. Gendered economic structures determine the limits and the possibilities of security and foreign policy, but the politics of democracy including in countries like Sweden, the United States and European states, are the principal means through which these structures are established and transformed. Exposing the connections between state military complexes and transnational business will enable us to better understand how power works to fuel and fund conflicts around the world. A feminist foreign policy must have as its central goal the long-term prevention of conflict and violence. It must identify the gendered globalized structures that contribute to violence and conflict such as economic inequality and insecurity. And it must link demilitarisation and disarmament to investment in people-centred development and justice. In this way, Margot Wallström's approach is similar to Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's (WILPF) century-long approach: that is, foreign policy needs to start at home with, to take one example, saving on weapons to spend on alleviating child poverty as the leader of the SNP in the UK, Nicola Sturgeon is doing in the run up to the UK general election. With Hillary Clinton getting ready to run for the US Presidency, promising to be the country with the highest military spending's first female commander-in-chief, it will be important to keep a close check on the connection she makes between feminism and foreign policy. Above all, foreign policy worthy of the adjective "feminist" must support and resource non-militarised solutions to conflict and challenge the self-interested masculine hegemonies in the state and private sector that perpetuate the business of killing. Towards this end, establishing a US Department of Peace – an idea muted by many in the past – would clearly demonstrate the prioritizing of peace-building through international aid and development initatives. In approaching old problems using peaceful means, an initiative of this kind would be a vital step in institutionalising a feminist foreign policy.
The only solution is a total break from the military industrial complex – any complicity reaffirms subjugation of women. Be skeptical of any PIC that claims military aid can be used for benevolent means.
Spade and Lazare '1/19 (Dean is a professor at Seattle University School of Law. His book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law, was published in 2015 by Duke University Press. Sarah is web editor at In These Times. She comes from a background in independent journalism for publications including the Intercept, the Nation, and Tom Dispatch. "There's Nothing Feminist About Imperialism." 1/19/19. Jacobin. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/feminism-military-industrial-complex-pentagon)-JJN
Yet, feminists should not view this "rise" of women as a win. Feminism, as the most recent wave of imperial-feminist articles shows, is increasingly being co-opted to promote and sell the US military-industrial complex: a profoundly violent institution that will never bring liberation to women — whether they are within its own ranks or in the countries bearing the greatest brunt of its brutality. As Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and assistant professor at George Mason University, put it in an interview with In These Times, women's inclusion in US military institutions "makes the system subjugating us stronger and more difficult to fight. Our historical exclusion makes it appear desirable to achieve inclusion but that's a lack of imagination. Our historical exclusion should push us to imagine a better system and another world that's possible." This pro-military media spin is no accident: Weapons contractors are working hard to sell a progressive, pro-women brand to the public. Raytheon and other firms spend millions on public relations painting themselves as noble empowerers of women and girls in the sciences. Raytheon champions its partnership with Girl Scouts of the USA. "Through a multiyear commitment from Raytheon, Girl Scouts will launch its first national computer science program and Cyber Challenge for middle and high school girls," states a promotional page. A high-dollar promotional video quotes Rebecca Rhoads, president of Raytheon's global business services, as stating, "Raytheon's vision about making the world a safer place and the girl scouts' vision of making the world a better place couldn't be more well-suited as partners." Such a claim is particularly brazen, coming from a company that supplies a steady stream of bombs for the US-Saudi war in Yemen, which has unleashed a famine that has killed an estimated 85,000 Yemeni children under the age of five. Lockheed Martin, by far the biggest arms producer in the world with $44.9 billion in arms sales in 2017, manufactured the 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb that struck a Yemeni school bus last August, killing fifty-four people (forty-four of them children). But that doesn't stop the company from presenting itself as a progressive organization that recruits — and supports — women scientists. A page on its website quotes the Langston Hughes poem, "A Dream Deferred," to make the case that the company helps girls achieve their dreams. "This poem was one of my favorites from my high school English class, but, now, as I consider my Community Service and Engagement with the Lockheed Martin community, I personally know what can happen to a dream deferred, when many say no, but I say, 'Yes you can,'" the page states. In her speech at the 2015 World Assembly for Women in Tokyo, the company's chairperson, president and CEO Marillyn A. Hewson said that "it is just as important to support women as they work to lift themselves up and raise up each other. Because taking responsibility for our own careers is empowering in and of itself." Faux-feminist PR is not just for private corporations — it is also being used to sell woman-led CIA torture. Gina Haspel, who once oversaw torture at a black site in Thailand, now runs the CIA, and the Trump administration defended her from critics of torture by pointing out the fact that she is a woman. "Any Democrat who claims to support women's empowerment and our national security but opposes her nomination is a total hypocrite," said Press Sec. Sarah Sanders on Twitter. Yet, Erakat asks, "How are you going to celebrate women in high military ranks as an achievement when all they do is fulfill an agenda that was never created through a feminist framework? Haspel was an architect of our torture regime. Why would I celebrate her?" Meanwhile, the war criminals of yesteryear are being rehabilitated by this "girl-power" coverage. Last April, the Washington Post ran a story with the eyebrow-raising headline, "'The kids, they love Madeleine Albright': How a veteran diplomat got turned into a girl-power icon." In 1996, Albright, the then-US ambassador to the United Nations, told 60 Minutes that the half-million Iraqi children killed by the US sanctions regime were "worth" it. "It's a very white, imperialist, liberal understanding of feminism to think that the promotion of women at the top of militarization and militarism is advancing women," says Kara Ellerby, author of No Shortcut to Change, who derides what she calls the "add-women-and-stir" approach. "Sure, it's great that you have a woman at the head of Raytheon, but what about the women who those bombs are being dropped on?" Ellerby emphasizes to In These Times. "From a global perspective, putting women in charge of US military dominance is not remotely feminist: It's imperialist." Feminist scholar and author Cynthia Enloe echoes this concern, suggesting that women's leadership in these organizations does not change what the organizations do to the rest of the world. "There is no evidence that I've seen — of the CIA, defense department, or other institutions where only a few women are rising to the top — that they challenge the mission of the company or the organization," she tells In These Times. The Military-Industrial Complex Is Not Good for Women US military intervention is particularly bad for women: It remains deeply interconnected to sexual and gender violence, for people in the military, for military spouses, and for people living in or near the estimated 1,000 US military bases around the world or where US military actions occur. From Japan to the Philippines, local populations have long protested the presence of the US military — and the environmental destruction and sexual violence it brings. The impacts of war — such as reduction in basic services, electricity, and access to food and water, loss of family members, and increased rates of illness and disability — all increase women's vulnerability to assault and worsen the conditions of women's labor. Women are predominantly responsible for caring for sick and disabled people, children, and elders — and the conditions for doing that work worsen severely in war conditions. The US military is also the largest polluter in the world. It is difficult to argue that its activities are "good for women" when it contributes to climate change and the poisoning of air, water, and land that endangers all people. The US military is also profoundly violent towards women within its own ranks. According to Veterans Affairs records, 1,307,781outpatient visits took place at the VA for Military Sexual Trauma (MST)-related care in 2015. Approximately 38 percent of female and 4 percent of male military personnel and veterans have experienced Military Sexual Trauma — a euphemism for rape or sexual assault. Research reveals that 40 percent of women homeless veterans have experienced sexual assault in the military. (Far less is known or publicly reported about the US military's sexual violence against occupied peoples.) Service members are punished for speaking out. A report from the Department of Defense finds 58 percent of women and 60 percent of men who report sexual assault face retaliation. And 77 percent of retaliation reports alleged that retaliators were in the reporter's chain of command. A third of victims are discharged after reporting, typically within seven months of making a report. A report from Harvard Law School's Veterans' clinic finds sexual assault victims receive harsher discharges from the military, with 24 percent separated under less than fully honorable conditions, compared to 15 percent of all service members. Women who drop out of the military because they have been sexually assaulted cannot rise through the ranks. The media portrayal of the women who have climbed to the top of the military and intelligence apparatuses, however, relies on bootstrap tough-it-up narratives that implicitly victim-shame women, often framing failure to achieve what they did in terms of women's lack of confidence that creates obstacles to their success. Lynn Dugle, CEO of Englity and former CEO of Raytheon, tells Politico, "One of my biggest challenges has been resisting the temptation to tell myself I couldn't do something. I didn't think I was ready to be president of a multibillion-dollar business at Raytheon when I was offered the role. I continually remind myself to have courage and confidence." These narratives about "progress" through inclusion of underrepresented groups in dominant institutions (in this case women), actually follow a well-worn pattern in US politics. Whether it is police departments championing "diversity" while perpetuating targeted harm against marginalized populations, or oil companies portraying themselves as "green," the drive to be associated with a (watered-down) progressivism or inclusivity is one of the most common PR strategies at work for the world's most harmful institutions. Wars to Save Women? The idea that the US military-industrial complex can be pro-women is not just an internal rebranding exercise: It is used to justify disastrous US military interventions around the world. In his book Ideal Illusions, historian James Peck shows how this is part of a larger trend that developed during the Cold War when, as an anticommunist strategy, the United States revamped its image as the human rights protector of the world to justify its military empire. The US claim that it uniquely protects women's rights was part of this larger picture. The George W. Bush administration famously justified the war in Afghanistan by arguing that it would rescue women from the Taliban. On Nov. 17, 2001, Laura Bush gave the president's weekly radio address, proclaiming, "Afghan women know, through hard experience, what the rest of the world is discovering: the brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists." Media outlets dutifully followed suit: In 2010, Time ran a cover showing "Bibi Aisha" with her nose cut off, with the headline, "What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan." Of course, the protracted US occupation has only further entrenched the Taliban, which now controls more territory than at any point in the past seventeen years. Meanwhile, civilian deaths are climbing. Yet none of the politicians or pundits who popularized the rhetoric of "saving women" are forced to answer to how this war has actually harmed — and killed — women in Afghanistan. The 2011 bombing of Libya was cheered as the first US war led by women, as noted by the Daily Beast, which reported that "the Libyan airstrikes mark the first time in U.S. history that a female-dominated diplomatic team has urged military action." The fact that command of the Libya air strategy was given to a woman officer was also celebrated in the Guardian as "a boost to women in the US military who complain daily about discrimination." Are these celebrated woman architects of war required to answer to today's nightmarish conditions in Libya where black people are now bought and sold in open-air slave markets? Do cheerleaders of the intervention actually examine whether US military intervention in Libya, or anywhere, leads to improved conditions for women? Narratives about saving women are also prevalent in the US war on ISIS. While there is no doubt that women face horrific treatment at the hands of ISIS, rape, enslavement, and abuse has been used to justify a brutal US bombing campaign that has caused 2,780 civilian casualty incidents in Syria and Iraq and relaxed standards for killing civilians in both countries — opening the door to more civilian deaths. Meanwhile, atrocities against women perpetrated by US ally Saudi Arabia go unpunished, revealing that the need to protect women is contingent on US geopolitical interests. These tropes are not new. They come from the playbook of US and Western European colonization, in which colonizers argue that their presence helps women, and their exit would do them grave harm. In just one example, Lord Cromer, who was the British consul general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907, cited the veil — and women's well-being — to argue Egyptians should be forcibly civilized. "The position of women in Egypt, and Mohammedan countries generally, is, therefore a fatal obstacle to the attainment of that elevation of thought and character which should accompany the introduction of Western civilisation," he once declared. Yet, as feminist scholar Leila Ahmed has pointed out, at the same time Cromer was railing against the veil, he was agitating in favor of the subordination of women in England, as a leader of the Men's League for Opposing Women's Suffrage.
Plan: The United States ought not provide military aid to authoritarian regimes
Contention 2: Framing
You have an obligation to betray any instance of hegemonic masculinity and affirm femininity- this comes prior
Schact and Ewing 97
(Steven P. Schacht and Doris Ewing Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice , Gonzaga University, Department of Sociology and Anthropology , Southwest Missouri State University, (1997) The many paths of feminism: Can men travel any of them? 1, Journal of Gender Studies, 6:2, 159-176, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.1997.9960679, JKS)
While it is true that men who reject traditional notions of masculinity are betrayers of such an ideology and they cannot become women, such men are anything but failures. For if one agrees with Stoltenberg's (1990, p. 185) assertion that, 'the belief that one is male, the belief that there is a male sex, the belief that one belongs to it is a politically constructed idea', then rejecting such a position is also a political statement. In other words, while men who betray masculinity are seen as failures in the eyes of patriarchy and death, they would also be successful survivors in a reality of feminism and life. Or, as more elegantly stated by Carlin, Exposing the monster's false power, thus breaking the spell, happens when a man dares to enter the realm of women's reality. A man breaks rank with other men when they make women's reality their referent. All the power of the social order gathers itself to prevent his going there .... Where he is going, he risks being regarded with suspicion, of not being readily accepted, because of what he has left.... He understands that to save himself means not grasping patriarchy closer, but letting it die—even the part of it that resides within himself. (1992, p. 124) Men who truly aspire to have a feminist worldview should not view such a commitment as a part-time, when it is convenient or to his advantage undertaking. Rather, to become truly committed to a feminist reality means he should try to act accordingly in every possible setting he finds himself in. Moreover, as Sonia Johnson notes, we believe such a feminist orientation is found in the present, not the future. When we envision the future without first changing our present feelings, without undoing our indoctrination, we project all our unexamined assumptions into the future, recreating the old reality, making it inevitable. Anything we try to do without grounding ourselves in new and powerful present feelings and perceptions will be compromised from the onset, hopelessly contaminated, simple tinkering at best, perilously complicit at worst.... This means that our feelings about ourselves in the present moment are the sole source of change, and that they are therefore our only source of power. (1987, pp. 305-306—emphasis in the original) In sum, individually giving up male privilege and replacing it with women and feminism means that men will have to discover new ways of relating to and interacting with women in the present. With women and feminism as his referent, this means that he should always try to 'discriminate positively in favour of women' (Bradshaw, 1982, p. 188).
Large-scale threats of future suffering collapses ethics and creates a form of temporal blackmail- the only ethical response is to refuse that bribery and align yourself with feminist urgency
Olson 15
(Elizabeth, professor of geography and global studies at UNC Chapel Hill, 'Geography and Ethics I: Waiting and Urgency,' Progress in Human Geography, vol. 39 no. 4, pp. 517-526)
Though toileting might be thought of as a special case of bodily urgency, geographic research suggests that the body is increasingly set at odds with larger scale ethical concerns, especially large-scale future events of forecasted suffering. Emergency planning is a particularly good example in which the large-scale threats of future suffering can distort moral reasoning. Žižek (2006) lightly develops this point in the context of the war on terror, where in the presence of fictitious and real ticking clocks and warning systems, the urgent body must be bypassed because there are bigger scales to worry about:¶ What does this all-pervasive sense of urgency mean ethically? The pressure of events is so overbearing, the stakes are so high, that they necessitate a suspension of ordinary ethical concerns. After all, displaying moral qualms when the lives of millions are at stake plays into the hands of the enemy. (Žižek, 2006)¶ In the presence of large-scale future emergency, the urgency to secure the state, the citizenry, the economy, or the climate creates new scales and new temporal orders of response (see Anderson, 2010; Baldwin, 2012; Dalby, 2013; Morrissey, 2012), many of which treat the urgent body as impulsive and thus requiring management. McDonald's (2013) analysis of three interconnected discourses of 'climate security' illustrates how bodily urgency in climate change is also recast as a menacing impulse that might require exclusion from moral reckoning. The logics of climate security, especially those related to national security, 'can encourage perverse political responses that not only fail to respond effectively to climate change but may present victims of it as a threat' (McDonald, 2013: 49). Bodies that are currently suffering cannot be urgent, because they are excluded from the potential collectivity that could be suffering everywhere in some future time. Similar bypassing of existing bodily urgency is echoed in writing about violent securitization, such as drone warfare (Shaw and Akhter, 2012), and also in intimate scales like the street and the school, especially in relation to race (Mitchell, 2009; Young et al., 2014).¶ As large-scale urgent concerns are institutionalized, the urgent body is increasingly obscured through technical planning and coordination (Anderson and Adey, 2012). The predominant characteristic of this institutionalization of large-scale emergency is a 'built-in bias for action' (Wuthnow, 2010: 212) that circumvents contingencies. The urgent body is at best an assumed eventuality, one that will likely require another state of waiting, such as triage (e.g. Greatbach et al., 2005). Amin (2013) cautions that in much of the West, governmental need to provide evidence of laissez-faire governing on the one hand, and assurance of strength in facing a threatening future on the other, produces 'just-in-case preparedness' (Amin, 2013: 151) of neoliberal risk management policies. In the US, 'personal ingenuity' is built into emergency response at the expense of the poor and vulnerable for whom 'the difference between abjection and bearable survival' (Amin, 2013: 153) will not be determined by emergency planning, but in the material infrastructure of the city.¶ In short, the urgencies of the body provide justifications for social exclusion of the most marginalized based on impulse and perceived threat, while large-scale future emergencies effectively absorb the deliberative power of urgency into the institutions of preparedness and risk avoidance. Žižek references Arendt's (2006) analysis of the banality of evil to explain the current state of ethical reasoning under the war on terror, noting that people who perform morally reprehensible actions under the conditions of urgency assume a 'tragic-ethic grandeur' (Žižek, 2006) by sacrificing their own morality for the good of the state. But his analysis fails to note that bodies are today so rarely legitimate sites for claiming urgency. In the context of the assumed priority of the large-scale future emergency, the urgent body becomes literally nonsense, a non sequitur within societies, states and worlds that will always be more urgent.¶ If the important ethical work of urgency has been to identify that which must not wait, then the capture of the power and persuasiveness of urgency by large-scale future emergencies has consequences for the kinds of normative arguments we can raise on behalf of urgent bodies. How, then, might waiting compare as a normative description and critique in our own urgent time? Waiting can be categorized according to its purpose or outcome (see Corbridge, 2004; Gray, 2011), but it also modifies the place of the individual in society and her importance. As Ramdas (2012: 834) writes, 'waiting … produces hierarchies which segregate people and places into those which matter and those which do not'. The segregation of waiting might produce effects that counteract suffering, however, and Jeffery (2008: 957) explains that though the 'politics of waiting' can be repressive, it can also engender creative political engagement. In his research with educated unemployed Jat youth who spend days and years waiting for desired employment, Jeffery finds that 'the temporal suffering and sense of ambivalence experienced by young men can generate cultural and political experiments that, in turn, have marked social and spatial effects' (Jeffery, 2010: 186). Though this is not the same as claiming normative neutrality for waiting, it does suggest that waiting is more ethically ambivalent and open than urgency.¶ In other contexts, however, our descriptions of waiting indicate a strong condemnation of its effects upon the subjects of study. Waiting can demobilize radical reform, depoliticizing 'the insurrectionary possibilities of the present by delaying the revolutionary imperative to a future moment that is forever drifting towards infinity' (Springer, 2014: 407). Yonucu's (2011) analysis of the self-destructive activities of disrespected working-class youth in Istanbul suggests that this sense of infinite waiting can lead not only to depoliticization, but also to a disbelief in the possibility of a future self of any value. Waiting, like urgency, can undermine the possibility of self-care two-fold, first by making people wait for essential needs, and again by reinforcing that waiting is 'something to be ashamed of because it may be noted or taken as evidence of indolence or low status, seen as a symptom of rejection or a signal to exclude' (Bauman, 2004: 109). This is why Auyero (2012) suggests that waiting creates an ideal state subject, providing 'temporal processes in and through which political subordination is produced' (Auyero, 2012: loc. 90; see also Secor, 2007). Furthermore, Auyero notes, it is not only political subordination, but the subjective effect of waiting that secures domination, as citizens and non-citizens find themselves 'waiting hopefully and then frustratedly for others to make decisions, and in effect surrendering to the authority of others' (Auyero, 2012: loc. 123).¶ Waiting can therefore function as a potentially important spatial technology of the elite and powerful, mobilized not only for the purpose of governing individuals, but also to retain claims over moral urgency. But there is growing resistance to the capture of claims of urgency by the elite, and it is important to note that even in cases where the material conditions of containment are currently impenetrable, arguments based on human value are at the forefront of reclaiming urgency for the body. In detention centers, clandestine prisons, state borders and refugee camps, geographers point to ongoing struggles against the ethical impossibility of bodily urgency and a rejection of states of waiting (see Conlon, 2011; Darling, 2009, 2011; Garmany, 2012; Mountz et al., 2013; Schuster, 2011). Ramakrishnan's (2014) analysis of a Delhi resettlement colony and Shewly's (2013) discussion of the enclave between India and Bangladesh describe people who refuse to give up their own status as legitimately urgent, even in the context of larger scale politics. Similarly, Tyler's (2013) account of desperate female detainees stripping off their clothes to expose their humanness and suffering in the Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the UK suggests that demands for recognition are not just about politics, but also about the acknowledgement of humanness and the irrevocable possibility of being that which cannot wait. The continued existence of places like Yarl's Wood and similar institutions in the USA nonetheless points to the challenge of exposing the urgent body as a moral priority when it is so easily hidden from view, and also reminds us that our research can help to explain the relationships between normative dimensions and the political and social conditions of struggle.¶ In closing, geographic depictions of waiting do seem to evocatively describe otherwise obscured suffering (e.g. Bennett, 2011), but it is striking how rarely these descriptions also use the language of urgency. Given the discussion above, what might be accomplished – and risked – by incorporating urgency more overtly and deliberately into our discussions of waiting, surplus and abandoned bodies? Urgency can clarify the implicit but understated ethical consequences and normativity associated with waiting, and encourage explicit discussion about harmful suffering. Waiting can be productive or unproductive for radical praxis, but urgency compels and requires response. Geographers could be instrumental in reclaiming the ethical work of urgency in ways that leave it open for critique, clarifying common spatial misunderstandings and representations. There is good reason to be thoughtful in this process, since moral outrage towards inhumanity can itself obscure differentiated experiences of being human, dividing up 'those for whom we feel urgent unreasoned concern and those whose lives and deaths simply do not touch us, or do not appear as lives at all' (Butler, 2009: 50). But when the urgent body is rendered as only waiting, both materially and discursively, it is just as easily cast as impulsive, disgusting, animalistic (see also McKittrick, 2006). Feminist theory insists that the urgent body, whose encounters of violence are 'usually framed as private, apolitical and mundane' (Pain, 2014: 8), are as deeply political, public, and exceptional as other forms of violence (Phillips, 2008; Pratt, 2005). Insisting that a suffering body, now, is that which cannot wait, has the ethical effect of drawing it into consideration alongside the political, public and exceptional scope of large-scale futures. It may help us insist on the body, both as a single unit and a plurality, as a legitimate scale of normative priority and social care.¶ In this report, I have explored old and new reflections on the ethical work of urgency and waiting. Geographic research suggests a contemporary popular bias towards the urgency of large-scale futures, institutionalized in ways that further obscure and discredit the urgencies of the body. This bias also justifies the production of new waiting places in our material landscape, places like the detention center and the waiting room. In some cases, waiting is normatively neutral, even providing opportunities for alternative politics. In others, the technologies of waiting serve to manage potentially problematic bodies, leading to suspended suffering and even to extermination (e.g. Wright, 2013). One of my aims has been to suggest that moral reasoning is important both because it exposes normative biases against subjugated people, and because it potentially provides routes toward struggle where claims to urgency seem to foreclose the possibilities of alleviation of suffering. Saving the world still should require a debate about whose world is being saved, when, and at what cost – and this requires a debate about what really cannot wait. My next report will extend some of these concerns by reviewing how feelings of urgency, as well as hope, fear, and other emotions, have played a role in geography and ethical reasoning.¶ I conclude, however, by pulling together past and present. In 1972, Gilbert White asked why geographers were not engaging 'the truly urgent questions' (1972: 101) such as racial repression, decaying cities, economic inequality, and global environmental destruction. His question highlights just how much the discipline has changed, but it is also unnerving in its echoes of our contemporary problems. Since White's writing, our moral reasoning has been stretched to consider the future body and the more-than-human, alongside the presently urgent body – topics and concerns that I have not taken up in this review but which will provide their own new possibilities for urgent concerns. My own hope presently is drawn from an acknowledgement that the temporal characteristics of contemporary capitalism can be interrupted in creative ways (Sharma, 2014), with the possibility of squaring the urgent body with our large-scale future concerns. Temporal alternatives already exist in ongoing and emerging revolutions and the disruption of claims of cycles and circular political processes (e.g. Lombard, 2013; Reyes, 2012). Though calls for urgency will certainly be used to obscure evasion of responsibility (e.g. Gilmore, 2008: 56, fn 6), they may also serve as fertile ground for radical critique, a truly fierce urgency for now.
Metrics and justifications for policies matter just as much as the ends - moves to resolve the aff by using masculine risk calculus are antithetical to ethical demands of the plan.
Verloo 05
(Mieke, Senior Lecturer in Political Sciences and Gender Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen and Research Director of an EU-funded comparative research facility, "Displacement and Empowerment: Reflections on the Concept and Practice of the Council of Europe Approach to Gender Mainstreaming and Gender Equality", Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12.3 (2005) 344-365)
Some studies that focus on assessing the success of gender mainstreaming practices at the level of the European Union point to a similar phenomenon of "adding other goals," as happened in the Message to the Committee of Ministers to Steering Committees of the Council of Europe on Gender Mainstreaming. In Hafner-Burton and Pollack's analysis (2000) of five areas (structural funds, employment and social affairs, development, competition and science, research and development), the accent is on explaining cross-sectional variety within the European Commission in the start and the implementation of gender mainstreaming. They show how important it has been that political opportunities in Europe have widened and increased over the course of the last decade, for instance as a result of the entrance of the Nordic countries. They also show how important lobbying and modernization have been, for instance the lobbying of WISE (the European organization for women's studies) in the case of gender mainstreaming in science, research, and development. In assessing the success of gender mainstreaming, they refer to classical power mechanisms that are at the heart of social movement theory: political opportunities and mobilizing. In the context of this article, the most interesting part of their analysis is their use of the concept of strategical framing, another power mechanism conceptualized in social movement theory. Strategical framing is a dynamic concept that enables us to see how different actors adapt existing policy frames to pursue their prospective goals. Strategical framing is defined as attempting to construct a fit between existing frames, or networks of meaning, and the frames of a change agent. Hafner-Burton and Pollack show that gender mainstreaming is "sold" as an effective means to the ends pursued by the European Commission, rather than as an overt challenge to those ends. They argue that the gender mainstreaming efforts, because of this strategical framing, might turn into an integrationist approach, integrating women and gender issues into specific regular policies rather than rethinking the fundamental aims of the European Union from a gender perspective. Especially since the European Union is one of the most successful implementers of gender mainstreaming so far, this threatens the transformative potential of gender mainstreaming, they say. End Page 358 Mary Braithwaite's work on gender mainstreaming in the structural funds (1999) corroborates these findings. She finds that because of the absence of precise objectives on reducing gender inequalities, gender is easily located within and has been subjected to other goals, such as employment creation, economic growth, or poverty reduction. This is not to say that these are abject goals, just to stress that they are not synonymous with gender equality. Braithwaite concludes that gender equity suffers from the dominance of efficiency and effectiveness in gender mainstreaming practices in the structural funds. Strategical Framing and Power The studies presented point out that "success," in the sense of starting a process of gender mainstreaming, seems to be connected to the "stretching" of the goal of gender equality, to strategical framing, and they also show that the actual goal of gender mainstreaming is not articulated clearly. In the last section of this article, I will therefore take a closer look at framing processes, at the politics of framing. What happens in processes of strategical framing? Why would it be that integration rather than transformation is the inevitable result of strategical framing processes? Strategical framing refers to a process of linking a feminist goal, such as gender equality, to some major goal of an organization that should engage or is engaging in gender mainstreaming, thereby securing the allegiance of these organizations to gender mainstreaming. In technical terms, this means that until now strategical framing in gender mainstreaming practices has usually involved framing bridging or frame extension6 (Benford and Snow 2000). The strategies chosen do not challenge the other, mainstream goals of policy makers, but provide for a link by "stretching" the gender equality goal. This means that the dual agenda that is mostly present in gender mainstreaming (of the feminist goal and some other goal) is presented as the possibility of a win-win situation. In such conceptualizations, power seems to evaporate; it is put between brackets. Gender mainstreaming is presented as a harmonious process, certainly in the Council of Europe report. The state is also mostly conceptualized as "friendly," probably connected to the fact that Sweden and the Netherlands have been among its pioneers, countries that to some extent have been "friendly" states in the past. Yet, if gender inequality is about power and privileges, then gender mainstreaming should be about abolishing privileges, and if gender mainstreaming is about eliminating gender bias in policy making, then the state should be problematized. Why then is a process of abolishing privileges and gender bias conceptualized as harmony? The answer provided in the studies discussed earlier is that it helps in organizing acceptance of gender mainstreaming, by making it less End Page 359 threatening. The consequence of this avoidance of struggle is the exclusion of opposing voices, including radical feminist voices. The "Beyond Armchair Feminism" volume of Organization (2000) is one of the few studies analyzing the bad results of such a dual agenda: the disappearance of a gender focus altogether. Coleman and Rippin (2000) conclude, after having tried such a process of harmonious change, that there needs to be more challenge and less agreement in such change processes, even if trust is a crucial component. The presentation of harmony, used to help smooth the process of change, is counterproductive in the end. In Hearn's (2000) reflection on the project, not only organizations are gendered (in the Acker 1990 definition), but also models of organizational or societal change are gendered, as well as embodying other forms of social division and domination. Following this analysis, change processes and hence gender mainstreaming processes and activities should be conceptualized as necessarily riddled with power, subject to mechanisms of power, and best understood in terms of power. Looking at processes of strategical framing as connected to power relations through a Foucauldian lens shows the logic of the dual agenda as a mix of enabling and constraining processes. The main enabling part is the opening generated by the bridging of frames. Yet, in this logic that juxtaposes two sets of goals, some options are repressed. Exposing the "organization" goal as not neutral, but already gendered, or positioning the "feminist" goal as an organization goal in its own right, will be difficult. As organizations tend to have a self-image of gender neutrality, the gender bias in their existing goals will not easily be recognized. And as both goals will hardly ever be backed by equal power resources, the feminist goal will be watered down much more, or much more easily than the organization goal. Moreover, in the process of convincing organizations or people to start a process of gender mainstreaming, there will already be a tendency to select more "acceptable" feminist goals. Also, the feminists or femocrats involved in these efforts will necessarily have some kind of acceptance by the (gender-biased) organization, leading to further selection and exclusion of radical or marginalized voices. The logic of the dual agenda therefore leads first to an opening for a feminist agenda, and then to a narrowing down of the feminist focus and feminist voices, to eventually losing the focus on gender and gender equality altogether. This logic functions through mechanisms of power. Both goals are not equally powerful, as they have unequal support and resources within the regular organizations that are the relevant context of gender mainstreaming. Especially when gender mainstreaming is conceptualized in a technocratic way, less external pressure or mobilization of feminist groups is to be expected. End Page 360 Moreover, this inequality of support and resources hinders a clear articulation of a feminist goal, or the expression of particular feminist goals that are seen as more radical, while such radical goals would be needed in view of the watering-down mechanisms. Mainstream liberal feminism hence has an advantage, while a goal that is articulated as a need to displace gender will meet resistance. Finally, within feminism there are hegemonic processes as well that are not recognized and that lead to the exclusion of certain feminist voices.
Sexual violence is genocidal and happens on a continuum – focus on systemic impacts is key since patriarchal war games make violence inevitable.
Sheperd 09
Laura J. Dept of Political Science and International Studies, U of Birmingham (UK), "Gender, Violence and Global Politics: Contemporary Debates in Feminist Security Studies," Political Studies Review, V7 I2, Apr
According to conventional accounts of international relations (IR), scholars focus on war (predominantly as a means to providing the sovereign state with security) and the existence of war's corollary is a foundational assumption that goes largely unquestioned. Peace must exist, for international relations are not characterised by perpetual conflict. However, peace is implicitly defined, in dichotomous terms, by the absence of violent conflict, as 'not-war'. Of more analytical interest is conflict, which is always a possibility and which, moreover, occurs between states. International relations as a discipline, narrowly conceived, is largely unconcerned with activities that occur within the state. Minimally, feminist and other critical approaches to IR seek to correct such disciplinary myopia. While classical realism theorises the political actor –Hans Morgenthau's 'political man' (1973, pp. 15–6) – in order to construct the state as actor, the now dominant neo-realism abstracts the human subject from its disciplinary musings, leading to the infamous 'black box' model of the state. Early feminist scholarship challenged this assumption as well, arguing that individuals, as human subjects in all their messy complexity, are an integral part of international relations (see Shepherd, 2007, pp. 240–1). Attention to the human subject in I/international R/relations – or, as Christine Sylvester phrases it, 'relations international', to emphasise the embedded nature of all kinds of relations in the international sphere, including power relations and gender relations (Sylvester, 1994, p. 6; see also Enloe, 1996) – allows critical scholars to look beyond the disciplinary obsession with war. Further, it allows us to investigate one of the simplest insights of feminist IR, which is also one of the most devastating: the war/peace dichotomy is gendered, misleading and potentially pathological. In this essay, I address each of these concerns in turn, developing a critique of the war/peace dichotomy that is foundational to conventional approaches to IR through a review of three recent publications in the field of feminist security studies. These texts are Cynthia Enloe's (2007) Globalization and Militarism, David Roberts' (2008) Human Insecurity, and Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women's Violence in Global Politics by Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry (2008). Drawing on the insights of these books, I ask first how violence is understood in global politics, with specific reference to the gendered disciplinary blindnesses that frequently characterise mainstream approaches. Second, I demonstrate how a focus on war and peace can neglect to take into account the politics of everyday violence: the violences of the in-between times that international politics recognises neither as 'war' nor 'peace' and the violences inherent to times of peace that are overlooked in the study of war. Finally, I argue that feminist security studies offers an important corrective to the foundational assumptions of IR, which themselves can perpetuate the very instances of violence that they seek to redress. If we accept the core insights of feminist security studies – the centrality of the human subject, the importance of particular configurations of masculinity and femininity, and the gendered conceptual framework that underpins the discipline of IR – we are encouraged to envisage a rather different politics of the global. From Boudica to Bhopal As Sjoberg and Gentry recount (2008, pp. 38–9), Boudica was an Iceni queen who led an uprising against the Roman forces occupying the British Isles circa 61 AD. Prior to launching the attack, Boudica's refusal to allow a Roman general to claim ownership of her land resulted in the rape of her two daughters as punishment. However, 'many inherited tales about Boudica do not emphasise her personal or political motivations, but the savage and unwomanly brutality of her actions' (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, p. 39). Almost two thousand years later and half a planet away, a toxic gas leak in 1984 at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India caused the immediate deaths of approximately 3,000 people and left tens of thousands suffering the after-effects for decades (Roberts, 2008, p. 10). At first reading, little links these two accounts of quite different forms of violence. The first is an instance of violent resistance against imperial oppression, and Boudica has been vilified, her efforts delegitimised, in much the same way as many actors in 'small wars' tend to be in global politics today (see Barkawi, 2004). The second is perhaps more usefully seen as the result of structural violence, following Johan Galtung's explanation of the same, as 'violence where there is no such actor' (cited in Roberts, 2008, p. 18). However, by asking questions about Boudica and Bhopal that are born of a 'feminist curiosity' (Enloe, 2007, p. 1, p. 11), these texts demonstrate connections beyond the simplistic equation that is applicable to both: actor/structure plus violence equals death. In Human Insecurity, Roberts poses the question, 'What is violence?' (2008, p. 17). This is a question rarely asked in international relations. Violence is war: large-scale, state-dominated, much studied, war. However, the three texts under review here all offer more nuanced theories of violence that focus analytical attention on complex constructions of agency (institutional and international), structure, and the global context that is product and productive of such violence. Through an intricate and beautifully accessible analysis of modernity –'that pot of gold at the end of the global rainbow' (Enloe, 2007, p. 64) – Enloe encourages her readers to seek the connections between globalisation and militarisation, arguing that at the heart of this nexus lie important questions about violence and security. Roberts notes a broad dissatisfaction with the concept of 'human security' (2008, pp. 14–7), offering instead his investigative lens of 'human insecurity', defined as 'avoidable civilian deaths, occurring globally, caused by social, political and economic institutions and structures, built and operated by humans and which could feasibly be changed' (p. 28). Placing the human at the centre of concerns about security immediately challenges a conventional state-based approach to security, as Enloe explains. In a convincing account of the hard-fought expansion of the concept of security, mapped on to strategic and organisational gains made by various feminist organisations, Enloe reminds us that if we take seriously the lives of women – their understandings of security – as well as on-the-ground workings of masculinity and femininity, we will be able to produce more meaningful and more reliable analyses of 'security'– personal, national and global (Enloe, 2007, p. 47). This latter quote typifies an approach for which Enloe has become somewhat famous. In the early 1980s, Enloe began asking the questions for which she is rightly acknowledged as a key figure in feminist security studies, including Does Khaki Become You? (Enloe, 1983) and 'where are the women?' (Enloe, 2000; see also Enloe, 2004). Inspired by her own curiosity about the roles played by women and the functions performed by gender in the militarisation of civilian life, Enloe has explored prostitution, marriage, welfare and war making with an eye to the representation (both political and symbolic) of women. In Globalization and Militarism she offers detailed vignettes that illuminate just how interwoven violence is with the quest for (various types of) security, and demands that nothing is left unquestioned in a critical analysis of these concepts. Even baby socks (embossed with tiny fighter planes, a gift to the parent of a small boy) have something to tell us about gender, militarism and the casual representations of violence and war that society accepts (Enloe, 2007, pp. 143–4). Following a similar logic, although he initially defines human insecurity as avoidable civilian deaths, Roberts focuses on 'preventable female deaths ... and avoidable deaths in children under five' (2008, p. 31). While this conflation of 'civilian' with 'women and children' is rather problematic (see Carpenter, 2006), in asking not only, where are the women? but also, why are they dying in such disproportionate numbers? Roberts enhances his critique of 'most security studies ... that largely miss the scale of avoidable human misery and avoidable human death' (2008, p. 4). As mentioned above, Roberts uses Galtung's concept of structural violence to draw attention to the manifest ways in which an increasingly interconnected global system relies on gender and violence (and gendered violence) for its perpetuation: 'The process of globalization, to which few are ideologically or otherwise opposed, is an essential conveyor and articulator of the masculinity that underpins andrarchy' (Roberts, 2008, p. 157). Whereas Enloe offers a persuasive and accessible account of patriarchy, a concept familiar to feminist and non-feminist scholars alike (Enloe, 2007, pp. 66–8), Roberts suggests 'andrarchy' as an alternative, which he defines as 'the gender-partisan ideological domination and rule structure that determines and sustains the general relative power of males over females globally' (Roberts, 2008, p. 140). However, it is difficult to see how this reformulation either differs substantively from patriarchy as an analytical tool or assists in the construction of an alternative theory of global violence that centralises the individual, and therefore takes gender seriously, in that it seems to essentialise violent actors (males) and violated victims (females). In contrast, Enloe's explanation of patriarchy challenges such essentialism as its first point of critical intervention. That is, the assumption of essential differences between men and women is part of patriarchal ideology, feeding into stereotypical notions of how such men and women should behave, which in turn constitute recognisable discourses of gender: sets of narratives about masculinity and femininity and how these are, in general, respectively privileged and marginalised. The most theoretically coherent account of gender and violence offered in these three texts comes from Sjoberg and Gentry and employs the notion of discourse to great effect. Whereas Roberts seeks to map out a consciously structural account of global violence, where the structure in question is a hybrid of andrarchy and a 'rapacious, increasingly competitive and hyper-masculine' neoliberalism (Roberts, 2008, p. 118), Sjoberg and Gentry offer a more sophisticated analysis of structure and agency in their 'relational autonomy framework' that accounts for both individual agency and structural constraint (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, pp. 189–98). When people perform acts of political violence, they argue, this is a conscious choice, but crucially individuals 'choose within a specified spectrum of socially acceptable choices' (p. 190). 'In its simplest form, relational autonomy is the recognition that freedom of action is defined and limited by social relationships' (p. 194) and this has profound implications for the study of violence in global politics. Sjoberg and Gentry use this insight to demonstrate that women's violence in global politics is rendered unintelligible, through narrative representations of the perpetrators as mothers, monsters or whores (in media discourse and academic discussion), rather than as autonomous agents. From the abuses of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, via the 'black widows' of Chechnya, to female perpetrators of genocidal violence in Rwanda, the authors show how representations of women's violence conform to and further confirm the stereotypes of violent women as either mothers (supporting or vengeful), monsters or sexually deviant whores (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, pp. 30–49). The very different theories of violence outlined in these three texts all contribute to the development of a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of violence in global politics. By insisting that international relations are also gender relations – by demanding that we recognise that states are an analytical abstraction and politics is practised or performed by gendered bodies – all of the authors put forward theories of violence that are corrective of gender blindness, in that the violences in question are simultaneously gendered and gendering (see Shepherd, 2008, pp. 49–54). They are gendered because they have different impacts on male and female bodies (Enloe, 2007, p. 13), both materially as people experience violence differently depending on their gender (and race, class, sexuality and so on) and also discursively, as what we expect of men and women in terms of their behaviours, violent and otherwise, is limited by the meaning(s) ascribed to male and female bodies by society. Regarding the former, Roberts proposes that we term the global victimisation of women 'structural femicide' (Roberts, 2008, p. 65), but does not sufficiently engage with the question of whether defining gendered violence as violence against women (and children) functions to constitute the subject of 'woman' as a perpetual victim, in need of protection and lacking in agency (Shepherd, 2008, p. 41). In contrast, Sjoberg and Gentry neatly articulate the interplay between material and discursive violence as they write a theory that accounts 'for people's impact on global politics and for the impact of narratives others construct for and about them' (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, p. 216, emphasis in original). Thus, violence is gendering as our understanding of politics is in part reproduced through violent actions. Through discursive violence against individuals – for example, representing Chechen women suicide terrorists as 'black widows', which demands that they are attributed the characteristics of the venomous and deadly black widow spider and, further, that their violence is grounded in familial loss, 'born directly of a desire for vengeance for the deaths of their husbands and sons' (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, p. 100) rather than as the result of a process of political decision making – our understanding of that individual and of the act of violence itself is produced. Similarly, through material acts of violence, discourses of gender are given physical form; the detainees at Abu Ghraib who were forced to simulate oral sex with each other were forced to do so in part because of crude cultural understandings of homosexuality as deviant and homosexuals as lesser men – that is, as women. To force a man to perform oral sex on another man is to undermine his masculinity and simultaneously to reinforce the gendered power relations that claim privilege for masculinity over femininity, heterosexuality over homosexuality – power relations that render such an act intelligible in the first instance. Such understandings of violence are beyond the remit of conventional state-based approaches to international relations. However, 'it is by tracking the gendered assumptions about how to wield feminization to humiliate males' (Enloe, 2007, p. 115) and how to represent gendered individuals in such a way as to render some acts of violence intelligible as political and others as monstrous that we can begin to piece together a useful feminist account of global violence, which is a necessary component of understanding security. Everyday Violence and In-Between Days In addition to questioning what violence is, how it is represented and with what effects, feminist security studies scholarship also asks which violences are considered worthy of study and when these violences occur. Expanding the concept of violence that underpins feminist analysis, as outlined above, allows us to take seriously what Arthur Kleinman (2000) refers to as 'the violences of everyday life'. Beyond a narrow focus on war and state-based violence lies a plethora of everyday violences that feminist security studies seeks to address. In the field of security studies the broadening and deepening of the concept of security, such that it is no longer assumed to apply only to the sovereign state, has demonstrated the multiple insecurities experienced by individuals and social collectives (Booth, 2005, pp. 14–5). The development of the concept of 'human security' largely took place within the parameters of a wider disciplinary debate over the appropriate referent object for security studies (the individual, society, the state) and the types of threat to the referent object that would be recognised. In a move similar to Ken Booth's (1991) reformulation of security as emancipation, Roberts' quest for individual empowerment seeks to overcome the 'élite-legitimized disequilibrium' that results in the manifest insecurity of the majority of the world's population (Roberts, 2008, p. 185). As might be expected, the violences Roberts identifies are innumerable. In addition to the physical violences of 'infanticide, maternal mortality, intimate ("domestic", "honour" and "dowry") killings and lethal female genital mutilation; and avoidable deaths in children under five' (Roberts, 2008, p. 31), his analysis attacks the institutional structures of the dominant international financial institutions (pp. 117–35) and the andrarchal and neoliberal discourses that sustain them (pp. 136–58). In short, Roberts' answer to the question of which violences matter in global politics is quite simple: all of them. However, while studies of human security, he argues, seek to provide the human with security, his reformulated analytic takes as its starting point human insecurity; that is, he starts with the threat(s) to the sovereign subject rather than the subject's ontological condition. Roberts suggests that this circumvents the disciplinary definitional problem with human security – identified by Roland Paris (2001), Edward Newman (2001; 2004) and others – but I cannot see how this is the case, given that the answer to the question 'what is it that humans do to make the world a more dangerous and dysfunctional place?' (Roberts, 2008, p. 28) is also quite simple: we live in it. Thus Roberts' analytic seems to suffer the same lack of definitional clarity – and therefore policy relevance – that he ascribes to more conventional approaches; it is no easier to identify, quantify and ultimately reduce the threats experienced by coexisting human subjects than it is to provide those human subjects with security, if security can first be defined as freedom from fear or want. I do not espouse some construction of human nature (if such a thing were to exist) that assumes essential selfishness and a propensity for violence, nor do I assume that security is a zero-sum game, in that one person's security must always be at the expense of another's, but I recognise that even the most well-intentioned security policy can have unforeseen and sometimes disastrous effects. Sometimes, moreover, as Sjoberg and Gentry demonstrate, the decision to perform acts of political violence that are a source of insecurity for the intended victims can be understood if not condoned. Enloe's analytical remit is similarly wide-ranging to Roberts', in that she focuses on processes – globalisation and militarism – that are inherently violent. However, although Enloe also insists that all violences should count in the study of global politics, she grounds this claim in an analysis of specific sites of violence and demonstrates with startling clarity just how everyday items – for example, sneakers – are both globalised and militarised: Threaded through virtually every sneaker you own is some relationship to masculinized militaries. Locating factories in South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s was a good strategic decision in the eyes of those Oregon-headquartered male Nike executives because of the close alliance between male policymakers in Washington and Seoul. It was a relationship – unequal but intimate – based on their shared anticommunism, their shared commitment to waging the Cold War, and their shared participation in an ambitious international military alliance (Enloe, 2007, p. 28). By drawing her readers' attention to the ways in which discourses of gender (ideas about how 'proper' men and women should behave) function, Enloe reminds us that adhering to ideals of masculinity and femininity is both productive of violence and is a violence in itself, a violence against the empowered human subject. 'Ideas matter', she concludes, ideas about modernity, security, violence, threat, trust. 'Each of these ideas is fraught with blatant and subtle presumptions about masculinity and femininity. Ideas about both masculinity and femininity matter. This makes a feminist curiosity a necessity' (Enloe, 2007, p. 161). While conventional studies of IR and security may be willing to concede that ideas matter (see Finnemore and Sikkink, 2001), paying close attention to the work that gender does allows for a fuller understanding of why it is that particular violences fall outside the traditional parameters of study. As to the question of when violence is worthy of study, all three texts implicitly or explicitly draw on the popular feminist phrase: 'the personal is political'. This slogan neatly encapsulates the feminist critique of a supposed foundational divide between the private and the public realms of social life. In arguing that the personal is political, feminist theory refuses to accept that there are instances of human behaviour or situations in social life that can or should be bracketed from study. At its simplest, this critique led to the recognition of 'domestic violence' as a political, rather than a personal issue (see, for example Moore, 2003; Youngs, 2003), forming the foundation for critical studies of gendered violence in times of war and in times of peace that would otherwise have been ignored. Crucially, Enloe extended the boundaries of critique to include the international, imbuing the phrase with new analytical vitality when she suggested, first, that the phrase itself is palindromic (that is, that the political is also personal, inextricably intertwined with the everyday) and, second, that the personal is international just as the international is personal. 'The international is personal' implies that governments depend upon certain kinds of allegedly private relationships in order to conduct their foreign affairs. ... To operate in the international arena, governments seek other governments' recognition of their sovereignty; but they also depend on ideas about masculinised dignity and feminised sacrifice to sustain that sense of autonomous nationhood (Enloe, 2000, pp. 196–7). These ideas about dignity and sacrifice are not neatly contained within the temporal boundaries of any given war, nor are they incidental to the practice of warfare. Further, there is of course also the question of who gets to define or declare war, or peace. While some of the violent women whose actions are analysed by Sjoberg and Gentry perform their violences in wartime (for example, Lynndie England, who received the most attention from global media of the women involved in prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib; see Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, pp. 67–70), others are fighting wars that are not sanctioned by the international community (such as the Chechen women pp. 97–111 and female Palestinian suicide bombers pp. 112–40). As discussed above, ideas about masculinity and femininity, dignity and sacrifice may not only be violent in themselves, but are also the product/productive of physical violences. With this in mind, the feminist argument that 'peacetime' is analytically misleading is a valid one. Of interest are the 'in-between days' and the ways in which labelling periods of war or peace as such can divert attention away from the myriad violences that inform and reinforce social behaviour. War can surely never be said to start and end at a clearly defined moment. Rather, it seems part of a continuum of conflict, expressed now in armed force, now in economic sanctions or political pressure. A time of supposed peace may come later to be called 'the pre-war period'. During the fighting of a war, unseen by the foot soldiers under fire, peace processes are often already at work. A time of postwar reconstruction, later, may be re-designated as an inter bellum– a mere pause between wars (Cockburn and Zarkov, cited in El Jack, 2003, p. 9). Feminist security studies interrogates the pauses between wars, and the political processes – and practices of power – that demarcate times as such. In doing so, not only is the remit of recognisable violence (violence worthy of study) expanded, but so too are the parameters of what counts as IR. Everyday violences and acts of everyday resistance ('a fashion show, a tour, a small display of children's books' in Enloe, 2007, pp. 117–20) are the stuff of relations international and, thus, of a comprehensive understanding of security. In the following section I outline the ways in which taking these claims seriously allows us to engage critically with the representations of international relations that inform our research, with potentially profound implications. The Violent Reproduction of the International As well as conceiving of gender as a set of discourses, and violence as a means of reproducing and reinforcing the relevant discursive limits, it is possible to see security as a set of discourses, as I have argued more fully elsewhere (Shepherd, 2007; 2008; see also Shepherd and Weldes, 2007). Rather than pursuing the study of security as if it were something that can be achieved either in absolute, partial or relative terms, engaging with security as discourse enables the analysis of how these discourses function to reproduce, through various strategies, the domain of the international with which IR is self-consciously concerned. Just as violences that are gendering reproduce gendered subjects, on this view states, acting as authoritative entities, perform violences, but violences, in the name of security, also perform states. These processes occur simultaneously, and across the whole spectrum of social life: an instance of rape in war is at once gendering of the individuals involved and of the social collectivities – states, communities, regions – they feel they represent (see Bracewell, 2000); building a fence in the name of security that separates people from their land and extended families performs particular kinds of violence (at checkpoints, during patrols) and performs particular subject identities (of the state authority, of the individuals affected), all of which are gendered. All of the texts under discussion in this essay argue that it is imperative to explore and expose gendered power relations and, further, that doing so not only enables a rigorous critique of realism in IR but also reminds us as scholars of the need for such a critique. The critiques of IR offered by feminist scholars are grounded in a rejection of neo-realism/realism as a dominant intellectual framework for academics in the discipline and policy makers alike. As Enloe reminds us, 'the government-centred, militarized version of national security derived from a realist framework remains the dominant mode of policy thinking' (Enloe, 2007, p. 43). Situating gender as a central category of analysis encourages us to 'think outside the "state security box"' (p. 47) and to remember that 'the "individuals" of global politics do not work alone, live alone or politic alone – they do so in interdependent relationships with others' (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2008, p. 200) that are inherently gendered. One of the key analytical contributions of all three texts is the way in which they all challenge what it means to be 'doing' IR, by recognising various forms of violence, interrogating the public/private divide and demanding that attention is paid to the temporal and physical spaces in-between war and peace. Feminist security studies should not simply be seen as 'women doing security', or as 'adding women to IR/security studies', important as these contributions are. Through their theorising, the authors discussed here reconfigure what 'counts' as IR, challenging orthodox notions of who can 'do' IR and what 'doing' IR means. The practices of power needed to maintain dominant configurations of international relations are exposed, and critiquing the productive power of realism as a discourse is one way in which the authors do this. Sjoberg and Gentry pick up on a recent theoretical shift in Anglo-American IR, from system-level analysis to a recognition that individuals matter. However, as they rightly point out, the individuals who are seen to matter are not gendered relational beings, but rather reminiscent of Hobbes' construction of the autonomous rational actor. 'The narrowness of the group that such an approach includes limits its effectiveness as an interpretive framework and reproduces the gender, class and race biases in system-level international relationship scholarship' (Sjoberg and Gentry 2008, p. 200, emphasis added). Without paying adequate attention to the construction of individuals as gendered beings, or to the reproduction of widely held ideas about masculine and feminine behaviours, Sjoberg and Gentry remind us that we will ultimately fail 'to see and deconstruct the increasingly subtle, complex and disguised ways in which gender pervades international relations and global politics' (2008, p. 225). In a similar vein, Roberts notes that 'human security is marginalised or rejected as inauthentic because it is not a reflection of realism's (male) agendas and priorities' (2008, p. 169). The 'agendas and priorities' identified by Roberts and acknowledged by Sjoberg and Gentry as being productive of particular biases in scholarship are not simply 'academic' matters, in the pejorative sense of the term. As Roberts argues, 'Power relationships of inequality happen because they are built that way by human determinism of security and what is required to maintain security (p. 171). Realism, as academic discourse and as policy guideline, has material effects. Although his analysis employs an unconventional definition of the term 'social construction' (seemingly interchangeable with 'human agency') and rests on a novel interpretation of the three foundational assumptions of realism (Roberts, 2008, pp. 169–77), the central point that Roberts seeks to make in his conclusion is valid: 'it is a challenge to those who deny relationships between gender and security; between human agency (social construction) and lethal outcome' (p. 183). In sum, all three texts draw their readers to an inescapable, and – for the conventional study of IR – a devastating conclusion: the dominance of neo-realism/realism and the state-based study of security that derives from this is potentially pathological, in that it is in part productive of the violences it seeks to ameliorate. I suggest that critical engagement with orthodox IR theory is necessary for the intellectual growth of the discipline, and considerable insight can be gained by acknowledging the relevance of feminist understandings of gender, power and theory. The young woman buying a T-shirt from a multinational clothing corporation with her first pay cheque, the group of young men planning a stag weekend in Amsterdam, a group of students attending a demonstration against the bombing of Afghanistan – studying these significant actions currently falls outside the boundaries of doing security studies in mainstream IR and I believe these boundaries need contesting. As Marysia Zalewski argues: International politics is what we make it to be ... We need to rethink the discipline in ways that will disturb the existing boundaries of both that which we claim to be relevant in international politics and what we assume to be legitimate ways of constructing knowledge about the world (Zalewski 1996, p. 352, emphasis in original). Conclusion: 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom, Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Contend' (Mao Tse-Tung) In this essay, I have used the analysis of three contemporary publications in the field of feminist security studies to demonstrate three significant sets of analytical contributions that such scholarship makes to the discipline of IR. Beyond the war/peace dichotomy that is frequently assumed to be definitive of the discipline, we find many and various forms of violence, occurring in and between temporally distinct periods of conflict, which are the product/productive of socially acceptable modes of gendered behaviour, ways of being in the world as a woman or man. I have also argued that critical engagement with conventional, state-based approaches to (national) security must persist as the academic discourses we write are complicit in the construction of the global as we understand it. Further, 'if all experience is gendered, analysis of gendered identities is an imperative starting point in the study of political identities and practice' (Peterson, 1999, p. 37). To this end, I conclude by suggesting that we take seriously Enloe's final comment: 'Tracking militarization and fostering demilitarization will call for cooperative investigations, multiple skills and the appreciation of diverse perspectives' (2007, p. 164). While there has been intense intra-disciplinary debate within contemporary feminist security studies over the necessary 'feminist credentials' of some gendered analyses, it is important to recognise the continual renewal and analytical vigour brought to the field by such debates.
Put away your "no root cause" cards from 20 years ago- best social science data votes Aff
Prugl, PhD, 2014
(Elisabeth, Feminist Interventions in International Relations in Under Development: Gender edited by Christine Verschuur, Isabelle Guérin, Hélène Guétat-Bernard )
For feminists, assertions that war-making has nothing to do with gender has always sounded hollow in light of the predominance of men in the security apparatus. The masculinity of war thus is a starting point for a number of feminist studies, yet there is contestation about what exactly the relationship is between gender and war. It is possible to identify three fault-lines in the feminist literature. The first focuses on the premise that associates men with war and women with peace: Is it correct to say that men for the most part support war and that women are more likely to favour peace? The second divide pertains to levels of analysis and addresses causality: Does the relationship between gender and war belong at the individual or systemic/structural level? Finally, the third fault-line pertains to the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and war: Does militarist masculinity have a substantive content or are masculinity and war empty signifiers that derive their potency from their formal qualities? The first disagreement amongst feminists is whether women should be thought of as outside war or inside war. On the surface, the evidence is striking: historically and cross-culturally men have accounted for the vast majority of soldiers and fighters. Women have participated in fighting wars, but they have invariably made up only a small minority of fighters (Goldstein, 2001). While this puzzle has given rise to interesting theorising, feminists have been uncomfortable with universalist assertions that reproduce the association of women with peace and men with war and that fail to take into consideration historical and cultural contexts.1 Against the empirical record that associates men with war and women with peace, feminists thus have put forward evidence that contradicts the idea that women do not fight. In part they have done so by broadening the types of militarised conflicts they look at to include non-state actors, and by taking seriously the various supporting roles that women play in conflicts. This has allowed them to bring into view the fact that women participate in violence and wars extensively: they cheer on men to engage in violence and shame them into participation (Goldstein, 2001); they have appeared as suicide bombers in the Middle East, in terrorist activities in Chechnya, and as participants in the Rwandan genocide (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007); they have a long record of fighting in liberation movements and militias, in African, Asian and Latin American revolutions of the 20th century, in loyalist militias in North Ireland, in militant movements in Kashmir and Sri Lanka, and in recent African conflicts from Sierra Leone to the Congo (T£treault, 1994; Puechguirbal, 2003; Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007; McEvoy, 2009; Parashar, 2009; MacKenzie, 2009). Women do not constitute a majority of fighters in these contexts, but they make significant contributions, accounting for over 30 of insurgents in some instances. Moreover, women increasingly are integrated in regular militaries; they now account for almost 15 of the US military (The Women's Memorial, 2011), the highest amongst NATO member states.2 The second disagreement amongst feminists focuses on the question of the causal or constitutive relationship between gender and war, and whether this relationship needs to be explored at the individual or the systemic/structural level of analysis. In other words, is masculinity a cause of war or are war and masculinity co-constituted? And do these causalities arise from socialisation and individual identities or from the masculinisation/militarisation of societies, cultures and global structures? These are amongst the most contested issues with far-reaching implications for how feminist scholarship can connect to security studies more broadly. The difference between approaches largely hinges on the understanding of gender. A series of quantitative studies has made a link between a country's propensity to go to war and the degree of gender equality within a country. They have shown a strong and consistent correlation between domestic gender inequality and a tendency of states to resolve conflicts violently. Using different indicators for gender equality (such as the percentage of women in the labour force and in parliament) and for violent conflict (militarised interstate and intrastate disputes and a "global peace index") and drawing on different databases, these studies agree that gender inequality is a significant predictor of conflict that in some models even outweighs the key explanatory variable of democracy (Tessler and Warriner, 1997; Caprioli, 2000, 2003, 2005; Caprioli and Boyer, 2001; Regan and Paskeviciute, 2003). Although empirically operating at a state level of analysis, scholars have drawn on arguments at the individual level to explain this correlation, evoking evolutionary biology and psychology. They have argued the adaptive advantage of male violence and its diffusion over time and drawn a causal relationship between resulting male characteristics and war fighting (Hudson et al., 2008). But the argument is difficult to sustain. Goldstein's comprehensive survey of evidence finds no support for simplistic causalities based on human biology and psychology, emphasising the interaction of biology with culture. Ultimately, he explains, the cross-cultural uniformity in the association of warfare with men is a result of "small, innate biological gender differences in average size, strength, and roughness of play" which combine with the "cultural modeling of tough, brave men, who feminize their enemies to encode domination" (Goldstein, 2001, p. 406). Biology and culture interact to produce a universal pattern and, in a startling reversal of general wisdom, biology emerges as more malleable than culture. Goldstein's survey thus gestures towards levels of analysis beyond the individual. A more thoroughly constructivist understanding than his leads to explanations at systemic or structural levels. A long tradition of feminist literature has located the relationship between war and gender at the systemic level and postulated a connection between patriarchy and "the war system" (Reardon, 1985). This type of literature has found the reasons for militarism in various forms of misogyny and suggested that fighting patriarchy is imperative in order to overcome war (e.g., Wasmuht, 2002; Mathis, 2002; Zwingel, 2003; Sjoberg, 2012). Cynthia Cockburn (2010) recently has provided a re-statement of this argument that takes into consideration new developments in feminist theory, including a focus on intersectionality. Taking the standpoint of anti-war feminist movement activists, she suggests that gender relations are one important root cause of war. She rejects individual-level arguments, emphasising that this causality cannot be put on the backs of what individual men and women do. Instead, war is a system in which everyday violence operates on a continuum with military violence, in which militaries and governing ideologies are systemically intertwined, and in which economic power and ethnic and national power intersect with gender power. She conceptualises militarised masculinities and femininities as emerging from social practices and discourses, insisting that these constructions can be thought of as causal. Similarly operating on a systemic and structural level, Cynthia Enloe (1989, 1993, 2000, 2010) has perhaps most extensively explored the structuring logic of masculinity and militarism in her large body of writings, making both causal and constitutive arguments. Relentlessly pursing the question "where are the women" in international affairs, she provides a forceful narrative of the power that is necessary to keep women in their subordinate place and enable militarist and exploitative international politics. Like Cockburn, Enloe takes her cues from feminist anti-militarist networks and talks about patriarchal social orders as "engines of militarization" (2007, p. 15). Yet her single-minded focus on women also leads her beyond simple causality to observe the parallel imbrications of economic and political orders with masculinist and militarist values and the perverse effects of these on marginalised populations. (151-4)
The judge should make an ethical decision about gender violence – this requires setting aside issues of political expediency. Concerns with political will or scarce resources makes possible violence against women
Enloe 04 Cynthia, prof of IR, The Curious Feminist, p. 74
Thus we need to become more curious about the process of trivialization. How exactly do regimes, opposition parties, judges, popular movements, and the press go about making any incident of violence against women appear trivial? The gendered violence can be explained as inevitable- that is, not worth the expenditure of political capital. Or it can be treated by the trivializers as numerically inconsequential, so rare that it would seem wasteful of scarce political will or state resources to try to prevent it. Third, trivialization can be accomplished by engaging in comparisons: how can one spend limited political attention on, say, domestic violence or forced prostitution when there are market forces like global competition, structural adjustment, or nuclear testing to deal with- as if, that is, none of those had any relationship to the incidence of violence against women? Finally, trivialization may take the form of undermining the credibility of the messenger. As early as the 1800's trivializers already were labeling women who spoke out publicly against violence against women as "loose," "prudish," or disappointed (it would be the trivializers twentieth century successors who would thing to add "lesbian").
JANFEB Fem AC V3
Tournament: Tournament of Champions | Round: 6 | Opponent: West Des Moines Valley JM | Judge: Castillo, Chris
War and feminism The logic of masculinist protection, I have argued, helps account for the rationale leaders give for deepening a security state and its acceptance by those living under their rule. There are two faces to the security state, one facing outward to defend against enemies and the other facing inward to keep those under protection under necessary control. So far I have concentrated on describing recent legislative and executive actions of the U.S. government in terms of the inward-looking face. Now I shall turn to the outward looking face, the United States as war maker. In fall 2001 the United States led a bombing campaign against Afghanistan. Even though that state had not taken aggressive action against the United States, the United States justified the war as a defensive reaction to the attacks of September 11. Perhaps because the claim that the state of Afghanistan actively supported al-Qaeda was weak, the United States quickly repackaged the war as a case of humanitarian intervention to liberate the Afghan people. The logic of masculinist protection appears in the claimed relationship of the United States to people outside the West, particularly in Islamic countries, ruled by brutal dictatorships. The United States will fight and sacrifice to save them. The Bush administration used the same discourse to justify a proposed war against Iraq. The United States defends not only itself in this scenario, but all the world's freedom for which the weapons Iraq might have are a threat. By saving ourselves we also save the Iraqi people from domination. So the United States is the protector of the world. Through this logic the American people and others who choose to identify with the actions of the United States can put themselves into the role of the protector, even as the state restricts our freedom for our own good. Packaging the war against Afghanistan as a humanitarian war to protect the Afghan people from domination was particularly effective because the Bush administration and journalists focused on women (cf. Tickner 2002). The women of Afghanistan constituted the ultimate victims, putting the United States in the position of ultimate protector. Use of the rhetoric of women's rights by the Bush administration during and after the war against Afghanistan should make feminists very uncomfortable. I wonder whether some seeds for such cynical appeals to the need to save women might not have been sown by some recent discourse and practice that positioned North American and European feminists as protectors of oppressed women in Asia and Africa. On November 17, 2001, Laura Bush became the first wife to give the president's Saturday morning radio address, which was devoted to condemning what she called the Taliban's war on women and justifying the U.S. war as an effort to free Afghan women (Stout 2001). After the overthrow of the Taliban regime, the Bush administration repeatedly invoked women's liberation to justify the war. In his 2002 State of the Union address, for example, George W. Bush said, "The last time we met in this chamber the mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school. Today women are free, and are part of Afghanistan's new government" (George W. Bush speech, January 29, 2002 Bush 2002c). On International Women's Day, Laura Bush spoke to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, linking the terrorist attacks with the oppression of women and thus, by implication, the war on terrorism with the liberation of women: The terrorist attacks of September 11 galvanized the international community. Many of us have drawn valuable lessons from the tragedies. People around the world are looking closely at the roles women play in their societies. Afghanistan under the Taliban gave the world a sobering example of a country where women were denied their rights and their place in society. Today, the world is helping Afghan women return to the lives they once knew. Women were once important contributors to Afghan society, and they had the right to vote as early as the 1920s. . . . This is a time of rebuilding— of unprecedented opportunity—thanks to efforts led by the United Nations, the United States, the new Afghan government, and our allies around the world. (Laura Bush speech to United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, March 8, 2002 L. Bush 2002) Years before the attacks of September 2001, U.S. feminists mounted a campaign directed at saving the women of Afghanistan from the Taliban. Although they lobbied the Clinton administration to put pressure on the Taliban government regarding women's rights, neither Clinton nor Bush evinced any concern for the situation of women under the Taliban before the war. Appeal to women's rights was thus a cynical attempt to gain support for the war among the citizens of the United States and other liberal countries. Some feminists jumped onto the war bandwagon. Shortly after the war began, for example, Eleanor Smeal, leader of the Feminist Majority, chatted cordially with U.S. generals: "'They went off about the role of women in this effort and how imperative it was that women were now in every level of the Air Force and Navy,' said Smeal, who found herself cheered by the idea of women flying F16s. 'It's a different kind of war' she says, echoing the President's assessment of Operation Enduring Freedom" (Lerner 2001). Certainly the Taliban should have been condemned for its policies, as should all the world's governments that perpetrate or allow systematic and discriminatory harms to and subordination of women. The Taliban stood with only a few other governments in the world in the degree of legally enforced restriction of women's freedom and horrible punishments. Even before the war it seemed to me, however, and still seems to me, that feminist focus on women under the Taliban constructed these women as exoticized others and paradigmatic victims in need of salvation by Western feminists, and it conveniently deflected attention from perhaps more intractable and mundane problems of gender-based violence, domination, and poverty in many other parts of the world, including the enlightened West. What is wrong with this stance, if it has existed, is that it fails to consider the women as equals, and it does not have principled ways of distancing itself from paternalist militarism. The stance of the male protector, I have argued, is one of loving selfsacrifice, with those in the feminine position as the objects of love and guardianship. Chivalrous forms of masculinism express and enact concern for the well-being of women, but they do so within a structure of superiority and subordination. The male protector confronts evil aggressors in the name of the right and the good, while those under his protection submit to his order and serve as handmaids to his efforts. Colonialist ideologies have often expressed a similar logic. The knights of civilization aim to bring enlightened understanding to the further regions of the world still living in cruel and irrational traditions that keep them from developing the economic and political structures that will bring them a good life. The suppression of women in these societies is a symptom of such backwardness. Troops will be needed to bring order and guard fledgling institutions, and foreign aid workers to feed, cure, and educate, but all this is only a period of tutelage that will end when the subject people demonstrate their ability to gain their own livelihood and run their own affairs. Many people living in Asian, African, and Latin American societies believe that not only U.S. military hegemony but also international trade and financial institutions, as well as many Western-based nongovernmental development agencies, position them in this way as feminized or infantilized women and children under the protection and guidance of the wise and active father. In its rhetoric and practice, according to some scholars, the British feminist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries aligned itself with the universal humanitarian civilizing mission invoked as the justification for the British Empire. Feminists endorsed male imperial leaders' assessment of the status of women in other nations as a measure of their level of moral development. Such interest in the status of women was useful to feminists in pointing out the hypocrisy of denying women's rights in the center as one fought for them in the periphery. Providing services for Indian women and other oppressed women in the empire also offered opportunities for the employment of middle-class professional women (Burton 1994). Some contemporary feminists have worried that Western feminism today has had some tendency to express and act in similar ways in relation to non-Western women. In a well-known essay, Chandra Mohanty, for example, claims that Western feminists too often use an objectified general category of third-world women, who are represented as passive and victimized by their unenlightened cultures and political regimes (1991). Uma Narayan claims that much feminist discussion of the situation of women in Asian and African societies, or women in Asian immigrant communities in Western societies, "replicates problematic aspects of Western representations of Third World nations and communities, aspects that have their roots in the history of colonization" (1997, 43). Assuming that these criticisms of some of the discourse, attitudes, and actions of Western feminists have some validity, the stance they identify helps account for the ease with which feminist rhetoric can be taken up by today's imperialist power and used for its own ends. It also helps account for the support of some feminists for the war against Afghanistan. Sometimes feminists may identify with the stance of the masculine protector in relation to vulnerable and victimized women. The protector-protected relation is no more egalitarian, however, when between women than between men and women. According to some recent reports, the lives of women in Afghanistan have changed little since before the war, except that some of them have lost their homes, their relatives, and what little livelihood they had (Reilly 2002). The oppression of most of them remains embedded in social structure, custom, and a culture of warlord anarchism. I would not argue that humanitarian reasons can never justify going to war against a state. I think, however, that such protectionist grounds for military intervention must be limited to situations of genocide or impending genocide and where the war actually makes rescue possible (Young 2003). Even if the U.S. government is sincere in its conviction that its military efforts are intended to save the world from evil, its political and military hegemony materially harms many poor and defenseless people of the world and positions most of the world in a position of subordination that nurtures resentment. Democratic global citizenship The contemporary security state in the United States, like many security states, has two faces, one looking outward and the other inward. Each aspect reinforces the other. Both threaten democratic values in the institutions and practices of the United States, as well as globally. Citizens and residents who accept the security state because they fear attack allow them selves to be positioned as women and children in relation to paternal protector-leaders. At the same time, to the extent that we identify with a rhetoric of war for the sake of saving the victims of tyranny, we put ourselves in a position superior to those we construct as in need of our aid. Whether looking outward or inward, adopting a more democratic ethos entails rejecting the inequality inherent in the protector-protected logic. When leaders promulgate fear and promise to keep us safe, they conjure up childish fantasies and desires. We are vulnerable beings, and we want very much to be made safe by a being superior in power to all that might threaten us. Democratic citizens, however, should resist leaders' attempts to play father over us. We should insist that government do its job to promote security without issuing guarantees it cannot redeem or requiring subordination from the people it promises to protect. Democratic citizenship should first involve admitting that no state can make any of us completely safe and that leaders who promise that are themselves suspect. The world is full of risks. Prudence dictates that we assess risks, get information about their sources, and try to minimize them, and we rightly expect our government to do much of this for us. In a democracy citizens should not have to trade this public responsibility for submission to surveillance, arbitrary decisions, and the stifling of criticism. In making this claim I am extending recent feminist arguments against a model of citizenship that requires each citizen to be independent and self-sufficient in order to be equal and fully autonomous. Feminist theorists of care and welfare have argued that the rights and dignity of individuals should not be diminished just because they need help and support in order to carry out their chosen projects (Tronto 1994; Kittay 1999). Persons who need care or other forms of social support ought not to be forced into a position of subordination and obedience in relation to those who provide care and support; not only should they retain the rights of full citizens to choose their own way of life and hold authorities accountable but also they ought to be able to criticize the way in which support comes to them (Sevenhuijsen 1998; Hirschmann 2002, chap. 5; Young 2003). This feminist argument rejects the assumption behind a notion of self-sufficient citizenship that a need for social support or care is more exceptional than normal. On the contrary, the well-being of all persons can be enhanced by the care and support of others, and in modern societies some of this generalized care and support ought to be organized and guaranteed through state institutions. The organization of reasonable measures to protect people from harm and to make people confident that they can move and act relatively safely is another form of social support. Citizens should not have to trade their liberty of movement or right to protest and hold leaders accountable in return for such security. Democratic citizenship thus means ultimately rejecting the hierarchy of protector and protected. In the article I cited above, Stiehm argues that rejection of this hierarchy implies installing a position of defender in place of both that of the protector and the protected. A society of defenders is "a society composed of citizens equally liable to experience violence and equally responsible for exercising society's violence" (1982, 374). Modern democracies, including U.S. democracy, are founded partly on the principle that citizens should be able to defend themselves if they are also to defend the republic from tyranny. In the twenty-first century, in a world of organized and less organized military institutions and weapons capable of unimaginable destruction, it is hard to know what it might mean for world citizens to exercise collective self-defense. It certainly does not mean that every individual should amass his or her own weapons cache. Nor does it mean whole groups and nations engaging in arms races. The distinction between defender and protector invokes an ideal of equality in the work of defense, and today this may have at least as much to do with political processes that limit weapons and their use as with wielding arms. The United States claims to use its arms to do this, much as a policeman does in domestic life. In a democratic relationship, however, the policeman protector comes under the collective authority of the people whose neighborhood he patrols. Democratic citizenship at a global level, then, would constitute a relationship of respect and political equality among the world's peoples where none of us think that we stand in the position of the paternal authority who knows what is good for the still-developing others. To the extent that global law enforcement is necessary, it is only legitimate if the world's peoples together have formulated the rules and actions of such enforcement (cf. Archibugi and Young 2002)
#CallLessPhiolosobros – reject obsessions with philosophy – it's an embodiment of masculinity because it privileges the certain forms of deliberation they find valuable. They're able to distance themselves from their social locations.
(Lauren, 8-3-16, Brocrates: Misogyny In Philosophy, http://lotswife.com.au/2016/08/03/brocrates-misogyny-in-philosophy/, JKS)
What is a philosophy bro (also known as a 'philosobro')? A philosophy bro is a man who thinks he knows a lot about philosophy, or perhaps even does know a lot about philosophy, and he definitely thinks he knows more than you (unless you're Peter Singer, whom philosobros tend to admire). They are usually found in the undergraduate philosophy classroom, Monash Philosophy Society, and sometimes in Wholefoods. You might be able to spot them by keeping an eye (or ear) out for men speaking loudly, name-dropping philosophers, and using overly complicated vocabulary and philosophy jargon. In class, or group discussions, they might repeat everything you've just said as if it were an entirely new and original point, speak over you, not listen to you, or mansplain something to you that you definitely already know. Philosobros prize rationality and reason, and are seemingly still influenced by the stereotype that women are irrational and emotional, which may be why they love to talk down to us, or assume we don't know what we're talking about. It's not uncommon for women to not have their points taken up by philosobros until they've been repeated by other men. They seriously just don't listen. On the occasion that they do listen to you, they'll probably try pretty hard to derail the conversation. "I see your point but your argument is not clear. Where are the premises? What is your conclusion?" and "Have you got anything more than anecdotal evidence to back that up?" are common expressions you may hear philosobros spouting. Anecdotal evidence is absolutely not acceptable, and if you do have empirical evidence to back up your premises, it had better be of statistical significance, otherwise it won't be regarded worthy of their consideration. All of this points to philosophy's problem with women. It's not very well known, in fact I didn't realise until I was in the third year of my philosophy major, that philosophy is male dominated. It's like the STEM of Arts. The main authors in almost all subsets of philosophy are predominantly male, philosophy departments tend to average 30 female staff (it's worse in the UK and North America), and top philosophy journals publish way more men than women. Monash has never had a female professor in philosophy, women hit the glass ceiling when they reach the level of associate professor. While many Arts disciplines were similarly male dominated a few decades ago, most of them have remedied their problems and now have a decent gender balance. Philosophy lags behind, and philosophy bros are a contributing factor.
Meta-ethics are shaped by gendered assumptions – morality can't be based on abstract rules that rely on the white, masculine subject's "reason".
Lynne S Arnault 92, PhD, Prof Miss State Gender/Body/Knowledge, Ed. By Alison Jagger, 1992
For many philosophers in the American-British analytic tradition, radical feminist moral theory seems way out in left field. Feminist repudiation of essentialism and the autonomous self, its rejection of the "standpoint of exchange" and mind-centered definitions of moral reasoning, its emphasis on the influence of gender and gender politics in the construction of knowledge, including moral theory—all suggest to many analytic philosophers a radically different and problematic meta-ethical orientation. In this essay, I hope to gain support for radical feminist moral theory by taking a classic theory of moral reasoning—R. M. Hare's universal prescriptivism—and exposing its radical future.1 1 will attempt to show that in order to meet its own criteria of universalizability and prescriptivity, this formalist-dispositional account of morals must abandon the liberal conception of the self and its accompanying, monological model of moral deliberation. Maintaining the internal coherence of Hare's ideal of universal prescriptivism, I will argue, requires a trip to left field, endorsing a more radicalized conception of autonomy and allowing for the possibility that social divisions may be so embedded in the structure of things as to infect even the means of discourse. i call Hare's theory of universal prescriptivism a "classic'' moral theory for two reasons. First, American-British analytic philosophers generally regard it as a major contribution to the development of "the novel issues and methods introduced into ethical theory in the twentieth century" (Kemer 1966:2). With the publication of G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica in 1903, American-British moral philosophy took a linguistic turn, involving itself with the logical analysis of moral terms, judgments, and modes of reasoning. Because Hare's theory that "the language of morals is one sort of prescriptive language" (Hare 1952:1) is usually included in analytic philosophy's canon of great theories, I have applied the honorific term "classic" to it. Second, 1 call Hare's theory of universal prescriptivism a "classic" because 1 believe that if we put aside the particularities of the relatively new "linguistic mm" and the importance of Hare's theory within it, we find that the deep assumptions underlying Hare's theory are not really novel at all but have dominated western philosophy since the seventeenth century. Hare's moral theory embodies commitments to universalism, impersonality, detachment, dispas-sion, neutrality, and the social transcendency of language. It is representative of a tradition with certain enduring, dominating beliefs: that morality consists in respect for rules; that moral decision making is a matter of using the proper moral calculus; and that meta-ethics consists in identifying precisely the correct method for justifying moral judgments. These assumptions, I would argue, have systematically privileged the point of view of a particular group of people (white, middle-class males of European descent) and have reinforced dualistic ideologies of masculinity and femininity. (186-7)
Traditional ethics ignores women's interests.
Alison M. Jaggar 13 American feminist philosopher born in England. She is currently College Professor of Distinction in the Philosophy and Women and Gender Studies departments at the University of Colorado, Boulder and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. She was one of the first people to introduce feminist concerns in to philosophy, "Feminist ethics." The Blackwell guide to ethical theory (2013): 433-460.
Since most feminist ethics is done in a Western context, it is Western ethics, particularly (though not exclusively) the European Enlightenment tradition, that has been the most frequent target of feminist critique. The feminist challenges to this tradition may be grouped conveniently under five main headings. Lack of concern for women's interests. Many of the major theorists, such as ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.) and ROUSSEAU (1712–1778), are accused of having given insufficient consideration to women's INTERESTS, a lack of concern expressed theoretically by their prescribing for women allegedly feminine virtues such as obedience, silence, and faithfulness. Some feminists charge that many contemporary ethical discussions continue the tendency to regard women as instrumental to male-dominated INSTI- TUTIONS, such as the FAMILY or the state; in debates on abortion, for instance, the pregnant woman may be portrayed as little more than a container or en- vironment for the fetus, while much discussion of reproductive technology has assumed that infertility is a problem only for heterosexual married women, i.e., women defined in relationship to men.
Abstract theorizing allows material harm to continue against marginalized women – we should instead focus on concrete particulars as a starting point as the only ethical strategy
Matsuda 88 (Mari, Associate Professor of Law, University of Hawaii, "When the First Quail Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential Method", 11 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 7 1989)
The multiple consciousness I urge lawyers to attain is not a random ability to see all points of view, but a deliberate choice to see the world from the standpoint of the oppressed. That world is accessible to all of us. We should know it in its concrete particulars. We should know of our sister carrying buckets of water up five flights of stairs in a welfare hotel, our sister trembling at 3 a.m. in a shelter for battered women, our sisters holding bloodied children in their arms in Cape Town, on the West Bank, and in Nicaragua. The jurispru- dence of outsiders teaches that these details and the emotions they evoke are relevant and impor- tant as we set out on the road to justice. These details are accessible to all of us, of all genders and colors. We can choose to know the lives of others by reading, studying, listening, and ventur- ing into different places. For lawyers, our pro bono work may be the most effective means of ac- quiring a broader consciousness of oppression. Abstraction and detachment are ways out of the discomfort of direct confrontation with the ugliness of oppression. Abstraction, criticized by both feminists and scholars of color, is the, method that allows theorists to discuss liberty, property, and rights in the aspirational mode of liberalism with no connection to what those concepts mean in real people's lives. Much in our mainstream intellectual training values abstraction and denigrates nitty-gritty detail. Holding on to a multiple consciousness will allow us to op- erate both within the abstractions of standard ju- risprudential discourse, and within the details of our own special knowledge. Whisperings at Yale and elsewhere about how deconstructionist heroes were closet fascists remind me of how important it is to stay close to oppressed communities. High talk about language, meaning, sign, process, and law can mask racist and sexist ugliness if we never stop to ask: "Exactly what are you talking about and what is the implication of what you are saying for my sis- ter who is carrying buckets of water up five flights of stairs in a welfare hotel? What do you propose to do for her today, not in some abstract future you are creating in your mind?" If you have been made to feel, as I have, that such inquiry is theoretically unsophisticated, and quaintly naive, re- sist! Read what Professor Williams, Professor Scales-Trent, and other feminists and people of color are writing.' The reality and detail of op- pression are a starting point for these writers as they enter into mainstream debates about law and theory.
JANFEB Yemen AC V5
Tournament: Tournament of Champions | Round: 1 | Opponent: Southlake Caroll SM | Judge: Randall, Chris
Contention 1: Lord of War
In response to civilian casualties the world is reducing military aid to the Saudi led coalition in Yemen-US aid is vital to the war effort
Dewan 11-23-18
(Angela, Senior Producer, https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/22/middleeast/arms-exports-saudi-arabia-intl/index.html)
A number of countries have restricted arms sales to Saudi Arabia since the kingdom began airstrikes on Yemen in 2015, in a war that the UN describes as the world's worst man-made humanitarian disaster. Calls for more restrictions on arms exports have been growing, particularly in Europe, since the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey last month. US President Donald Trump, however, has repeatedly pointed to the US' lucrative arms deals with the Saudis as a reason to stand by the kingdom. Denmark and Finland on Thursday became the latest countries to suspend new arms deals with Saudi Arabia. Denmark's Foreign Ministry said it was freezing new deals over both Khashoggi and Yemen, while the Finnish Foreign Ministry mentioned only Yemen. Finland also banned new arms sales to the United Arab Emirates, which is part of the Saudi-led coalition in the conflict. Their announcements came just two days after Germany said it was stopping all arms transfers to the kingdom. Denmark and Finland are not major suppliers of weapons to Saudi Arabia, but Germany certainly is. It had already suspended new arms deals to Saudi Arabia, but on Monday it widened that ban to include the transfers of weapons on existing orders as well. So where is Saudi Arabia getting its weapons from? Arms deals are often done in secret or with little publicity. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) tries to track deals involving major weapons, and a database of Saudi imports from the last decade shows the United States as the biggest supplier, followed by the United Kingdom, France, Spain and then Germany. But a lot of exporters still selling to the Saudis have dramatically decreased their supply in recent years. The United Kingdom, for example, transferred arms worth an estimated $843 million in 2016 but almost halved that value to $436 million last year, according to SIPRI. (The database uses values constant with 1990 prices to eliminate currency fluctuations and inflation.) French exports of major weapons to Saudi Arabia were worth $174 million in 2015 but dropped to $91 million in 2016 and $27 million last year. The value of Spanish exports also dramatically decreased in that time period, but the Spanish government confirmed this year it would go ahead with arms deals it had previously suggested it would freeze, bowing to pressure from Spanish manufacturers, according to reports. US dwarfs other exporters Despite these decreases, the overall value of Saudi weapons imports actually increased by 38 between 2016 and 2017. That was almost entirely because of a huge uptick in transfers from the United States, which almost doubled its exports in terms of value from $1.8 billion to $3.4 billion in that time. Germany also multiplied its exports from $14 million to $105 million, although it is expected to be much lower this year following its suspension. Overall, no country comes close to the United States in major weapons supply. Over the past five years, for example, the US accounted for 61 of major arms sales to the Saudis. The UK was a distant second, with a 23 share, while France, in third place, was a mere 4. In a statement on Tuesday, Trump said that canceling major arms contracts with the Saudis would be foolish, and that "Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries" if the US halted its sales. China supplies a negligible amount of major weaponry to Saudi Arabia, SIPRI data shows, but it is on the increase. Russia supplies so little it is not included in the organization's database. "Russia has tried hard in the past 10 to 15 years to get into the large Saudi arms market, but it has not been very successful. Saudi Arabia has acquired Russian rifles and may have bought some other items, but such deals have been very small," said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with SIPRI's arms transfers and military expenditure program. "China has made some more substantial inroads into the Saudi arms market, in particular selling armed drones," Wezeman said. "The details are shady and we may very well have underestimated China's role as an arms exporter to Saudi Arabia. But China doesn't come anywhere near the USA, UK or even France as arms suppliers. Still, the important point here is that Saudi Arabia has explored the possibility of diversifying its supplier base."
2. Support to the coalition has resulted in the deaths of more than 50,000 people from US supplied weapons and 85,000 children from the related famine and disease outbreaks.
Larry Korb 19 PhD, Senior Fellow @ Center for American Progress, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, "Ending Support for the War in Yemen," No Publication, 3-27-2019 https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/03/27/ending_support_for_the_war_in_yemen_114290.html
Until last month, the main reason for the U.S. ending its support for the Saudi-UAE-led war against the Houthis in Yemen was the humanitarian catastrophe it was causing. Since the Saudis began bombing Yemen in March 2015, more than 50,000 people have died, mostly from U.S.-supplied combat weapons; 14 million people—or about half the entire Yemeni population—are on the brink of famine; 85,000 children under the age of five have already died from hunger and disease; each week there are 10,000 new cases of cholera; and 22.2 million people—about three-quarters of the population—are in need of humanitarian aid. In the summer of 2018, the Saudi coalition even bombed a school in the northern town of Dahyan, killing 54 people, including 44 children, and wounding dozens more. Seeing these horrible statistics, the Republican-controlled Senate, over strong opposition from the Trump administration, has twice taken the unprecedented steps of voting to end U.S. support for the Saudi-UAE coalition, first in December and then again this month. The House, controlled by the Republicans in December, refused to take up the measure. But now that the Democrats control the lower chamber, it is expected that it will vote overwhelmingly to support the Senate bill. It is doubtful that President Trump, who unabashedly supports the current regime in Saudi Arabia, will approve such a measure when it arrives on his desk. Not surprisingly, many members of the Trump administration and some in Congress believe that the U.S. should maintain its support for the Saudis because their intervention in Yemen aids our national security by preventing the Houthis, who receive aid from Iran, from gaining control of Yemen, and thus increasing Iran's influence in the region. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), called the recent Senate vote, "inappropriate and counter-productive." While there is no doubt that the humanitarian devastation that has already happened is reason enough to end our support for the Saudi-led coalition, its opponents in Congress and the Administration must also heed two recent reports, which demonstrate convincingly that in addition to using U.S. weapons to inflict incredible harm on civilians, much of the U.S.-supplied equipment is falling into the hands of unaccountable militias, many of whom are sworn enemies of the U.S., and to the Houthis themselves. On February 5, 2019, CNN reported that "Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners have transferred American-made weapons, some very sophisticated, to Al Qaeda linked fighters, hardline Salafi militias, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and other factions engaging in war in Yemen." According to CNN, the Saudis did this even though such practices violate the agreements that they have made with the U.S., which prohibit them from transferring U.S. weapons to such groups. These weapons include not just guns but anti-tank missiles, armored vehicles including mine-resistant armored vehicles (MRAPs), heat-seeking lasers and artillery, or, as President Trump calls them, "beautiful military equipment." Not only do these groups inflict unspeakable damage on innocent civilians with these weapons, but we now know many of these weapons have also fallen into the hands of the Houthis, who are the enemies of the coalition. As a result, the Houthis can not only exploit their vulnerabilities, but also reverse engineer these weapons, making their weapons more lethal, and most disturbingly pass on these technologies to Iran itself, which the Trump administration considers the major threat to American interests in the region. The CNN report was followed a day later by one from Amnesty International. It too demonstrated convincingly that the UAE, Saudi Arabia's primary partner in this conflict, is "recklessly arming militias in Yemen with advanced weaponry supplied by the U.S. and other states." According to Amnesty, the UAE is actually transferring such items as armored vehicles, mortars, and machine guns to several unaccountable groups, many of whom are accused of war crimes. Meanwhile, the Pentagon's response to these reports has been to state that the U.S. has not authorized the Saudis nor the UAE to make such transfers and therefore cannot comment on any pending investigation. How did they not know? Willful ignorance of this magnitude must be called out. These humanitarian and strategic concerns make it clear that the U.S. must immediately end all its military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and end all its arms sales to the Saudis and UAE, as several of our NATO allies, including Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands have already done. The longer we wait, the more our values and security will be compromised, and the more lives of innocent Yemenis will be lost. And to what ends?
3. The war in Yemen is responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians.
Michael Horton 19 Foreign Policy Analyst who has written for numerous publications, including Intelligence Review, West Point CTC Sentinel, The Economist, The National Interest, and the Christian Science Monitor, "Saudi Arabia is Losing the War in Yemen," American Conservative, 3-28-2019 https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/saudi-arabia-is-losing-the-war-in-yemen/
As the war in Yemen marks the end of its fourth year this week, it is clear that, with the aid and complicity of the United States and United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have savaged an impoverished country. Yemen's infrastructure has been laid waste to, as has some of its most productive farmland. The result has been the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet. Yet despite this destruction, Yemen has turned into Saudi Arabia's Vietnam. Ditto for the UAE. The two countries have sunk billions of dollars and countless troops and mercenaries into what has become a quagmire of catastrophic proportions. What they had hoped would be a decisively quick war has turned into an albatross, with the rest of the world now questioning their motivations and urging their Western helpmates to withdraw support immediately. The overt reason for Saudi and Emirati involvement is to defeat the Houthi rebels, a Zaidi Shia group with deep roots in Yemen. Yet this hasn't been achieved. The two Gulf States claim that the Houthis are proxies for Iran, but it has become increasingly clear that they are fiercely independent, and while they receive limited aid from Tehran, they do not take orders. Saudi and Emirati leaders would do well to learn from Yemen's 2,000-year history of draining the blood and coffers of imperial and lesser powers. The Yemenis defeated the Romans, the Ottoman Turks twice, and evicted the British in 1967. They also defeated the Egyptians who invaded in 1962. Much like the U.S. in Vietnam more than 40 years ago and more recently in Afghanistan, the goliath invaders are fighting a war of attrition, bleeding their resources, and losing whatever moral and political authority they might have had in the process. But were they ever being honest about their real intentions in Yemen? Saudi Arabia and the UAE have armed and supported a mushrooming number of Yemeni militias and factions, some of which have ties to al-Qaeda. These policies have purposefully turned Yemen into a patchwork of warring fiefdoms. This is because the covert purpose of the "intervention" has less to do with perceived Iranian influence than it does with securing access to Yemen's strategic real estate and its natural resources. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are engaged in a neo-colonial war for power, resources, and territory. The two countries, which are increasingly in competition with one another, are trying to carve Yemen up into spheres of influence. Because it has a slightly more competent mercenary army, the UAE has the lead over Saudi Arabia in this regard. It's set up military bases throughout southern Yemen where it supports separatists of various stripes who want everything from an independent south Yemen to an Islamic emirate. Not content with just occupying the mainland, the UAE has also established bases on the once pristine Yemeni island of Socotra—a UNESCO world heritage site—and the island of Perim. Saudi Arabia is playing catch-up with its ally and is laying claim to the governorate of al-Mahra in eastern Yemen. There, Riyadh hopes to build a pipeline that will allow it to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. However, as in other parts of Yemen, the people are fighting to stop what many view as a land grab by a foreign power. Residents of al-Mahra protested the construction of a Saudi-funded madrassa that would have undoubtedly used Saudi schoolbooks, the same schoolbooks that were used by the Islamic State. Residents are also blocking the construction of a Saudi military base. Both countries have much to learn from America's costly misadventures after 9/11. Despite fielding the world's most capable armed forces and spending several trillion dollars, the U.S. failed to achieve its aims in Iraq or Afghanistan, a country that is in many respects similar to Yemen. In Iraq, the invasion destroyed much of that country and paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State, as well as driving Baghdad into Iran's open arms. In both nations, new and deadlier strains of extremism grew out of the power vacuums that were created. Saudis Find Out Hard Way: Yemen Is Another Graveyard of Empires The war in Yemen will have similar results. By continuing to fight the Houthis, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are paradoxically strengthening their enemies and providing Iran with more fertile ground for its influence operations. The Houthis are superb fighters, but have shown less competence with regard to governance. The war and Saudi and Emirati airstrikes have enhanced the Houthis' legitimacy by allowing them to do what they do best: fight. It may be years before Yemen is a unified country with a functioning government again. In fact, Yemen may never again be unified. However, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are unlikely to ever see a return on their investment. Even a cursory reading of Yemen's history would have told them this. And failing that, an examination of America's failed wars should have dissuaded them from becoming involved in the first place. Without sustained international pressure on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran, the war in Yemen will continue for years to come. All the while, it will drain both the UAE and Saudi Arabia of billions of dollars, spawn new militant groups, and ironically provide Iran with more opportunities to expand its influence. Most critically, the war will continue to kill, maim, starve, and impoverish tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians.
4. Yemini instability causes arms racing and miscalculation in the region – causes cascading conflicts
Young, PhD, 17
(Karen E. Young; senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, former fellow @ Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science, assistant professor of political science at the American University of Sharjah, PhD in political science from the City University of New York, an MA in political science from Columbia University, an MA in international economic relations from the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar; War at Any Price: Domestic and Regional Economic Consequences of Yemen's Civil War; Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington; May 25, 2017; https://agsiw.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Young_War-at-Any-Price_ONLINE.pdf)
The incidence of continued violence after civil war will put Yemen and its neighbors at risk of prolonged low-level insurgency, and the harboring of violent groups. Again, work by Collier, Hoefler, and Rohnerz demonstrates that once a country stumbles into civil war there is a danger of entering a cycle of conflict,41 or what prominent political economists call a violence trap, 42 particularly in states with very weak political institutions and lacking an inclusive national identity. As they argue, the principle legacy of a civil war is a grossly heightened risk of further civil war. For the Gulf Arab states, the risks brewing inside Yemen are very clear: In a young, unemployed, fractionalized society with access to arms and little access to public health services or education, conflict is sure to resurface. But it might be more compelling to consider the export of the conflict effects on neighboring countries' domestic political and economic stability. The violence trap is not contained. Countries engaged in conflict tend to increase their military spending. The spending effect is contagious to neighboring states, even if they are at peace. Civil war tends to increase military expenditure by two percentage points of GDP, according to a World Bank study by Collier.43 It creates regional arms races in which governments dedicate spending to military purchases and expenses that might have otherwise gone to public health, infrastructure, or education. According to Anthony Cordesman, citing reports by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Saudi Arabia spent $56.9 billion on defense in 2016, only $2 billion less than the total spent by Russia.44 Saudi Arabia's military and security spending has decreased somewhat during the fiscal austerity measures of the last year, but remains extremely high by international standards at 8.9 percent of its GDP in 2016. In the current period of fiscal adjustment for the GCC states, this regional effect could have important consequences on fiscal policy. As cross-regional World Bank studies demonstrate, one of the strongest influences on individual state military expenditure is the expenditure of neighboring states.45 Even for neighboring states that are not directly involved in the conflict, this research suggests that by the end of the conflict and the return to "equilibrium" (rough estimates from studies above indicate at least after five years), the neighboring countries will have increased their military expenditure on average by 0.7 percentage points.46 There is a spatial cascade effect of military spending, especially for bordering states and even in states not directly engaged in conflict. The cascade spending, and the arms race it can spur, could lead to militarized regions primed for conflict and hypersensitive to threat. The experiential learning happening inside the Yemen conflict suggests that Emirati and Saudi threat perception has only heightened, along with their willingness to commit scarcer resources to defense.
5. Yemen conflict more likely to escalate than their disad
Khourt, PhD, 8-29-18
(Nabeel, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/08/29/the_war_in_yemen_playing_with_fire_113750.html
It is worth reminding ourselves that the conflict has national, regional, and international aspects. Iran has become an issue at the regional and international levels, but it was not involved, and remains so to this day, in the internal Yemeni struggle for power. Internally, the now-defunct national dialogue of 2011-2012 never led to a firm handshake on a power-sharing agreement between principal domestic powers: the Houthis; the former ruling party, the General People's Congress; the former opposition Islah party; and the Southern Movement or Hirak with all its components. Filling the void left by the late Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh's ouster from power in 2012 remains the crux of the problem in Yemen. It is also the cornerstone of any overall peace plan for the country. A strong and sensible national figure has yet to appear and appeal to all militia and political leaders to gather for the purpose of hammering out a true national pact that would not only guarantee them a role in a future government, but also offer a compromise on their long-term policy fears, hopes, and preferences. To be sure, such national figures exist in and outside Yemen, but they would need international backing to propel them into the limelight and support their quest for national unity. With all due respect to the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, his job belongs to a Yemeni not to an outsider, no matter how well intentioned. Regionally, one has to confront the two-ton bear (real or otherwise) sitting in the living room: Iran. Saudis have complained about Iran meddling in Yemen for the past decade. Ironically, Saleh—who allied with the Houthis in 2015, then later withdrew from that alliance, and was eventually assassinated by a Houthi sniper on December 4, 2017—did the same when he started the six-year war against the Houthis in 2004, insisting that Iran was behind the Houthi successes on the battlefield. In both cases, while I was at the U.S. Embassy in Sana'a we searched for evidence of the wolf at the door and found nothing but empty slogans and precious few actual contacts. To be sure, that situation changed in 2010 when the Saudi air force intervened to help Saleh against the Houthis. Iran's involvement increased again when the Saudi-led coalition launched a war to stop the Houthi advance on south Yemen after they took over Sana'a in 2014. Just as with the wolf-at-the-door parable, Iran took an interest and started helping the Houthis, albeit not very effectively given the U.S. military presence in the Gulf. Regardless of the merits of the Iran argument, bugaboos have to be confronted since virtual and/or partially true fears can cause just as much insecurity and unpredictable responses as the real thing. Stoking those fears—as Israeli and U.S. hawks have been doing—is the last thing regional and international players should do. It's a dangerous game anywhere, but particularly in the volatile Middle East. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two regional super powers engaged in a cold war and competing for regional supremacy in the Gulf and beyond. Yemen is the one place where this cold war has actually stoked the flames of a hot war, and the dangers of an all-out conflagration are quite real.
Plan: The United States ought not provide military aid to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
Contention 2: Solvency
Cutting off arms is the only moral response to war in Yemen
Mohamed and Shaif 16
(Rasha Mohamed is Amnesty International's Yemen researcher. Follow her on Twitter at: @RashaMoh2. Rawan Shaif is a freelance journalist covering Yemen. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/25/civilian-casualties-war-crimes-saudi-arabia-yemen-war/)
These gruesome scenes are just two examples of the horrors that Yemen has seen since the Saudi-led military coalition launched its air campaign in March 2015. On one side of this war is the Houthi armed group, often referred to as the "Popular Committees," which is supported by armed groups loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and parts of the army. On the other side is the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and allied forces on the ground, usually referred to as muqawama, or the "resistance," fighting on behalf of Hadi and his government. The Houthis and their allies — armed groups loyal to Saleh — are the declared targets of the coalition's 1-year-old air campaign. In reality, however, it is the civilians, such as Basrallah and Rubaid, and their children, who are predominantly the victims of this protracted war. Hundreds of civilians have been killed in airstrikes while asleep in their homes, when going about their daily activities, or in the very places where they had sought refuge from the conflict. The United States, Britain, and others, meanwhile, have continued to supply a steady stream of weaponry and logistical support to Saudi Arabia and its coalition. One year on, it still remains unclear who is winning the war. Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners claim to have regained control of more than 80 percent of the country, but the Houthis remain in control of the key strongholds of Sanaa, Ibb, and Taiz. Moreover, armed groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State are gaining ground and support in the south and southeast parts of the country, taking advantage of the security vacuum to consolidate their power. One thing is clear: Yemeni civilians are losing the most. This wanton disregard for the lives of civilians continues unabated... At approximately 11:30 a.m. on March 15, the market in Khamees, a town in northern Yemen, was destroyed in two apparent airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition, claiming the lives of 106 civilians, including 24 children. One man, Hasan Masafi, who spoke to us over the phone, couldn't even grieve his 18-year-old son's death because he couldn't locate his whole body. "We were only able to find his right leg," he said. The facts speak for themselves, and evidence of violations of international humanitarian law cannot be dismissed as mere hearsay, as the British government has attempted to do with U.N. reports. Amnesty International and other organizations have presented compelling evidence over the past year that indicates all parties to the Yemen conflict have committed war crimes. But some countries do not want to see the evidence that is staring them in the face. Flooding the region with arms is akin to adding fuel to the fire. Attacks like the one on Khamees market have become the norm for civilians in Yemen. More than 3,000 civilians have been killed during the conflict, according to the United Nations. Thousands of others have been injured, more than 2.5 million have been displaced, and 83 percent of Yemenis are reliant on humanitarian assistance. There is barely a single corner of Yemen or a single soul that hasn't in some way been touched and scarred by this war. The Saudi-led coalition's response to reports of civilians unlawfully killed — and homes, schools, and infrastructure destroyed — has been to constantly repeat the mantra that "only military targets are hit by airstrikes." The situation on the ground tells a very different story. With each unlawful coalition airstrike, it becomes more evident that Saudi Arabia and other coalition members either do not care about respecting international humanitarian law or are incapable of adhering to its fundamental rules. And yet, Britain, the United States, and France continue to authorize lucrative arms deals with the Saudi-led coalition — apparently without batting an eyelash. Since November 2013, the U.S. Defense Department has authorized more than $35.7 billion in major arms deals to Saudi Arabia.Since November 2013, the U.S. Defense Department has authorized more than $35.7 billion in major arms deals to Saudi Arabia. This includes the announcement of a $1.29 billion U.S. arms sale to Saudi Arabia in November 2015 that will supply Riyadh with 18,440 bombs and 1,500 warheads. Meanwhile, during his time in office, British Prime Minister David Cameron has overseen the sale of more than $9 billion worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia, including nearly $4 billion since airstrikes on Yemen began, according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade, a London-based NGO. Regardless of when the weapons used by coalition forces in Yemen were acquired — whether before or since the start of the air campaign — the countries that supplied them have a responsibility to ensure that they are not facilitating violations of international law. While the relentless coalition airstrikes account for most of the civilian deaths in the conflict, civilians also find themselves increasingly trapped in the crossfire between Houthi and anti-Houthi armed groups, with each side supported by different units of the now-divided armed forces. A case in point is the southern city of Taiz, which has suffered restrictions on movement of food and medical supplies since at least November. Attacks continue to maim and kill civilians, including children. When Amnesty International visited the city in July 2015, we witnessed the irresponsible conduct of fighters firsthand and documented 30 ground attacks, which led to more than 100 casualties. One of those victims was 12-year-old Ayham Anees, who was killed in an apparent Houthi mortar attack in May. Munther Mohamed, Anees's uncle, described rushing to the scene after hearing children's screams following the attack. "I also saw my nephew Ayham, whose head had separated from his body," he said. "I had told the children to play in the middle of the alley because it was the safest place, but it was not." The crisis in Taiz has only gotten worse in recent days. While the Houthis have been partially pushed out of the city center, they still maintain control of the majority of the governorate. Where the Houthis have been forced to retreat, they have laid landmines — internationally banned weapons that have already claimed dozens of civilian lives. Last week, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition announced that operations are nearing their end in Yemen. What that means in practice is not yet clear, as airstrikes continue to pound the country. But accountability doesn't take a back seat just because military operations may be winding down. It's time to bring these crimes against civilians to an end. With peace talks expected to take place in Kuwait on April 18, all parties must prioritize several crucial conditions: protecting the long-term interests of ordinary Yemenis, ensuring an end to the horrors of the past year, and guaranteeing that those responsible will be held accountable. All those civilian lives lost as a result of violations won't be forgotten, even if this chapter of war closes. It's too late for the children of Salah Basrallah. But there's no excuse not to do the right thing now. States should act immediately to ensure that none of Yemen's warring parties is supplied — either directly or indirectly — with weapons, munitions, military equipment, or technology that would be used in any furtherance of the conflict. And they must do everything in their power to ensure there is an independent international investigation into violations by all sides aimed at ensuring justice and reparation — for Salah Basrallah and the thousands of other victims of this deadly war.
2. Continued assistance prevents coalition exhaustion- they won't negotiate as long as we supply – arms sales eliminate pressure for peace Foreign Policy 15
(https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/12/10/flexing-new-powers-congress-to-review-arms-shipments-to-saudi-arabia/, 12-10)
The organizations leading the charge against the weapons sale include Oxfam America, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch. The groups accuse Washington of being complicit in what they call Saudi Arabia's "indiscriminate" airstrikes in Yemen where about 2,500 civilians have died in the fighting. "Arms transfers give a green light to indefinite military intervention, substantially relieving the pressure on the coalition and the government of Yemen to agree to a ceasefire," Oxfam America senior humanitarian policy adviser Scott Paul told Foreign Policy.
3. Ignore negative evidence- it's a product of the Kingdom Industrial Complex
WaPo Editorial Board 10-24-18 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/does-saudi-money-leave-room-for-an-honest-debate/2018/10/24/678654c2-d7bb-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html?utm_term=.ecdabd07f4fe
WASHINGTON NEEDS to have a thorough debate about Saudi Arabia and whether the bilateral relationship as it now stands serves U.S. interests. That raises a difficult question: Is it possible to have an honest discussion when so many American experts are, in one way or another, on the Saudi payroll? Many countries spend heavily to influence Congress or U.S. public opinion, but the Saudi operation dwarfs most of them. In the decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, the regime spent more than $100 million to rebuild its image here, according to Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy. Last year alone it spent $27.3 million on lobbyists and consultants, according to public records; more than 200 people have registered as Saudi agents. Prominent Washington think tanks, including the Middle East Institute and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have accepted millions in Saudi money; so have universities, museums and other cultural organizations. U.S. financial firms are brokering big deals for the Saudi government, which is effectively controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Members of Congress or journalists looking for expert advice on Saudi Arabia might typically turn to former ambassadors or former chiefs of the Pentagon's Central Command. But a number of them are connected to those think tanks or financial firms. According to Mr. Freeman, lobbyists made nearly $400,000 in campaign contributions last year to Senate and House members they contacted on behalf of the Saudis; in 11 cases, the contributions were made on the same day as the contact. One of those lobbyists is Norm Coleman, a former Republican senator. He told The Post that "the relationship with Saudi Arabia is critically important, and its partnership in confronting the Iranian threat is critical for U.S. security." That's an oft-made and legitimate argument. But do those who hear it take into account the fact that Mr. Coleman is paid to represent Saudi rather than U.S. interests?
4. The plan forces KSA to unilaterally end the war prompting negotiated settlement
Feltman, PhD, 11-26-18
(Jeffrey, Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs from July 2012 until April 2018 and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2009 to 2012.
Charged with the difficult task of getting meaningful peace talks off the ground, Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy for Yemen since February 2018, has focused his efforts on several fronts at once. He seeks to secure humanitarian access to the Red Sea port of Hodeidah, through which more than 70 percent of Yemen's imports flow. At the same time, Griffiths is seeking to persuade the Saudi-led coalition to refrain from air strikes in response to Houthi restraint from cross-border missile and rocket attacks. The envoy is working to build confidence on both sides through steps such as prisoner exchanges, and he is leading political talks addressing transitional arrangements and the threat of southern secession. Griffiths' approach seems sensible. Leaders on both sides can more easily accept (and the UN can more easily monitor) a quid pro quo cessation of Houthi missile strikes and Saudi air strikes than a comprehensive cease-fire. Griffiths is wise to begin political discussions without waiting for a cessation of hostilities or an answer to the "who goes first" question. Further, he has set forward his agenda for Yemen at exactly the moment the United States was most receptive. He seems to have won support from Trump administration officials during his recent consultations in Washington, including one with Mattis just days before the secretary of defense announced his support for peace talks at the Manama Dialogue, an annual high-profile security forum in Bahrain, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But the problem with Griffiths' step-by-step negotiation strategy is that it will take too long. In Yemen, a catastrophic war drags on, and nearly half the population faces a potential famine. This is no time for bickering, yet bickering is precisely what Griffiths' process is likely to invite. That is in part because any of the belligerents could hold the negotiations hostage to unreasonable demands; and attempts to negotiate a cease-fire could easily get tangled up with the question of transitional leadership. Unpopular and in poor health, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the president of Yemen, is widely considered dispensable. He knows that his patrons—Saudi Arabia and the United States—would happily trade him for a solution to the conflict, and this knowledge makes him a difficult and paranoid negotiator. But replacing Hadi will be complicated. His vice president, General Ali Mohsen, is hated by the Houthis for his role in the brutal wars against them from 2004 to 2009 and distrusted by the Emiratis for being a member of Islah, Yemen's Muslim Brotherhood party. Without an obvious candidate for transitional leadership who could win support of a broad spectrum of Yemenis and their outside patrons, conditioning a cease-fire on a succession agreement prolongs the fighting. THE ROAD TO PEACE RUNS THROUGH RIYADH Unilaterally ending its military campaign would serve Riyadh's interests as much as it would everyone else's. Not only would such a halt stanch the bloodshed in Yemen, it could slow or stop the slide in Saudi Arabia's global reputation. If Saudi Arabia waits to end the conflict through talks aimed at a cease-fire, the Houthis may decide that the kingdom loses more in a continuation of hostilities than they do. The Houthis could gain the upper hand in negotiations and hold them hostage by making unreasonable demands on the Saudis. Yet the Saudis do not seem to be moving in this direction. They answered the calls for peace from Pompeo and Mattis with more air strikes. The Trump administration's November cessation of midair refueling of Saudi-coalition flights does not seem to have changed Saudi calculations. Clearly, the United States needs other means to persuade them. There have been frequent calls to suspend arms sales to Riyadh. But Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has pointed out that suspending the sale of military spare parts to Saudi Arabia would quickly ground the Saudi air force and be more effective. The U.S. Congress is currently willing to take punitive actions against Saudi Arabia, and the Trump administration can use this as leverage. A unilateral Saudi cessation is risky. The Houthis—who sparked the war with their military takeover in 2014—would undoubtedly exploit it to trumpet the victory of their "resistance" against the greater firepower unleashed against them. And there is a chance this could be construed as a victory for Iran. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates exaggerated the degree of Iranian influence on the Houthis at the beginning of the war as part of their justification for intervening. But today, even though the Houthis are still not quite a subsidiary of Iran in the same way as, say, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iranian influence in Yemen has grown significantly. The threat of expanding Iranian influence is not a reason to delay a cease-fire, however. While ending the war unilaterally and focusing on UN-sponsored political talks will not eliminate Iranian influence, such steps could halt its expansion. A drawn-out war in Yemen, on the other hand, will only produce the same result as the wars in Iraq and Lebanon: a permanently entrenched Iranian presence that operates through military proxies and is eventually able to direct domestic policy. A Saudi cease-fire is not a panacea. There is no guarantee that the Houthis would respond by agreeing to share power with Saudi-backed Yemeni leaders or that the south would stop trying to secede. Lower-level domestic fighting would likely continue, even if the Saudi-Houthi war ends. But Saudi Arabia stands to benefit from ceasing its military operations even if the Houthis respond by continuing to fire missiles across the border: the role reversal would be in the Saudis' favor. The world would turn its attention to the Houthis as the aggressors and spoilers, and Saudi self-defense would be widely tolerated. AFTER THE FIGHTING STOPS Yemen's war has deep roots in a politics laced with distrust. From 2004 until his ouster in November 2011, former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, backed by Saudi Arabia, instigated multiple military campaigns against Ansar Allah, the Houthis' political movement. Saleh promised quick victories but was repeatedly undercut by surprisingly strong Houthi resistance, foreshadowing the Saudis' fate in the current war. In 2011, the Houthis participated in popular protests against Saleh, convincing the Gulf Cooperation Council countries—concerned with maintaining stability—that he had to go. The GCC, with strong encouragement from the United States, helped nudge Saleh aside in favor of Hadi, his vice president at the time. Hadi took control of a transitional government that eventually morphed into the internationally recognized but virtually powerless one he leads today. The UN convened a 2013–14 conference charged with ending the transition period and reaching agreements on elections and power sharing. The Houthis were wary participants, and since then it has become clear that the Houthi delegation either failed to negotiate in good faith or never had the support of its political leadership. In September 2014, the Houthis exploited the opportunity of popular demonstrations against fuel prices to seize power by force. In February 2015, they fully occupied Sanaa. Saleh, the Houthis' former adversary, provided critical assistance in this effort. Probably nursing a grudge from having been pushed aside in favor of Hadi in 2011, Saleh infuriated his former Saudi patrons by aligning himself and armed forces loyal to him with the Houthis, whom he had demonized and fruitlessly pummeled, with Saudi help, for years. (Saleh, in turn, was killed by the Houthis in December 2017 when he tried to switch sides again and join the Saudi fight against the Houthis.) The avowed purpose of the Saudi-led military campaign that began in March 2015 was to restore the internationally recognized, but now exiled, Hadi government to Sanaa. The United Kingdom and the United States pushed a resolution that provided cover to Saudi Arabia through the UN Security Council (Russia, presciently, abstained). Resolution 2216 demanded that the Houthis "immediately and unconditionally" withdraw their forces from all areas they had captured; relinquish arms seized from the state; and "cease all actions that are exclusively within the authority of the legitimate Government of Yemen." Resolution 2216 demanded something close to unconditional surrender from a movement that had repeatedly proven its military resilience. Rather than providing a formula for a negotiated end to the conflict, Resolution 2216 became an unhelpful litmus test in Saudi and Emirati hands: if a UN envoy, for example, did not sufficiently emphasize the terms of the resolution, the Saudis and Emiratis would darkly hint that he or she held Houthi sympathies. If an envoy did emphasize the terms of 2216, on the other hand, it would play into Houthi suspicions and provoke Houthi boycotts of UN meetings. If Saudi Arabia decides to endits military operations, the Security Council should pass a new resolution in support of that decision, which would provide Griffiths and his UN team with a more realistic mandate for talks. CUTTING LOSSES After three and a half years, the Saudi-led coalition's goals remain elusive, while conditions on the ground deteriorate: the humanitarian situation is worsening, disease is spreading, the Houthis are more entrenched than ever, and Iranian influence has grown. Yemen desperately needs good-faith negotiations on long-term political and security arrangements. Support from Pompeo and Mattis for UN-sponsored political talks is a welcome development. But negotiations will not outpace the coming humanitarian calamity or distract the world from Saudi Arabia's questionable conduct in this war. The security risks to Saudi Arabia from an increasingly sophisticated Hezbollah-like militia and growing Iranian military presence just across the Saudi border are clear and become more acute as the war continues. A unilateral Saudi cease-fire will save lives and could change the narrative of the war to focus on these very real threats. But Saudi Arabia is unlikely to make this move unless the United States demonstrates to it that continuing the war will come at a cost to the relationship between the two countries.
5. No Russia/China shift - transition would take decades- no interoperability
Kessler, "the" fact checker, 10-11-18
(Glen, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/11/trumps-billion-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-still-fake/?utm_term=.5935b70dc2da)
Trump raised the possibility that the Saudis might turn to Russia or China for its hardware. The Saudis are still considering purchasing a Russian S-400 air-defense system, but Reidel said the kingdom is too invested in U.S. equipment – which means the U.S. has significant leverage if it wanted to punish the Saudis over the Khashoggi matter. "It would take decades to transition from U.S. and U.K. aircraft, for example, to Russian or Chinese aircraft," Reidel said. "Same is true for tanks, communications equipment and other hi-tech equipment. And the Saudis don't have time given they are bogged down in Yemen."
6. military aid includes arms sales
CIA publication 78
(National Foreign Assessment Center, Communist Aid Activities in Non-Communist Developing Countries 1978, https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EjrjgnKfVAkJ:https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP08S01350R000100150002-9.pdf+andcd=10andhl=enandct=clnkandgl=us)
The term military aid as used throughout this paper includes commercial sales of military equipment and services as well as sales on concessionary terms. (iii)
7. Saudi doesn't pay – ignore their evidence – the government tries to cover it up.
Anthony Capaccio 18 Defense Reporter @ Bloomberg, "Saudi Arms Buyers Won a $3.5 Billion Discount From the Pentagon," Bloomberg, 3-21-2018 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-21/saudis-praised-by-trump-as-arms-buyers-won-a-big-u-s-discount
President Donald Trump says the Saudis are a "big purchaser" of American arms. A $3.5 billion discount they won from the Pentagon last year in buying an anti-missile system for $15 billion shows they're also adept at tapping into the Pentagon's generosity. Welcoming Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman to the White House on Tuesday, Trump said the kingdom has completed $12.5 billion in purchases of planes, missiles and frigates from U.S. companies since his visit to Saudi Arabia last year. He didn't mention the discount granted last April on the Thaad system from Lockheed Martin Corp. The price break, which hasn't previously been reported, was approved after the Saudis claimed the sale could be lost without it. It came in the form of two waivers from a U.S. law requiring foreign purchasers of American weapons to pay part of the Defense Department's costs in developing them. The sale, announced in October, was only the second time the U.S. has allowed the Army's Thaad anti-missile system to be sold for export, after a sale to the United Arab Emirates. The Thaad batteries deployed in South Korea are owned by the U.S. A month after the sale was announced, Russia disclosed that it was selling Saudi Arabia its S-400 air defense system, which it asserts is equal in capabilities to Thaad. Largest Yet The Saudi waivers were the largest yet approved for any nation, based on a Government Accountability Office review published in January of the discounts from 2012 through 2017. Over those years, the Pentagon approved $9.2 billion in waivers to allies, mostly from the Middle East, on the rationale of preventing lost sales. That includes about $4.5 billion last year, including the Saudi waivers, the first year of the Trump administration, up from about $500 million in 2016. The GAO highlighted the $3.5 billion in waivers without naming Saudi Arabia. A U.S. official familiar with the data, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the Saudis were the beneficiaries. Not all of the waivers approved necessarily ended up at the initial amounts cited in the review, according to the GAO. While the discounted arms sale reflects Trump's priority on building alliances with Saudi Arabia -- and in countering the regional influence of its arch rival Iran -- it raises questions about the policy of giving wealthy nations a break from contributions toward weapons development costs that otherwise would go to the U.S. Treasury. Taxpayers' Burden "American taxpayers are footing the bill for billions of dollars for researching and developing the weapons we sell to foreign governments." Representative Jackie Speier of California, a Democrat who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. "The Gulf Arab nations are among the richest in the world" so "they can certainly afford it," said Speier, who joined a colleague in requesting the GAO report. Yet the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency, or DSCA, "repeatedly and without examination bought the absurd claim that paying those reimbursements would cause Gulf nations to call off" deals, said Speier, who added that she's exploring options to tighten oversight of the DSCA. 'Carefully Evaluate' Senator Robert Menendez, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement to Bloomberg News that he'll pursue an explanation for the Saudi waivers. "We need to carefully evaluate all our military assistance and arms sales to Saudi Arabia, as we do with any country," the New Jersey senator said. "I plan to ask the Administration why it granted Saudi Arabia a waiver exempting it from reimbursing the United States" for "an expensive missile system, and how this contributes to our national security. I would seriously question this waiver for such a wealthy country," even though "Saudi Arabia remains an important security ally." A law requires foreign buyers of American military systems to reimburse a share of the one-time or "nonrecurring" research and development costs borne by taxpayers. In addition to the risk of lost sales, a waiver can be granted if a potential customer makes a case that the sale will improve "commonality" with the U.S. military through the use of standard weapons. These types of waivers are available for sales to NATO allies, Australia, South Korea and Jordan, the GAO found. 99 Approval Rate The defense agency approved $16 billion, or 99 percent of waiver claims, for various reasons from 2012 through 2017. A waiver is issued almost routinely when a customer claims the sale will be lost without it, according to the GAO. A congressional aide official familiar with the data the defense agency gave to the GAO said it showed Saudi Arabia had won 57 waivers totaling $4.82 billion, including the Thaad sale. Other waivers totaled $2.6 billion to Qatar, $767 million to the United Arab Emirates and $328 million to Kuwait.
8. Conditions fail- they are easily circumvented and get converted to unconditional aid
-conditions have been attempted and failed
McGuire 87
(Martin C. McGuire, University of Maryland, Foreign Assistance, Investment, and Defense: A Methodological Study with an Application to Israel, 1960-1979, Economic Development and Cultural Change, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Jul., 1987), pp. 847-873, JKS)
When one country makes grants or concessionary loans to another, the assistance is often restricted to be spent on target categories, most typically, capital formation or defense. But usually the receiving government will have many opportunities for converting conditional into unconditional aid, for circumventing restrictions, and transforming conditional assistance into fungible resources. Any understanding of the interrelations among defense, development, and foreign assistance must recognize and incorporate such self-interested behavior on the part of the aid-receiving government. It has been demonstrated both theoretically and as the outcome of practical econometric estimation that the proportion of conditional or targeted foreign assistance converted into fungible unconditional resources can be statistically estimated employing classical utility maximization with its derived demand format.8 Moreover, in making this estimate, certain highly relevant information about the effect of aid on the effective price of defense or capital formation can be derived. Such information in turn can be used to infer cross-elasticities between various expenditure components of interest. This source of implicit relative price variation can be especially important for analysis of developing countries where long- run time series on price indexes of components of GNP or of government outlays are not available.
9. US involvement breeds resentment/fuels recruitment
Bandow 12-18-18
(Doug, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire. https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/its-time-end-us-support-saudi-war-yemen)
Washington should draw a line at Yemen. So far, unfortunately, the administration remains committed to backing Riyadh in a murderous war against one of the world's poorest nations, incompetently waged to restore a Saudi and Emirati puppet regime to power. The result has been a humanitarian catastrophe. The state-orchestrated murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi finally energized Congress to challenge President Donald Trump on the issue, though GOP congressional leaders worked to protect the bloody royal regime in Riyadh. The issue will heat up next year after Democrats take control of the House. The United States should leave the Yemen War. American officials have pretended that Washington is not a combatant. However, the United States has provided targeting intelligence, sold munitions and refueled Saudi aircraft. (The latter recently was suspended.) Yemenis realize that the United States has provided essential combat support in a countrywide bombing campaign targeting weddings, funerals, and much in between, thereby killing tens of thousands of civilians. If angry Yemenis turn into terrorists, American officials will be primarily to blame.
10. Ceasefire collapses now
Kern 4-11
(Soren, SeniorFellow@Gatestone, BA Diplomacy@Gtown, 19, https://warsclerotic.com/2019/04/11/is-iran-winning-in-yemen/)
A ceasefire deal aimed at ending Yemen's civil war is collapsing amid disputes between the warring parties over how to implement the agreement. A resumption of hostilities would, according to aid groups, accelerate Yemen's descent into famine and threaten as many as 15 million people — more than half the population — with starvation.
Contention 3: Framework
Debate should focus on technical details of military policy. This is crucial to activating and training a left IR contingent to challenge the far right.
Schulman, MA, 18
(Loren, Lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, and is also an affiliate of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation
https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-the-future-of-progressive-foreign-policy/#_ftn75, 12-4)
In his essay on what a progressive national security agenda should look like, Van Jackson proposes to stretch the common progressive position of anti-militarism to a more realist platform of military "sufficiency." In doing so, he brings attention to a serious gap in current defense politics. The stilted and superficial dialogue that passes for national security debate in American politics includes an active constituency for a "military first" (or military friendly) foreign policy, reflexively applying military tools to problems abroad and inflating defense spending. There is also a weaker constituency, most present outside government, for a "military last" or "anti-militarist" policy, which would cut defense spending and end wars with similar reflexivity. Outside the apolitical "blob" of Washington, there is little interest in publicly debating the prudence or effectiveness of these agendas. The left, regardless of its broader "theory of security," could fill some of this vacuum — and it is better situated to do so than conventional wisdom might suggest.70 Democrats Drowning at the Water's Edge For the last two decades, there has been little political opportunity to question America's role in the world. With some exception, relevant defense and security policies have been open to even less scrutiny. Questions about the ethical or effective application of force, the size of the defense budget, the success of a given military strategy, the utility of specific weapons platforms, and the return on investment from security cooperation are, at best, diversions. Anyone who attempts to challenge the status quo risks being greeted with political attacks about lacking patriotism or not supporting American troops.71 But at a time of frequent missteps abroad on the part of the Trump administration, the space to question America's foreign policy traditions may be widening. The inability to pose legitimate questions about security policy is a particular flavor of political correctness, and because of it, the Democratic Party has all but disappeared in defense policy and politics.72 The last two years have seen more than a dozen pieces on the left's lack of branded national security ideas.73 Michael Walzer has attributed this gap to an intentional abstention: The default position of the left is that "the best foreign policy is a good domestic policy."74 Jackson highlights modest resourcing and under-representation as justifications for the left's notable lack of a "theory of security" and the general subsuming of the debate under a big-tent "third way" liberalism. Traditional Democrats in the national security community (including me) have bristled at these criticisms, but would be hard-pressed to offer a distinctive and coherent political viewpoint. Some see the Democratic Party's lack of a defined national security policy as something to celebrate. Declaring that politics "stops at the water's edge" of national security is a winning Bingo option at any think tank event. But this dictum stifles debate about the national interest and the proper application of national resources. Consequently, there are moral and political questions on defense and interventions abroad that have no meaningful forum. This gap is particularly felt on Capitol Hill, where in the past security-minded Democrats have found political safe-harbor in a Republican-lite national security agenda — essentially blank-check support for Republicans on defense with, at most, a raised eyebrow from time to time. These policy positions require little analytical effort or political capital, and let Democrats occasionally posture as morally superior by emphasizing "non-military tools" of foreign policy. The opposite alternative of a more rigid pacifism and anti-militarism, though common in the grassroots progressive community, has no consistently organized political presence on the Hill and thus also escapes thorough interrogation.75 For those outside the Beltway, opposition to all things military offers the refuge of principle without critical justification or analysis. For many Democrats, the Obama model was a strangely tolerable middle ground: a bipartisan budget mess made while a "responsible" president ramped up security interventions in enough secrecy to avoid nagging scrutiny or self-examination. Re-Politicizing Defense Despite the valiant efforts of some individuals, there is no political home for responsible defense debate, oversight, and accountability.76 Yet, with determination, the left might find a real foothold in defense policy — without compromising progressive values. To be clear: There is substantial work to be done on figuring out what cohesive view of America's role in the world the left can tolerate and advance. There is even greater work to be done on determining how to renew, reuse, and reform international institutions.77 But any such agendas would be well served by embracing a set of principles that make clear-eyed debate and evaluation of defense policy and execution an asset, not an unforgiveable sin. Critical analysis of defense affairs is too often left to the technocratic and comparatively powerless "blob," which can write a mean op-ed or tweet, but has limited ability to engage the American people on its will and interests. And although Congress has willfully declawed itself so that it cannot maintain meaningful oversight of national security,78 its ability to stage and amplify policy debate for the American people is without parallel, and it has tremendous latent potential to restore greater balance in civil-military relations. Congress's absence and the associated de-politicization of national security affairs is costly. For instance, the American public is deeply ambivalent about the 17-year conflict in Afghanistan and generally ignorant of the widespread activities of the war on terror.79 This is unsurprising: Congress, too, is disaffected, often ignorant of where the U.S. military is even engaged,80 and has made little headway into questioning or shaping this intervention. The most substantive and serious debate about executive war authorities and the effectiveness of U.S. counterterrorism strategy has resulted in little more than a reauthorization proposal that still failed to move forward.81 Too many examples of political leaders' stand-off or superficial approach to defense policy and execution abound. Military superiority is generally viewed as sacrosanct, placed on "so high a pedestal as to render real debate meaningless."82 That reverence infantilizes defense budget debates. Thanking troops for their service is a politicized ritual that divorces politicians and their constituents from the intent and costs of that service. With decisions on the needs of the U.S. military and sustaining legacy systems openly linked to the economies of congressional districts, it's understandable that skeptics of utilizing military tools have been unwilling to evaluate their merits. These must all change. While, at its worst, the political right treats the use of force abroad as a metric of patriotism and the size of the force as the measure of one's love of America, the political left ought to draw from its skepticism toward intervention and its faith in institutions to advance a more rational and accountable approach to national security. For years, Robert Farley has highlighted that "progressives consistently underestimate the importance of discussions about military doctrine and technology,"83 taking what Michael Walzer calls "shortcuts"84 in their critiques of defense policy that relieve them from contributing to key debates. Instead of excusing themselves, the left should instead propose legitimate questions about major shifts in force employment and development: Will it work? What are its goals? What is the U.S. national security apparatus learning? Why didn't it work? Were U.S. objectives wrong? What did America change when it didn't work? Will America do it again? What could be improved? What should America do now? Joining the Conversation Jackson's notion of what a progressive "wager" on national security might look like in practice is useful, filling the gap between the "Republican-lite" default and the stubbornness of anti-militarism. But the left's diversity of thought can accommodate a wider playing field of potential alternative approaches to security than even he proposes. A true pacifist movement on the Hill and on the campaign trail, dedicated to the advancement of non-military approaches but premised on analysis and logical arguments, would be a serious advancement in national security and should be welcomed by the most ardent military advocates. Likewise, a more prudent middle ground approach — one that is skeptical of, but open to, military might and intervention and demands a better return on investment of national security tools — should play a more prominent political role. The full range of the left's national security spectrum should forcefully engage in oversight of the rationale for and quality of American forces and interventions abroad. The left should therefore consider adopting a series of principles on defense matters — including criteria for the use of force — that apply to the military-friendly and anti-militarist left alike. In practice, this means acknowledging that there are valid political positions on matters of defense that lie somewhere in between "yes, and" and "no never" and that trivializing them is harmful to America's national security. There are alternatives to today's counterterror strategy and it would not be an insult to the military to debate them. It's entirely legitimate to study whether the military is equipped to face today's threats without being accused of retreating from the world or starting with an artificial budget cut. It's sensible to consider whether the planned growth of ground forces, a 350-ship Navy, or a 386-squadron Air Force are the right investments or political benchmarks.85 These questions involve choices and values and should not be avoided under the umbrella of a supposed technocratic bipartisan agreement. Just as important, it's essential that the left avoid becoming a caricature of itself that promotes simplistic and superficial positions that set rigid, unserious standards. The left may not agree on the size or purpose of the military, but it can agree America should strive for informed oversight and accountability. The bumper sticker of such principles is simple: Ask informed questions,86 illuminate and demand accountability for failures, encourage fresh thinking, and bring the American people into the discussion without fear. That this is so simple is an embarrassment to the present state of the "debate." In detail, these principles should include: Building the right force driven by security interests, not an inherently smaller force driven by an allergy to size. Arguing that the U.S. military is too large without clarifying what it should be expected to do and how is, at best, a lazy and an ill-informed reaction to sticker shock. There are valid questions — and a range of plausible answers — about the appropriate mission and scope of America's forces, and a worthwhile dialogue to be had on where risks in force structure should reside. Exploring fully how threat assessments impact military roles, missions, and investments. A rigid antipathy to conflict and intervention, or to the military itself, leaves the left out of conversations that determine how and where America spends its blood and treasure, and precludes the defense establishment from tackling questions important to the left (e.g., what does a world of accelerating climate change require of the U.S. military?). The left's absence from attempts to set the analytic agenda for defense policy is dangerous. Engaging in more practical conversations about how military capabilities might be used, where, and why. Military platforms carry within them assumptions about the nature of U.S. strategy and interests that are poorly articulated in today's defense authorizing environment. Most detailed political debate today emphasizes the cost of military platforms, or their associated acquisition processes, or, for legacy systems, the industrial base. As Robert Farley noted in 2011, "Analysts, institutions, and politicians tend to respond to the arguments they see, rather than those that they don't."87 Recruiting, retaining, and promoting the military and civilian skill sets and imagination necessary for today's and tomorrow's security challenges. The mish-mash of human capital and talent management processes of today's Department of Defense, paired with a legacy focus on capacity, the booming costs of military personnel, a growing civil-military divide, and a growing gap in the military's high-technical skills, spell a looming disaster for future military manpower. The left must treat this as a strategic priority rather than a mere bureaucratic matter. Increasing transparency to the public on the manner, costs, risks, intent, and success or failure of military interventions. As I wrote with Alice Friend, the current approach of military secrecy and unwillingness to pursue an "airing of grievances" about past strategic and operational failure "assumes that domestic support for U.S. military engagements can be sustained in an information vacuum. It draws on a reservoir of public faith in the military while also limiting the public's ability to make an informed decision. This is a losing gamble."88 The left should reset this dynamic. Deliberately connecting debates on America's capabilities and political investments in preventing and resolving conflicts to the more mature debates on how to prepare to fight the nation's wars. Diplomacy, development, economics, and intelligence demand modernization just as military forces do, and they need to be far better at measuring and communicating their value. The left should push the political dialogue on these matters beyond mere talking-points. Ensuring that any military action America does engage in has clear goals, is limited in scope, is sustainable for the duration, and is assessed in terms of fully-burdened costs to the military, the broader national security community (intelligence analysts, diplomats, aid workers, contractors, and more), U.S. allies, and local populations. Exploring these matters is not pedantic or risky in the face of threats. It is the only responsible option, and the left should force these discussions. Sustaining engaged and thoughtful interest, oversight, and civil skepticism of all military and non-military intervention activities abroad. The beginning of an intervention should not be the high point of political energy. It is shameful that the progress of the war in Afghanistan, the viability of the U.S. counterterrorism strategy, the occasional airstrikes in Syria, and much more escape serious oversight. Advancing civil-military relations with respectful skepticism of military employment; unconditional support for service members, families, and veterans; and resolve to right wrongs of past failures. The left — in all its forms — should embrace the necessity of active participation and serious debate beyond the water's edge. That's how to make national security more democratic, transparent, and therefore accountable. What could be more progressive than that?
Survival is radical resistance- it turns their impacts because commitment to survival as prefigurative challenges structure that designate some life as unlivable
Ahmed, PhD, 17
(Sara, Living a Feminist Life)
But the experiences we have are not just of being worn down; these experiences also give us resources. What we learn from these experiences might be how we survive these experiences. Toward the end of chapter 9 I raised the question of survival. Here survival is how I begin; it is the start of something. Survival here refers not only to living on, but to keeping going in the more profound sense of keeping going with one's commitments. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs suggests, we need a '"robust and transformative redefinition of survival" (2010, 17). Survival can also be about keeping one's hopes alive; holding on to the projects that are projects insofar as they have yet to be realized. You might have to become willful to hold on when you are asked to let go; to let it go. Survival can thus be what we do for others, with others. We need each other to survive; we need to be part of each other's survival. To be committed to a feminist life means we cannot not do this work; we cannot not fight for this cause, whatever it causes, so we have to find a way of sharing the costs of that work. Survival thus becomes a shared feminist project. So this tool kit contains my personal stuff, what I have accumulated over time; things I know I need to do and to have around me to keep on going on. We will accumulate different things, have our own stuff; we can peer into each other's kits and find in there someone else's feminist story. But 1 think the point of the kit is not just what we put in it; it is the kit itself, having somewhere to deposit those things that are necessary for your survival. Feminism is a killjoy survival kit. We could think of this feminist survival kit as a form of feminist self-care. However, to think of a killjoy survival kit as self-care might seem to be a neoliberal agenda, a way of making feminism about the resilience of individuals.1 I discussed the problem of resilience in chapter 7, the way in which we are asked to become resilient so we can take more (more oppression, more pressure, more work). But this is our problem: feminism needs feminists to survive. We might still need to be able to take it, the pressure we are put under when we refuse to take more, when we refuse to put up with a world. Feminism needs feminists to survive: my killjoy survival kit is assembled around this sentence. It is a feminist sentence. And the reverse too is very true: feminists need feminism to survive. Feminism needs those of us who live lives as feminists to survive; our life becomes a feminist survival. But feminism needs to survive; our life becomes a feminist survival in this other sense. Feminism needs us; feminism needs us not only to survive but to dedicate our lives to the survival of feminism. This book has been my expression of my willingness to make this dedication. Feminists need feminism to survive. Audre Lorde, in her extraordinary poem "A Litany of Survival," addresses those who were "never meant to survive," those for whom survival requires creativity and work; those for whom survival is politically ambitious. Let me share a few lines from this poem: For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns (1978, 31) Here through the art of light description Lorde evokes for us a "those of us," a those of us who live and love on the edges of social experiences, in doorways, shadows, those of us who fall like shadows fall, the fallen, those for whom coming into full view would be dangerous, those for whom survival might require not coming out in the full light of day. Survival can be protest. And then: how we care for ourselves becomes an expression of feminist care. Audre Lorde, as one might expect, helps us to differentiate survival from other styles of self-orientated politics. Lorde writes, "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare" (1988, 131). This is a revolutionary, extraordinary sentence. It is a much-loved, much-cited sentence. It is an arrow, which acquires its sharpness from its own direction. It is from the epilogue to Lorde's A Burst of Light, a piece of writing so profound, so moving, that it never fails to leach me, often by leaving me undone, beside myself (that's why, as you will read, this book is in my survival kit). This writing is made up of fragments of notes put together as Audre Lorde learns that she has liver cancer, that her death can only be delayed, as she comes to feel that diagnosis in her bones. The expression "a burst of light" is used when she comes to feel the fragility of her body's situation: "that inescapable knowledge, in the bone, of my own physical limitation" (Lorde 1988, 121). A Burst of Light is an account of how the struggle for survival is a life struggle and a political struggle. A death sentence is not only about what Jasbir Puar (2009) has called "prognosis time": it is not (or not only) about experiencing your death as imminent. When you are not supposed to live, as you are, where you are, with whom you are with, then survival is a radical action; a refusal not to exist until the very end; a refusal not to exist until you do not exist. We have to work out how to survive in a system that decides life for some requires the death or removal of others. Sometimes: to survive in a system is to survive a system. Some of us have to be inventive, Audre Lorde suggests, to survive. (no pages on google books)
The role of the judge is to be an "independent policy analyst". This means you should prioritize pluralism and problem solving theory
Desch, PhD, 19
(Michael C., IR@NotreDame, "Conclusions, Responses to Objections, and Scholarly Recommendations." Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security, Princeton University Press.)
I want to reiterate that I am not arguing that scholarship that is formal or quantitative is by definition irrelevant. Indeed, one can point to examples of both that are. When applied to economic issues, the discipline of economics has managed to be both highly "scientific" and, at times, quite relevant, though for both good and ill. Likewise, there are examples of highly quantitative political science that policymakers have found useful.1 Finally, there is much nonquantitative scholarship, particularly but not exclusively in the humanities that, is jargon laden and otherwise inaccessible to a wider audience, including government policymakers.2 This is by no means an anti-social science methods screed, just a reminder of the tensions between rigor and relevance that need to managed rather than assumed away. Nor is this in any way a brief against theory. Former State Department official Roger Hilsman reminded us that everyone, including policymakers, uses theory. Paraphrasing John Maynard Keynes, he concluded that "it seems obvious that all thinking involves notions of how and why things happen. Even the 'practical' man who despises theory has a number of assumptions and expectations which lead him to believe that when certain things are done, certain results follow.. . .It is this 'theory' that helps a problem solver select from the mass of facts surrounding him those which he hopes are relevant."3 Given that, I fully associate myself with Hans Morgenthau's balanced view that "theory without verification is metaphysics, but empiricism without theory is aimless."4 Since policymakers implicitly use theory in analyzing situations and assessing their alternatives, such theories should be stated explicitly and analyzed systematically, which is a comparative advantage of the scholars. Instead, what I offer is simply a critique of the increasing tendency of many social scientists to embrace methods and models for their own sake rather than because they can help us answer substantively important questions. This inclination is in part the result of the otherwise normal and productive workings of science, but is also reinforced by less positive factors such as organizational self-interest and intellectual culture. As a result of the latter, many political scientists have committed themselves to particular social science methods not so much because they believe they will illuminate real-world policy problems but because they serve a vested interest in disciplinary autonomy and dovetail with a particular image (mathematized and model-based) of what a "science" of politics should look like. In other words, the professionalization of social science is the root of the enduring relevance question. This tendency to equate rigor with technique imposes costs on the rest of society as well as the discipline, especially when it excludes a more balanced approach to rigor and relevance of the sort that characterized the subfield of security studies in the past. On the former, as diplomat George Kennan rightly observed, policymakers need academic expertise because they have to make decisions about issues and areas of the world "about which they cannot be expert and learned."5 They depend on the academy for the raw data—whether quantitative or historical—that they use in decision making. They also rely on the social sciences for the theories they use to analyze and make sense of this data. The problem with relying exclusively on in-house government research to make up for the lack of policy-relevant academic research is that it is often of low quality. The role of the "independent policy analyst" is essential for three reasons: 6 He or she can challenge basic policy assumptions. As RAND's Hans Spier put it, they can undertake "research which does not necessarily take the mission of the military for granted and admits the possibility U.S. may be wrong"7 And academic social scientists are particularly well suited to this role by virtue of the fact that they both conduct research and also teach future policymakers. Academics have some other advantages over policymakers. They have the time to develop greater depth of knowledge on issues and regions than most policymakers can. The institution of tenure also gives them, at least in theory, the freedom to explore controversial issues and take unpopular stands. And while peer review can homogenize and narrow scholarship, it also plays an indisputably positive role in advancing it. Finally, university-based scholars have less of a vested interest in certain policies and programs than do policymakers, though of course that is not to deny that they have their own institutional interests and biases.9 I am not suggesting, of course, that scholars would make better policy than bureaucrats and elected officials. They lack inside knowledge, have little actual power, and are often politically out of step with the rest of American society.10 They also come to policy issues with a markedly different intellectual orientation than policymakers.11 Rather, my point is simply that our democratic political system depends on the successful functioning of the marketplace of ideas and checks and balances in which individuals and groups with various strengths and weaknesses and offsetting biases participate in the larger policy debate, thereby compensating for each other's limitations.12 We run into trouble when we lack one of these perspectives in policy debates. Indeed, there are instances—the war in Vietnam and the recent Iraq War—in which had the majority consensus of scholars in academia influenced policy, the country's national interest would have been better served. As the flawed Iraq War debate demonstrates, our nation's marketplace of ideas is bankrupt, particularly in national security affairs.13 Of course, our political problems run much deeper than just the Beltway/Ivory Tower gap, but closing it would represent an important step in the country's intellectual recapitalization. This nation's universities need to reclaim their place as one of society's main sources of independent ideas about the problems that it faces.14 Less widely recognized, and perhaps more controversial given the prevailing sentiments in the Academy for a sharp distinction between "science" and "policy," is my contention that the growing gap is ultimately bad for the generation of new knowledge. There are at least two reasons why greater attention to policy relevance produces better scholarship. First, it leads to more realistic theorizing. As John Kenneth Galbraith warned his economics colleagues nearly forty years ago, "No arrangement for the perpetuation of thought is secure if that thought does not make contact with the problems that it is presumed to solve."15 Second, a focus on manipulatable variables makes it more likely that they are testable because the analyst can ensure variation on them. Also, the hyperspecialization of knowledge today makes it difficult for even scholars in related disciplines to understand each other, much less the general public. Such intellectual fragmentation makes the application of scholarly knowledge to policymaking extremely difficult. Therefore, a deeper and more regular engagement between the Ivory Tower and the Beltway will be mutually beneficial for both sides.16 Ultimately, even the most sophisticated social science will be judged by what it tells us about things that affect the lives of large numbers of people and which policymakers therefore seek to influence and control.17 The recurrent congressional debates about National Science Foundation funding for political science highlight the direct costs to the discipline of not being able to justify itself in terms of broader impact on the rest of society. Harkening back to the debate about the Mansfield Amendment, an article in Science cautioned that "to the extent that the research community disdains work on major national missions or behaves self-servingly in mission-oriented work, anti-intellectualism will increase its influence on the fate of American science."18 Also, public and philanthropic community support for investment in academia generally reflects the belief that it will produce work that will speak to problems of broader importance. When the academy fails on that score, it can undermine that support.19 Political science's subfield of international security studies can plausibly claim to save large amounts of money and even lives and so its increasing marginalization is a self-inflicted wound on the discipline. Response to Objections There are at least eight reasonable, though ultimately unpersuasive, objections to my argument that we should consider. First, some point to the influence of the Democratic Peace Theory (DPT) on the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations as evidence that one of the most scientific of social science theories in international relations was both useful and influential among policymakers.20 The argument that democracies are unlikely to go to war with each other gained currency among social scientists based on statistical analysis of every major interstate war since 1815. In the words of Rutgers political scientist Jack Levy, the Democratic Peace Theory is "as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations."21 Two scholars argued that the theory became relevant outside of the academy precisely "because of the law-like status of a particular empirical finding."22 Others hold it up as a model of how basic research in political science can contribute to policymakers.23 It is not clear, though, that the influence of the DPT on recent U.S. foreign policy was due to its unassailable social scientific standing. While former Defense Department official and Ohio State political scientist Joseph Kruzel conceded that DPT "had substantial impact on public policy," he attributed its attractiveness to policymakers to its simplicity rather than its social scientific rigor.24 It clearly identifies America's enemies (nondemocratic states) and prescribed a simple response to them (make them democratic). It is also likely that the much less methodologically sophisticated articulation of the theory in the work of Michael Doyle was far more influential.25 And the process by which DPT entered the Clinton White House did not involve sophisticated social science. Rather, the key administration proponent of the democratic peace was National Security Advisor (and former college professor) Anthony Lake.26 It is clear, however, that to the extent that Lake was drawing support for the democratic peace from academic sources, it was not from statistically based research, but rather from the qualitative work of scholars like Harvard's Samuel Huntington.27 The results of a survey of senior national security policymakers found that more than half of those familiar with the methodologically sophisticated democratic peace theory reported not being influenced by it in their government work.28 Finally, one could argue that U.S. policymakers have embraced the democratic peace because of its compatibility with our political culture rather than its scientific standing.29 A second, and in some ways, flip side of the first critique, is that the relevance problem with contemporary security studies is the result of the subfield's domination by realism, and particularly its most abstruse and theoretical manifestation, neorealism.30 Critics point particularly to neorealist arguments that tout the virtues of nuclear proliferation as examples of theoretically elegant but politically unacceptable social science.31 Despite its respectability among scholars, neorealist proliferation optimism has reportedly had little influence on actual policy.32 While that particular policy issue may not have been influenced by realist thinking, as this book has shown realists have remained committed to policy relevance at times when the rest of the discipline has eschewed it. And they have more often been on the right side of policy debates as well.33 A third potential challenge to my argument is that many social scientists believe that they should avoid offering policy recommendations in favoring of focusing on basic research tasks such as identifying empirical regularities and offering generalizations to explain them.34 As Dartmouth political scientist Kalman Silvert warned, "It is not the legitimate role of the social scientist as scholar to advocate specific courses of governmental action or to act as implementer of government decisions."35 Another rationale is that doing so is unnecessary given that the applied implications of basic research tend to trickle down by themselves.36 Policy engagement—particularly offering explicit policy recommendations—is both unwise and unnecessary in the view of many social scientists. Neither of these views, however, are shared by policymakers. Most believe that in addition to providing basic research findings, "scientists must explicitly define the linkage, whether immediate or remote, of the knowledge acquired or being acquired, to specific operational problems and continually assess the import of such knowledge to solution of the problems."37 Nor are current and former policymakers sanguine about the trickle-down (or bubble-up in which senior policymakers get the results of scholarly work through their methodologically savvy staffs) process. As John K. Plank of the Brookings Institution, a former DoD official, recollected, "There is presumably a process whereby the research product is filtered up to senior policymakers, but in point of fact very little of operational usefulness is transmitted."38 Fourth, some political scientists believe that there are now so many new outlets for scholars to engage in the policy debate, it is both easier for them to do so and also unnecessary for them to concern themselves with doing so in their scholarship.39 Academics can now publish basic research in scholarly venues and then disseminate its applied implications through the new media. George Washington political scientist and blogger Marc Lynch effused that with the rise of the new media "this is in most ways a golden age for policy-relevant public spheres."40 Indeed, many see the proliferation of new media outlets as the answer to political science's perennial problem: its diminished public profile.41 The assumption here is that political scientists are simply not communicating their results effectively. There are three problems with these arguments: Until recently, we had no idea whether blogs and other new media reached policymakers. As one optimist conceded, we have "no solid statistics" on our impact.42 But we do now and it suggests that blogs and other new media are in fact not an important source of information for policymakers and therefore are unlikely to effectively convey the implications of basic research to policymakers, the media, or the general public.43 Moreover, even if a few blogs get some attention, many others do not, simply making more noise in an already cacophonous marketplace of ideas.44 And suggesting that the failure of communication argument misses the mark, Social Science Research Council president Craig Calhoun noted that scholarly "engagement with public constituencies must move beyond a dissemination model" that assumes that "pure research" will naturally triclde down, even with better communication.45 In other words, it is not the medium that matters as much as the message. And the message must be made more intelligible and useful to policymakers and the general public. Finally, there is systematic evidence that academic bloggers and scholars who utilize other new media venues receive little professional credit for them in the critical areas of promotion and tenure.46 In short, despite the explosive growth of new media outlets, professional incentives still do not encourage scholars to use them. A fifth conceivable objection is that advanced social science techniques and basic research will eventually become more useful to policymakers as they (or at least their staffs) become more sophisticated in their understanding of them. One optimist, for example, noted that most graduate public policy schools now include one or two required courses in economics and social science methods in their curricula. As these increasingly methodologically savvy young bureaucrats become senior policymakers, so this argument goes, they will be more adept at using them and more appreciative of their policy relevance.47 However, this argument assumes that training in advanced research techniques is a recent development. Policy schools, however, have long had methods courses as part of their required curriculum. Even prior to this, many national security policymakers came out of academic Ph.D. programs in which they were exposed to the latest innovations in social science methodology. It also ignores that the security studies subfield played a leading role in developing many of these sophisticated social science techniques, particularly at RAND in the 1950s.48 An example of the reverse flow of ideas from the policy world to the Academy was the "unquestionably" leading role that RAND mathematicians and other social scientists played in the development of game theory, a mathematical framework for strategizing under uncertainty.49 Despite early enthusiasm, many at RAND concluded that game theory had an Achilles Heel in its application to national security policy: how to assign the numerical values that were to be plugged into its formulas. That was not a trivial limitation, which led Hitch to confess that "for our purposes, Game Theory has been quite disappointing."50 It also assumes that today's aspiring policymakers come away from these methods courses with an unqualified appreciation of their usefulness. My experience after ten years in teaching in such schools, and familiarity with the evaluations students give these courses, leaves me skeptical. They often do not see the usefulness of such courses and suspect they are being forced to take them for academic, not professional, reasons.51 Other colleagues at professional schools share this impression.52 Finally, an earlier survey of current and former national security policymakers reveals that the more highly educated the policymaker, the greater the skepticism about their utility.53 This is consistent with the argument that familiarity with advanced techniques instills greater appreciation not only for their promise but also their limits. Even proponents of modern social science methods in international relations concede that "the emerging science of international relations has a long way to go before it can be of direct use to policy makers."54 It is hard to find much evidence that the most sophisticated approaches to international relations are of much direct use to policymakers, and there are ample reasons for caution about how much of the discipline's "basic" research is really trickling down to indirectly influence policymakers. Sixth, some point to the post-9 /11 resurgence of interest among younger social scientists as a harbinger of another renaissance of interest in policy relevance. Others suggest that changes in the nature of the "new paradigm of knowledge production," which is "socially distributed, application-oriented, trans-disciplinary, and subject to multiple accountabilities" constitute grounds for optimism about a broader return to relevance among the social sciences.55 To be sure, there are reasons for optimism on this score but also for continuing caution. As we have seen, previous periods of optimism about answering the relevance question have given way to disappointment. Moreover, many scholars have claimed to be policy relevant even though policymakers did not find them so.56 As one CIA analyst warned, "Social scientists commonly define policy-relevant research far more broadly than the foreign policy community does."57 A seventh potential criticism of my argument is there are other forms of "relevance" beyond just influencing government policymakers by offering policy recommendations to which scholars should aspire.58 Especially in a democratic political system, a scholar's vocation for politics can also involve educating students and informing the wider public about pressing issues of policy. Moreover, an engaged scholar could serve with nongovernmental and private organizations rather than just through government service. While there is no doubt that policy influence is broader than just affecting government policy, that is ultimately the goal of the enterprise, either directly through policymakers or indirectly through the media or the public. Moreover, it is the clearest and most demanding standard of relevance available. So if we want to understand when and how social science matters to policymakers that is the most important, if not the only, aspect of it to consider.59 Finally, many political scientists share Daniel Drezner's view that economics has solved the relevance question in being both rigorous and relevant. 60 The logical implication of such a belief is that the rest of social sciences should follow that discipline's lead in terms of its approach and methodology. This economics envy is based on a misapprehension that academic trends in economics have not also created a relevance problem. For example, a recent review of research at the World Bank by leading academic economists raised questions about how much of the scholarship of bank analysts that was written for publication in academic journals was of any use to the bank.61 Their answer was not much. They blamed intellectual trends in the discipline because it encouraged research that was "too academic, too focused toward the previously existing academic agenda, and too directed towards technical rather than pressing policy issues."62 Behind this economics envy lies an even deeper inferiority complex visa- vis the natural sciences. Many social scientists believe that the physical sciences have two advantages over the "softer" social sciences: more reliable data and a consensus on how to analyze it. Quantifiable data, in this view, is more persuasive, because it is clearer and less subject to dispute.63 This view of the superiority of the physical over the social sciences is widespread, with many of the former reveling in their preeminence and some of the latter manifesting two classic symptoms of an inferiority complex: resentment or reflexive emulation. Neither of these responses is healthy. It is simply not true that expressing propositions mathematically ensures that they are clearer and more transparent than conveying them in English. Economist Paul Romer admitted that "with enough math, an author can be confident that most readers will never figure out where FWUTV facts with unknown truth values is buried. A discussant or referee cannot say that an identification assumption is not credible if they cannot figure out what it is and are too embarrassed to ask."64 On the latter, one would think that the 2008 Great Recession, in which the misguided belief that quantitative models of the economy could be used to guide investment decisions on the grounds they could reveal "the truth" about what drives the market, would temper confidence that such scientific approaches could ensure effective policy.65 In a much discussed essay in the New York Times Magazine, Princeton economist Paul Krugman concluded that "the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.. . . The central cause of the profession's failure was the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually elegant approach that also gave economists a chance to show off their mathematical prowess."66 It is not even clear that natural scientists have been most influential when they have employed their most rigorous and mathematically sophisticated approaches, at least in the national security realm. Indeed, there is more evidence that they have been most influential when they have offered practical solutions to real-world problems. These solutions have often come from scientifically uncertain and incomplete data.67 These are the hallmarks of much of the best of qualitative social science. Social scientists also ought to take heart that they not only can make an important contribution using their own distinct approaches, but also that in some instances they might even be superior to those of the physical scientists. For example, many of the nuclear scientists involved in the Manhattan Project soon came to regret their role in the escalating nuclear arms race of the Cold War. Reflecting a collective sense of guilt, chemist and peace activist Linus Pauling got almost nine thousand scientists to sign a January 1958 petition to end nuclear testing as first step toward universal disarmament.68 Talcing an equally impractical tack, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard wrote to Franldin Delano Roosevelt's science adviser Vannevar Bush in January 1944, "This weapon is so powerful that there can be no peace if it is simultaneously in the possession of any two powers unless these two powers are bound by an indissoluble political union."69 While not all of the atomic scientists harbored doubts—recall the famous debates between Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller—the majority became advocates of international control of nuclear weapons, a policy that in retrospect was politically unrealistic. In comparing the assessments and policy recommendations of the physical scientists in the Golden Age, with those of social scientists like Jacob Viner, Bernard Brodie, and William T. R Fox, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the latter's views of the nuclear problem (that the genie of nuclear weapons could not be stuffed back in the bottle), and their recommendations for dealing with that situation (nuclear deterrence), were far more "realistic" than those of the nuclear "one world" physical scientists. What Is to Be Done? There are, of course, some nuts-and-bolts issues that scholars should be mindful of if they want to participate in the broader policy debate. Since policymakers have short attention spans given the number and breadth of issues they have to deal with, scholarly efforts to engage them need to be brief in conveying their ideas.70 This explains why Op/Eds are particularly influential and why so many are optimistic that blogs could play a similar role. Moreover, policymakers find much current scholarly work—from across the methodological spectrum—inaccessible. The common sentiment animating their views is that scholars should cut the jargon. Policymakers don't want scholars to write in Greek or French, but rather just plain English.71 There are also some much bigger issues undergirding the relevance question.72 To begin with, political science needs to rethink how it balances scholarly rigor with practical application. There is a middle ground between policy analysis and journalism, on one side, and scholastic irrelevance on the other.73 The best approach to balancing scholarly rigor with continuing policy relevance is methodological pluralism, which includes a commitment to using not any particular method (or all of them) but rather just the approach most appropriate for the question at hand. But methodological pluralism, by itself, is not sufficient. The latest trend in political science requiring the simultaneous use of multiple methods could, ironically, prove to be even more limiting of policy relevance. Indeed, given the need to employ all of these methods simultaneously, it is potentially even more constraining in terms of the problems it can address because it has to be limited to those which can be quantified, modeled, and studied in depth at the same time.74 Therefore, reinforcing methodological pluralism must also be a commitment to problem-, rather than method-, driven research agendas. It is only the combination of these two principles that will ensure that policy-relevant security studies can not only survive, but thrive, in political science.75 Scholars also need to think carefully about the role of theory in policyrelevant security studies scholarship. While there is no doubt that theory is important to policymakers, scholars need to be aware that as with many other things, too much of it can be a bad thing. In particular, the effort to cram the rich complexity of the social world into universal models can do intellectual violence to the phenomenon under study as well as produce suboptimal policy. Paul Nitze, then the director of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, readily conceded policymakers' need for theory but also noted that "there is the opposing consideration .. . that theoretical oversimplification presents great dangers."76 Albert Wohlstetter advocated a balanced approach to theory, noting that the key to his success throughout his career "was the practical experience I had in working with engineers. I worked with them from two sides, so to speak, as someone who had been concerned with very abstract theory more basic than that familiar to design engineers, but on the other hand, I was also concerned with production, and therefore generally trying to get them to do things more practical than they wanted to do."77 Theory is a powerful tool of statecraft, but when scholars embrace universal models they also risk irrelevance or worse. Likewise, the transmission belts conveying scholarly findings to the policy world must be repaired. Kennan envisioned the State Department's Policy Planning Staff in the late 1940s serving this function, and in some respects it continues to do so to this day.78 However, there are limits to how effectively a part of the bureaucracy can serve as an honest research broker. A plethora of think tanks in Washington are also supposed to translate knowledge into action, though the trend in recent years has been toward the establishment of overtly political and advocacy organizations, rather than nonpartisan, translational research centers.79 Reinventing the role of think tanks as bridges between the Ivory Tower and the beltway is long overdue. While nonacademic transmission belts can mediate between the Ivory Tower and the Beltway, they are no substitute for the scholars who produce knowledge to themselves serve as their own translators of it into policy. To be sure, scholars should not stop writing scholarly books and monographs utilizing the most sophisticated techniques of their discipline, if appropriate. In addition to doing these things, scholars should address pressing real world problems, not just chase after disciplinary fads. No one is in a better position to highlight the policy implications of a given piece of research than the individual who conducted it. Academic social scientists, if they want to be heard by senior policymakers, and heard correctly, need to be their own policy "transmission belts."80 The role of the Democratic Peace Theory in the recent Iraq war demonstrates the problems with scholars not specifying the concrete policy implications of their research.81 Drawing on DPT, some officials in the George W. Bush administration justified the invasion of Iraq as part of a larger strategy to bring peace to the region by spreading democracy.82 Democratic Peace proponent Bruce Russett objected to this conclusion after the fact though his voice had been largely mute in the run up to the war.83 Had he and other democracy scholars participated more actively in the prewar debate, this rationale may have been less credible. Academics also need to develop a more nuanced appreciation of the various influences on policy. Many, even in democratic political systems, tend to have an unrealistically "technocratic" attitude toward policymaking. 84 They often underestimate the role of politics in government decision making. Scholars must therefore understand that the policymaking process is inherently political and that without such an appreciation of the political considerations associated with any policy choice, even a good one may not be implemented.85
Tournament: Emory | Round: 2 | Opponent: Newark Science SB | Judge: Stekl, Misa
2. US support allegedly makes the war safer, however the empirical record shows our unwavering support greenlights atrocity. By the time your RFD is over 6 Yemeni children will have been killed
Foreign policy 10-9-18
(Lara Seligman is Foreign Policy's Pentagon correspondent https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/09/starvation-and-child-soldiers-in-yemen/)
In health centers across Yemen, children are weighed and measured for signs of severe malnutrition. At checkpoints from Sanaa to the port city of Hodeida, child soldiers stand guard, knowing full well it is American bombs that are falling from the skies. These were some of the scenes that David Miliband, the president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC), witnessed during a September visit to Yemen, where a civil war has raged since 2015. "There is undue risk being posed to civilians because of the fact that this is a war being conducted from 20,000 feet," Miliband said in an interview with Foreign Policy. "The excesses of the Houthis do not excuse the flouting of international humanitarian norms." Yemen's infrastructure and civilian population have been decimated by the war between Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government, backed by a Saudi-led and U.S. military-supported coalition of Gulf states. With 22 million civilians in need of humanitarian aid and nearly 10 million facing famine by the end of the year, Yemen has been called the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than half the population does not have access to drinking water, and according to UNICEF, a child in Yemen dies every 10 minutes from illness and starvation. Miliband, who is also a former member of the British Parliament, arrived in Yemen soon after the most violent month this year for civilians and one of the deadliest since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015. In total, 450 civilians were killed in the first nine days of August, and many more are at risk of dying of starvation or preventable conditions, he said. Illness is also a significant threat, Miliband stressed. Yemenis lived through the worst cholera outbreak in modern history last year, with more than 1 million cases (over half of which were children). While the mass outbreak was stemmed, the cases of cholera have tripled in Hodeida since the coalition launched its offensive in June, according to reports. "When the war has been going on for so long, three and a half years, with no real movement in the front line, you realize that the so-called stalemate is far from static—it is actually imposing enormous human suffering," Miliband said. The IRC has one of the largest humanitarian operations in Yemen and has been able to reach 1 million people across the country with about 800 staff working in both Houthi- and government-controlled areas. Miliband's staff is training Yemenis to provide essential services. "It's really important to understand that aid workers are local people," Miliband said. "We are hiring in vast bulk Yemenis and local people, and we train them, and they then have local intelligence, the local credibility, the local consent to be able to do their work." But the blockade of Hodeida, where 70 to 80 percent of Yemen's commercial and humanitarian imports enter the country, means that aid workers do not have enough medicine, fuel, or essential items to do their work. Not only does the blockade obstruct access to food and medicine, but it also means that the cost of fuel is skyrocketing, making it vastly more difficult for IRC staff to travel around the country. Meanwhile, humanitarian workers have had a hard time obtaining the necessary permits required to pass safely through checkpoints due to bureaucratic red tape. Of course, the workers themselves also face violence on both sides of the conflict. During his trip, Miliband heard from staff members about the risk of being targeted by missile strikes or setting off land mines. The violence in Yemen poses political dangers as well, Miliband stressed. As the conflict metastasizes, radical militant groups, such as al Qaeda and the Islamic State, have been "thriving on the chaos," he said. While U.S. involvement aims to reduce Iranian influence, Tehran is actually becoming more influential, he added. Miliband called on the international community to agree to an immediate cease-fire. The next step, he said, is to allow the flow of humanitarian aid through Hodeida and open Sanaa's airport to commercial traffic. To halt further economic collapse, Miliband urged that salaries be paid to the 1.2 million civil servants providing life-saving assistance across the country. "I'm a great believer in the philosophy that when you are in a hole, you should stop digging," Miliband said. "The war strategy that is being pursued is digging a deeper hole rather than helping us out of it." While the humanitarian effort can lessen the number of those dying, Miliband stressed that only "effective politics" could stop the killing. He pointed to a "complete lack of military progress," noting that after 18,000 bombing raids since 2015, which caused 75 percent of the war's civilian casualties, the Houthis still control 70 percent of the country. But diplomatic efforts hit a snag recently, when Houthi representatives failed to show up to the first meeting in Geneva convened by the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths. Miliband urged all sides in the conflict to engage in the peace process. He also called on the U.S. government to end its support for the Saudi-led coalition and take a more forceful approach to halting the violence. He disputed the claim that the coalition is doing everything possible to minimize civilian casualties. This argument "obviously sits askance with the reality on the ground," he said. The United States has more leverage than it claims, he added. "Everything we know about the U.S. stance is that it does make a difference because the actors in the drama do look to the U.S. for actions or restraints," Miliband said. "The great danger is the Yemeni conflict becomes a terrible stain on the U.S. reputation."
3. US support for authoritarian regimes places millions at risk-prioritize reducing material violence over geostrategic chess
Almutawakel and Alfaqih, Award winning Human Rights Activists, 11-8-18
(Radhya Almutawakel is a co-founder and leader of Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, which recently received the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty, a biennial prize awarded by U.S.-based Human Rights First. @ Abdulrasheed Alfaqih is a co-founder and leader of Mwatana Organization for Human Rights, which recently received the Roger Baldwin Medal of Liberty, a biennial prize awarded by U.S.-based Human Rights First. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/08/saudi-arabia-and-the-united-arab-emirates-are-starving-yemenis-to-death-mbs-khashoggi-famine-yemen-blockade-houthis/)
Jamal Khashoggi was but the latest victim of a reckless arrogance that has become the hallmark of Saudi Arabia's foreign policy. Yemenis were saddened, but not surprised, at the extent of the brutality exhibited in Khashoggi's killing, because our country has been living through this same Saudi brutality for almost four years. As human rights advocates working in Yemen, we are intimately familiar with the violence, the killing of innocents, and the shredding of international norms that have been the hallmarks of Saudi Arabia's military intervention in our country. For nearly four years, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition, along with the United Arab Emirates, that has cynically and viciously bombarded Yemen's cities, blockaded Yemen's ports, and prevented humanitarian aid from reaching millions in need. According to the Yemen Data Project, Saudi and Emirati aircraft have conducted over 18,500 air raids on Yemen since the war began—an average of over 14 attacks every day for over 1,300 days. They have bombed schools, hospitals, homes, markets, factories, roads, farms, and even historical sites. Tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children, have been killed or maimed by Saudi airstrikes. But the Saudis and Emiratis couldn't continue their bombing campaign in Yemen without U.S. military support.Saudis and Emiratis couldn't continue their bombing campaign in Yemen without U.S. military support. American planes refuel Saudi aircraft en route to their targets, and Saudi and Emirati pilots drop bombs made in the United States and the United Kingdom onto Yemeni homes and schools Nevertheless, U.S. attention to the war in Yemen has been largely confined to brief spats of outrage over particularly dramatic attacks, like the August school bus bombing that killed dozens of children. Saudi crimes in Yemen are not limited to regular and intentional bombing of civilians in violation of international humanitarian law. By escalating the war and destroying essential civilian infrastructure, Saudi Arabia is also responsible for the tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians who have died from preventable disease and starvation brought on by the war. The United Nations concluded that blockades have had "devastating effects on the civilian population" in Yemen, as Saudi and Emirati airstrikes have targeted Yemen's food production and distribution, including the agricultural sector and the fishing industry. Meanwhile, the collapse of Yemen's currency due to the war has prevented millions of civilians from purchasing the food that exists in markets. Food prices have skyrocketed, but civil servants haven't received regular salaries in two years. Yemenis are being starved to death on purpose, with starvation of civilians used by Saudi Arabia as a weapon of war. Three-quarters of Yemen's population—over 22 million men, women, and children—are currently dependent on international aid and protection. The U.N. warned in September that Yemen soon will reach a "tipping point," beyond which it will be impossible to avoid massive civilian deaths. Over 8 million people are currently on the verge of starvation, a figure likely to rise to 14 million—half of the country—by the end of 2018Over 8 million people are currently on the verge of starvation, a figure likely to rise to 14 million—half of the country—by the end of 2018 if the fighting does not subside, import obstructions are not removed, and the currency is not stabilized. To be clear, there is no party in this war is without blood on its hands; our organization, Mwatana, has documented violations against civilians by all parties to the conflict in Yemen, not only Saudi Arabia. The Houthis have killed and injured hundreds of civilians through their use of landmines and indiscriminate shelling, while militias backed by the United Arab Emirates, Yemeni government-backed militias, and Houthi militias have arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared, and tortured civilians. But the de facto immunity that the international community has given Saudi Arabia through its silence prevents real justice for violations by all sides. The people of the Middle East have long and bitter experience with international double standards when it comes to human rights, as purported champions of universal rights in the West regularly ignore grave violations by their allies in the region, from the former shah of Iran to Saddam Hussein to Saudi Arabia's current crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. This double standard was on display during the crown prince's recent tour of world capitals and Silicon Valley, where he was generally praised as a "reformer," and media figures recited his vision for Saudi Arabia in the year 2030 without asking what will be left of Yemen by the year 2020 if the war continues. Similarly, this double standard is on display when Western policymakers downplay Saudi and Emirati violations of Yemenis' human rights by claiming that a close partnership with Riyadh is needed to prevent perceived Iranian threats to the international community, without asking whether that same community is also endangered by Saudi Arabia's daily violations of basic international norms. And yes, there is a double standard in the wall-to-wall coverage of Khashoggi's horrific murder, when the daily murder of Yemenis by Saudi Arabia and other parties to the conflict in Yemen hardly merits mention. Those in the United States and elsewhere who are incensed by Khashoggi's murder must summon similar moral clarity and condemn Saudi Arabia's daily killing of innocents in Yemen.Those in the United States and elsewhere who are incensed by Khashoggi's murder must summon similar moral clarity and condemn Saudi Arabia's daily killing of innocents in Yemen. If Saudi violations are to be genuinely curtailed, Khashoggi's killing must mark the beginning, not the end, of accountability for Saudi crimes. Khashoggi's death has been reduced to a single data point, rather than being seen as the result of subverting universal values in favor of geopolitics or business interests. Reversing course—ending U.S. military support for the Saudi-Emirati intervention in Yemen and supporting U.N.-led peace efforts and the reopening of Yemen's air and sea ports—can still save millions of lives. If U.S. lawmakers had spoken up and taken action on Yemen years ago, when Saudi Arabia's rampant violations were already well known, thousands of Yemeni civilians who since then have been killed by airstrikes or starvation would still be alive today—and perhaps Jamal Khashoggi would be, too.
4. Arming authoritarian regimes makes us responsible for the violence they carry out
Rovera 15
(Donatella Rovera is the senior crisis response advisor for Amnesty International. https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/26/the-human-carnage-of-saudi-arabias-war-in-yemen/, 8-26)
The Houthis and their allies are the declared targets of the coalition's 5-month-old air campaign. In reality, however, it is civilians like little Rahma and her family who all too often pay the price of this war. Hundreds have been killed in such strikes while asleep in their homes, when going about their daily activities, or in the very places where they had sought refuge from the conflict. The United States, meanwhile, has provided the weapons that have made many of these killings possible. The conflict has worsened an already dire humanitarian situation in the Middle East's poorest country. Prior to the conflict, more than half of Yemen's population was in need of some humanitarian assistance. That number has now increased to more than 80 percent, while a coalition-imposed blockade on commercial imports remains in place in much of the country and the ability of international aid agencies to deliver desperately needed supplies continues to be hindered by the conflict. The damage inflicted by a coalition airstrike last week on the port of the northwestern city of Hudaydah, the only point of entry for humanitarian aid to the north of the country, is only the latest example. The situation is poised to deteriorate further: The U.N. World Food Program warned last week of the possibility of famine in Yemen for millions, mostly women and children. Bombs dropped by the Saudi-led air campaign have all too often landed on civilians, contributing to this humanitarian disaster. In the ruins of the Musaab bin Omar school, the meager possessions of the families who were sheltering there included a few children's clothes, blankets, and cooking pots. I found no sign of any military activity that could have made the site a military target. But I did see the remains of the weapon used in the attack — a fin from a U.S.-designed MK80 general-purpose bomb, similar to those found at many other locations of coalition strikes. This was far from the only instance where U.S. weapons killed Yemeni civilians. In the nearby village of Waht, another coalition airstrike killed 11 worshipers in a mosque two days earlier. There, too, bewildered survivors and families of the victims asked why they had been targeted. One of the two bombs dropped on the mosque failed to explode and was still mostly intact when I visited the site. It was a U.S.-manufactured MK82 general-purpose bomb, fitted with a fusing system also of U.S. manufacture. The 500-pound bomb was stamped "explosive bomb" and "tritonal" — the latter a designation indicating the type of explosive it contains. Mistakes in the identification of targets and in the execution of attacks can and do happen in wars. In such cases, it is incumbent on the responsible parties to promptly take the necessary corrective action to avoid the recurrence of the same mistakes. But there is no sign that this is occurring in Yemen: Five months since the onset of the coalition airstrike campaign, innocent civilians continue to be killed and maimed every day, raising serious concerns about an apparent disregard for civilian life and for fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. Strikes that are carried out in the knowledge that they will cause civilian casualties are disproportionate or indiscriminate and constitute war crimes. While the United States is not formally part of the Saudi-led coalition, it is assisting the coalition air campaign by providing intelligence and aerial refueling facilities to coalition bomber jets. The sum total of its assistance to the coalition makes the United States partly responsible for civilian casualties resulting from unlawful attacks. Washington has also long been a key supplier of military equipment to Saudi Arabia and other members of the coalition, providing them with the weapons that they are now unleashing in Yemen. Regardless of when the weapons used by coalition forces in Yemen were acquired — whether before or since the start of the air campaign — the countries that supplied the weapons have a responsibility to ensure that they are not used to commit violations of international law. The poisonous legacy of these U.S.-made weapons will plague Yemen for years to come. In Inshur, a village near the northern city of Saada, I found a field full of U.S.-made BLU-97 cluster submunitions — small bombs the size of a soda can that are contained in cluster bombs. Many lie in the field, still unexploded and posing a high risk for unsuspecting local residents, farmers, and animal herders who may step on them or pick them up, unaware of the danger. In one of the city's hospitals, I met a 13-year-old boy who stepped on one of the unexploded cluster bombs in Inshur, causing it to explode. It smashed several bones in his foot. Cluster bombs were banned by an international convention in 2008. But in the 1990s, the United States sold the type of cluster bombs now littering the fields of Inshur to Saudi Arabia. Each of these cluster bombs contains up to 200 small bombs, which are dispersed by the bomb's explosion over a large area. However, many of these smaller bombs often do not explode on impact, leaving a lethal legacy for years to come. Coalition airstrikes have been particularly intense in the north of the country, notably in and around Saada, a Houthi stronghold that is home to some 50,000 people. When I visited the city in July, I was shocked by the extent of the destruction: Saada now lies in ruin, with most of the population displaced and private homes, shops, markets, and public buildings reduced to rubble in relentless and often indiscriminate air bombardments. A coalition spokesman said in May that the entire city of Saada was considered a military target, in breach of international humanitarian law, which demands that belligerents distinguish between civilians and military targets at all times. International law is clearly being violated in Saada and the surrounding villages. A series of coalition strikes on a village in Sabr, near Saada, killed at least 50 civilians, most of them children, and injured nine others in the afternoon of June 3. Half of the village was completely destroyed. Surviving villagers showed me the piles of rubble which used to be their homes. Ghalib Dhaifallah, a father of four, who lost his 11-year-old son Moaz and 27 other relatives in the attack, told me the boy had been playing with his cousins in the center of the village, at the precise point of impact of one of the airstrikes. "We dug for days looking for the bodies; we recognized some body parts from the clothing only," he told me.
5. Civilian casualties from strikes or famine are entirely preventable but entail massive suffering
WP 11-21-18 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/11/21/children-have-starved-death-during-saudi-led-intervention-yemen-says-new-report/?utm_term=.b026eca4ad1c
More than 85,000 children may have died of hunger since Saudi Arabia intervened in the war in Yemen three years ago, according to Save the Children, an international NGO. "For every child killed by bombs and bullets, dozens are starving to death and it's entirely preventable," said Tamer Kirolos, Save the Children's country director in Yemen. With only a few hospitals still operational, the nongovernmental organization says that the human toll of the conflict cannot be fully captured by simply relying on official numbers. Instead, the charity used historical mortality rates and United Nations data on Yemeni malnutrition to estimate that more than 25,000, or 20 to 30 percent of all acutely malnourished children, have died every year since April 2015. The estimates, the NGO said, may still be lower than the actual number of deaths. "Children who die in this way suffer immensely as their vital organ functions slow down and eventually stop. Their immune systems are so weak they are more prone to infections, with some too frail to even cry," said Save the Children representative Kirolos. "Parents are having to witness their children wasting away, unable to do anything about it," he said. According to the United Nations, half the Yemeni population suffers from famine. The United States has remained largely silent on the war, even when Saudi Arabia enacted a blockade on its borders with Yemen last November. Since then, human rights groups have struggled to supply some of the most malnourished areas in the country with food and drinking water. About 90 percent of the country is considered to be desert or arid and the Yemeni government heavily relied on food imports before the conflict. What began as a rebellion by the country's Shiite-majority Houthi rebels during the Arab Spring has turned into a bigger confrontation between Saudi Arabia and its archrival Iran, which supports the Houthis. Saudi Arabia has received support from eight other Arab states that are also opposed to Iran's influence. U.S. officials long argued that the involvement of Iran has made it impossible to end the conflict, but criticism of that assessment has mounted as the conflict became the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Western nations have remained careful in calibrating their responses, to neither disgruntle the wealthy and investment-eager Saudi leadership nor domestic human rights supporters. Germany, for instance, reduced its arms equipment sales to Saudi Arabia and vowed to stop them completely, but approved new sales earlier this year. (Those sales have now been stopped amid the killing of Washington Post contributing columnist Khashoggi). In the United States, Trump has put Saudi investments and arms purchases first, even as members of his administration have pressured the Saudis to stop the Yemeni conflict. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both said in October that the war should come to an end. The United States exports more arms to Saudi Arabia than any other country.
Plan: The United States ought not provide military aid to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
2. The plan sends a signal to allies that US support must be earned encouraging moderation- this stabilizes the region, oil prices, reduces terrorism and proliferation
Walt, PhD, 18
(Stephen, IR@Harvard, 1-16 https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/16/the-islamic-republic-of-hysteria-iran-middle-east-trump/)
Fortunately, no state inside or outside the Middle East was then — or is today — in a position to control it. As a result, the United States does not have to do much to maintain a regional balance of power. Instead of giving Saudi Arabia or Israel a blank check to counter some mythical Iranian hegemon, Washington should seek more balanced relations with all states in the region, Iran included. This more equitable approach would facilitate cooperation on issues where U.S. and Iranian interests align, such as Afghanistan. The prospect of better relations with the United States would give Tehran an incentive to moderate its behavior. Past U.S. efforts to isolate the clerical regime encouraged it to play a spoiler's role instead, with some degree of success. This approach would also discourage America's present allies from taking U.S. support for granted and encourage them to do more to retain its favor. America's current regional allies (and their domestic lobbies) would surely protest vehemently if Washington stopped backing them to the hilt and sought even a modest détente with Iran. But that is ultimately their problem, not America's. Excessive U.S. support encourages allies to behave recklessly, as Israel does when it expands illegal settlements and as Saudi Arabia is doing with its military campaign in Yemen, its diplomatic squabble with Qatar, and its bungled attempt to reshape politics inside Lebanon. If U.S. allies understood that Washington was talking to everyone, however, they would have more reason to listen to America's advice lest it curtail its support and look elsewhere. Having many options is the ultimate source of leverage. Playing balance-of-power politics in the Middle East does not require Washington to abandon its current allies completely or tilt toward Tehran. Rather, it means using U.S. power to maintain a rough balance, discourage overt efforts to alter the status quo, and prevent any state from dominating the region while helping local powers resolve their differences. Lowering the temperature xwin this way would safeguard access to oil, dampen desire in the region for weapons of mass destruction, and give these states less reason to fund extremists and other proxies.
3. Military aid is an outdated model- it doesn't give the US influence or leverage
Walsh, Cairo Bureau chief, and Schmitt, national security writer, 12-25-18
(Declan and Eric, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/world/middleeast/yemen-us-saudi-civilian-war.html)
For decades, the United States sold tens of billions of dollars in arms to Saudi Arabia on an unspoken premise: that they would rarely be used. The Saudis amassed the world's third-largest fleet of F-15 jets, after the United States and Israel, but their pilots almost never saw action. They shot down two Iranian jets over the Persian Gulf in 1984, two Iraqi warplanes during the 1991 gulf war and they conducted a handful of bombing raids along the border with Yemen in 2009. The United States had similar expectations for its arms sales to other Persian Gulf countries. "There was a belief that these countries wouldn't end up using this equipment, and we were just selling them expensive paperweights," said Andrew Miller, a former State Department official now with the Project on Middle East Democracy. Then came Prince Mohammed bin Salman. When the prince, then the Saudi defense minister, sent fighter jets to Yemen in March 2015, Pentagon officials were flustered to receive just 48 hours notice of the first strikes against Houthi rebels, two former senior American officials said. American officials were persuaded by Saudi assurances the campaign would be over in weeks. But as the weeks turned to years, and the prospect of victory receded, the Americans found themselves backing a military campaign that was exacting a steep civilian toll, largely as a result of Saudi and Emirati airstrikes. American military officials posted to the coalition war room in Riyadh noticed that inexperienced Saudi pilots flew at high altitudes to avoid enemy fire, military officials said. The tactic reduced the risk to the pilots but transferred it to civilians, who were exposed to less accurate bombings. Coalition planners misidentified targets and their pilots struck them at the wrong time — destroying a vehicle as it passed through a crowded bazaar, for instance, instead of waiting until it reached an open road. The coalition routinely ignored a no-strike list — drawn up by the United States Central Command and the United Nations — of hospitals, schools and other places where civilians gathered. At times, coalition officers subverted their own chain of command. In one instance, a devastating strike that killed 155 people in a funeral hall was ordered by a junior officer who countermanded an order from a more senior officer, a State Department official said. The Americans offered help. The State Department financed an investigative body to review errant airstrikes and propose corrective action. Pentagon lawyers trained Saudi officers in the laws of war. Military officers suggested putting gun cameras on Saudi and Emiratis warplanes to see how strikes were being conducted. The coalition balked. In June 2017, American officials extracted new promises of safeguards, including stricter rules of engagement and an expansion of the no-strike list to about 33,000 targets — provisions that allowed the secretary of state, then Rex W. Tillerson, to win support in Congress for the sale of more than $510 million in precision-guided munitions to the kingdom. But those measures seemed to make little difference. Just over a year later, in August 2018, a coalition airstrike killed at least 40 boys on a packed school bus in northern Yemen. Still, American leaders insisted they need to keep helping the Saudi coalition. America's role in the war was "absolutely essential" to safeguard civilians, the general in charge of Central Command, Gen. Joseph L. Votel, told a charged Senate hearing in March. "I think this does give us the best opportunity to address these concerns," he said.
Rejection of problem solving is elitist and locks in oppression of the marginalized
Jarvis 2000 (D.S.L., Lecturer n Government - U of Sydney, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND THE CHALLENGE OF POSTMODERNISM, p. 128-9)
Certainly it is right and proper that we ponder the depths of our theoretical imaginations, engage in epistemological and ontological debate, and analyze the sociology of our knowledge. But to suppose that this is the only task of international theory, let alone the most important one, smacks of intellectual elitism and displays a certain contempt for those who search for guidance in their daily struggles as actors in international politics. What does Ashley's project his deconstructive efforts, or valiant tight against positivism say to the truly marginalized, oppressed and destitute? How does it help solve the plight of the poor, the displaced refugees, the casualties of war, or the emigres of death squads? Does it in any way speak to those whose actions and thoughts comprise the policy and practice of international relations? On all these questions one must answer no. This is not to say, of course, that all theory should be judged by its technical rarionality and problem-solving capacity as Ashley forcefully argues. But to suppose that problem-solving technical theory is not necessary—or is in some, way bad—is a contemptuous position that abrogates any hope of solving some of the nightmarish realities that millions confront daily. Holsti argues, we need ask of these theorists and these theories tne ultimate question, "So what?" to what purpose do they deconstruct problematize, destabilize, undermine, ridicule, and belittle modernist and rationalist approaches? Does this get us any further, make the world any better, or enhance the human condition? In what sense can this "debate toward a bottomless pit of epistemology and metaphysics" be judged pertinent relevant helpful, or cogent to anyone other than those foolish enough to be scholastically excited by abstract and recondite debate.
Government action is key—reform can pursue genuine equality - defeatist attitudes ensure that the world stays the same and cede politics.
Eddie S. GLAUDE Jr., Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton and a PhD in Religion from Princeton, 16 Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves, p. 185-197
CHANGE HOW WE VIEW GOVERNMENT For more than three decades, we have been bludgeoned with an idea of government that has little to no concern for the public good. Big government is bad, we are told. It is inefficient, and its bloated bureaucracies are prone to corruption. Even Democrats, especially since Bill Clinton, have taken up this view. For example, Obama says, "We don't need big government; we need smart government." For some on the right, big government is bad because it aims to distribute wealth to those who are lazy and undeserving. "Big government" is just a shorthand for dreaded entitlement programs-all too often coded language for race. In this view, "big government" is the primary agent of enforcing racial equality, taking hard-earned stuff from white Americans and giving it to undeserving others. Government cannot do such a thing, they argue, without infringing on the rights of white Americans. And even government-mandated redistribution will not solve the problem. As Barry Goldwater put the point in 1964, "No matter how we try, we cannot pass a law that will make you like me or me like you. The key to racial and religious tolerance lies not in laws alone but, ultimately, in the hearts of men." From this perspective, government plays no role in changing our racial habits. Why would we want to make it bigger? But Goldwater failed to realize that governmental indifference can harden hearts, and government action can create conditions that soften them. People's attitudes aren't static or untouchable. They are molded by the quality of interactions with others, and one of the great powers of government involves shaping those interactions-not determining them in any concrete sense, but defining the parameters within which people come to know each other and live together. Today, for example, most Americans don't believe women should be confined to the home raising children, or subjected to crude advances and sexist remarks by men. The women's-rights movement put pressure on the government, which in turn passed laws that helped change some of our beliefs about women. Similarly, the relative progress of the 1960s did not happen merely by using the blunt instruments of the law. Change emerged from the ways those laws, with grassroots pressure, created new patterns of interactions, and ultimately new habits. Neither Obama's election to the presidency nor my appointment as a Princeton professor would have happened were it not for these new patterns and habits. None of this happens overnight. It takes time and increasing vigilance to protect and secure change. I was talking with a dose friend and he mentioned a basic fact: that we were only fifteen years removed from the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 when Ronald Reagan was elected president and Republicans began to dismantle the gains of the black freedom struggle. Civil rights legislation and the policies of the Great Society had just started to reshape our interactions when they started to be rolled back. We barely had a chance to imagine America anew-to pursue what full employment might look like, to let the abolition of the death penalty settle in, to question seriously the morality of putting people in prison cells, and to enact policies that would undo what the 1968 Kerner Commission described as "two Americas"¬ before the attack on "big government" or, more precisely, the attack on racial equality was launched. The objective was to shrink the size of government ("to starve the beast") and to limit its domestic responsibilities to ensuring economic efficiency and national defense. Democrats eventually buckled, and this is the view of government, no matter who is in office, that we have today. It has become a kind of touchstone of faith among most Americans that government is wasteful and should be limited in its role-that it shouldn't intrude on our lives. Politicians aren't the only ones who hold this view. Many Americans do, too. Now we can't even imagine serious talk of things like full employment or the abolition of prisons. We have to change our view of government, especially when it comes to racial matters. Government policy ensured the vote for African Americans and dismantled legal segregation. Policy established a social safety net for the poor and elderly; it put in place the conditions for the growth of our cities. All of this didn't happen simply because of individual will or thanks to some abstract idea of America. It was tied up with our demands and expectations. Goldwater was wrong. So was Reagan. And, in many ways, so is Obama. Our racial habits are shaped by the kind of society in which we live, and our government plays a big role in shaping that society. As young children, our community offers us a way of seeing the world; it lets us know what is valuable and sacred, and what stands as virtuous behavior and what does not. When Michael Brown's body was left in the street for more than four hours, it sent a dear message about the value of black lives. When everything in our society says that we should be less concerned about black folk, that they are dangerous, that no specific policies can address their misery, we say to our children and to everyone else that these people are "less than"-that they fall outside of our moral concern. We say, without using the word, that they are niggers. One way to change that view is to enact policies that suggest otherwise. Or, to put it another way, to change our view of government, we must change our demands of government. For example, for the past fifty years African American unemployment has been twice that of white unemployment. The 2013 unemployment rate for African Americans stood at 13.1 percent, the highest annual black unemployment rate in more than seventy years. Social scientists do not generally agree on the causes of this trend. Some attribute it to the fact that African Americans are typically the "last hired and first fired." Others point to changes in the nature of the economy; still others point to overt racial discrimination in the labor market. No matter how we account for the numbers, the fact remains that most Americans see double-digit black unemployment as "normal." However, a large-scale, comprehensive jobs agenda with a living wage designed to put Americans, and explicitly African Americans, to work would go a long way toward uprooting the racial habits that inform such a view. It would counter the nonsense that currently stands as a reason for long-term black unemployment in public debate: black folk are lazy and don't want to work. If we hold the view that government plays a crucial role in ensuring the public good-if we believe that all Americans, no matter their race or class, can be vital contributors to our beloved community-then we reject the idea that some populations are disposable, that some people can languish in the shadows while the rest of us dance in the light. The question ''Am I my brother's or my sister's keeper?" is not just a question for the individual or a mantra to motivate the private sector. It is a question answered in the social arrangements that aim to secure the goods and values we most cherish as a community. In other words, we need an idea of government that reflects the value of all Americans, not just white Americans or a few people with a lot of money. We need government seriously committed to racial justice. As a nation, we can never pat ourselves on the back about racial matters. We have too much blood on our hands. Remembering that fact-our inheritance, as Wendell Berry said-does not amount to beating ourselves over the head, or wallowing in guilt, or trading in race cards. Remembering our national sins serves as a check and balance against national hubris. We're reminded of what we are capable of, and our eyes are trained to see that ugliness when it rears its head. But when we disremember-when we forget about the horrors of lynching, lose sight of how African Americans were locked into a dual labor market because of explicit racism, or ignore how we exported our racism around the world-we free ourselves from any sense of accountability. Concern for others and a sense of responsibility for the whole no longer matter. Cruelty and indifference become our calling cards. We have to isolate those areas in which long-standing trends of racial inequality short-circuit the life chances of African Americans. In addition to a jobs agenda, we need a comprehensive government response to the problems of public education and mass incarceration. And I do mean a government response. Private interests have overrun both areas, as privatization drives school reform (and the education of our children is lost in the boisterous battles between teachers' unions and private interests) and as big business makes enormous profits from the warehousing of black and brown people in prisons. Let's be clear: private interests or market-based strategies will not solve the problems we face as a country or bring about the kind of society we need. We have to push for massive government investment in early childhood education and in shifting the center of gravity of our society from punishment to restorative justice. We can begin to enact the latter reform by putting an end to the practice of jailing children. Full stop. We didn't jail children in the past. We don't need to now. In sum, government can help us go a long way toward uprooting racial habits with policies that support jobs with a living wage, which would help wipe out the historic double-digit gap between white and black unemployment; take an expansive approach to early childhood education, which social science research consistently says profoundly affects the life chances of black children; and dismantle the prison-industrial complex. We can no longer believe that disproportionately locking up black men and women constitutes an answer to social ills. This view of government cannot be dismissed as a naive pipe dream, because political considerations relentlessly attack our political imaginations and limit us to the status quo. We are told before we even open our mouths that this particular view won't work or that it will never see the light of day. We've heard enough of that around single payer health care reform and other progressive policies over the Obama years. Such defeatist attitudes conspire to limit our imaginations and make sure that the world stays as it is. But those of us who don't give a damn about the rules of the current political game must courageously organize, advocate, and insist on the moral and political significance of a more robust role for government. We have to change the terms of political debate. Something dramatic has to happen. American democracy has to be remade. John Dewey, the American philosopher, understood this: The very idea of democracy, the meaning of democracy, must be continually explored afresh; it has to be constantly discovered and rediscovered, remade and reorganized; while the political and economic and social institutions in which it is embodied have to be remade and reorganized to meet the changes that are going on in the development of new needs on the part of human beings and new resources for satisfying these needs. Dewey saw American democracy as an unfinished project. He knew that the aims and purposes of this country were not fixed forever in the founding documents, but the particular challenges of our moment required imaginative leaps on behalf of democracy itself. Otherwise, undemocratic forces might prevail; tyranny in the form of the almighty dollar and the relentless pursuit of it might overtake any commitment to the idea of the public good; and bad habits might diminish our moral imaginations. The remaking of America will not happen inside the Beltway. Too many there have too much invested in the status quo. A more robust idea of government will not emerge from the current political parties. Both are beholden to big money. Substantive change will have to come from us. Or, as the great civil rights leader Ella Baker said, "we are the leaders we've been looking for"-a model of leadership that scares the hell out of the Reverena Sharpton. We will have to challenge the status quo in the streets and at the ballot box. In short, it will take a full-blown democratic awakening to enact this revolution. On February 7, 2014, I flew to Raleigh, North Carolina, to join with tens of thousands of other like-minded people to protest the draconian laws passed by the North Carolina state legislature. Since 2010, while many people-especially black people-were still reeling from the 2008 recession/depression, Republicans eliminated Medicaid coverage for half a million North Carolinians, passed a voter-ID law designed to disenfranchise primarily African American voters, transferred $90 million from public schools to voucher schools and cut pre-K for 30,000 children, passed a law requiring women about to have an abortion to listen to the heartbeat of the fetus, repealed the earned income tax credit for 900,000 people, and constitutionally banned gay marriage. North Carolina Republicans had declared war. They represented clear examples of those who hold a view of government that hardens hearts and reinforces racial habits. I watched from afar as the Forward Together moral movement took shape in response. People from all across North Carolina organized and mobilized to take back the state from extremists. The state NAACP, with its charismatic leader, Reverend William Barber II, built a movement from the ground up to challenge what they took to be an allout assault on the moral and social fabric of the state. The movement was not simply a reaction to Tea Party Republicans. "We started this when the Democrats were in power," Barber said. "We put out the word. The state had not complied with the Leandro decision a 1994 publiceducation-equity lawsuit. We still had not given public employees collective bargaining rights. We didn't have a racial justice act." But the actions of the North Carolina GOP intensified the group's efforts. More than 900 people who engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience to protest the Republican agenda were arrested during the 2013 legislative session. Reverend Barber put out a call across the country for a massive march in February to launch the 2014 Forward Together campaign. Eighty thousand to 100,000 people answered. It was the largest mass demonstration in the South since the Selma march in 1965. I arrived early. It was cold, and clouds blocked the sun as organizers began to set up. A few people worked on their signs. One sign read PROTECT ALL N.C. CITIZENS with different examples of vulnerable groups written underneath (the mentally ill, the unemployed, teachers, the elderly, students, prisoners, the uninsured, minorities). I was struck from the beginning by the cross-section of people there. Old and young, straight and gay, black, white, and Latino all began to gather. I asked a few of them why they were marching. Leslie Boyd, a white woman from Asheville, North Carolina, told me about her son, Michael Danforth. He had suffered from a birth defect that made it next to impossible for him to get health insurance. He died in the hospital, and ever since, she has dedicated her life to health care activism. She started a small nonprofit called Western North Carolina Health Advocates, through which she met Reverend Barber. He asked her to join the movement. The cold weather drove me into the nearby McDonald's, where several people sipped coffee while they waited for the march to begin. I struck up a conversation with Martin Marshall from Atlanta, Georgia, and Ron Gray from Rock Hill, South Carolina. Martin told me a story about his childhood experiences with racism, about the wall that divided his white community from the black community, and how racism was still alive today. "Voter restrictions and access to health care " were · the reasons he was marching. Ron was less talkative. He said, "I will give you the short form: injustice. I am here because it is the right place to be." Sitting next to Martin and Ron was an older white couple, Bill and Betsy Crittendon from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. They were members of an interracial choir called the United Voices of Praise. They had been involved in interracial social issues for a number of years and found the "regressive policies that have come about in this state to be just awful, absolutely awful. They have completely reversed the course of this state." Mrs. Crittendon wasn't too optimistic that the march would change the minds of state legislators, but she and her husband understood the long-term significance of the march and the Forward Together movement. "People need to see and hear what this is all about .... Every step along the way is a building step to clear the way for justice issues." These were people from different walks of life who understood the common ground of suffering in this country. For them, that understanding did not require anyone to leave the particulars of their suffering at the door. Anti-racism remained a part of their advocacy whether they struggled for universal health care or a living wage. They joined with others to urge a fundamental change in North Carolina and the country that could help break down racial habits. Reverend Barber thinks of their efforts in this way: It's about showing people the intersectionality of their lives; the intersectionality of their moving together . ... We have a phrase: we is the most important word in the justice vocabulary. The issue is not what I can do, but what we can do when we stand together, fight together, pray together, and work together, and we feel movement together. As I finished the conversations in McDonald's, I looked outside. Busload after busload of people had begun to arrive. Before the march began, speakers rallied the crowd. The topics were wide-ranging, from LGBT concerns, the state of public education, issues of immigration and the status of undocumented workers, to racist voter-ID laws. It was an in-the-flesh performance of a multiracial, multi-issue coalition. And whenever someone shouted, "Forward together," the crowd replied, "Not one step back." Initially, to an outsider looking in, the moment resembled the traditional theater of contemporary American protest. A march serves as a moment of catharsis. People gather, tensions are released, folks go back to business as usual, and the men (and it is typically always men) who lead the march leverage the spotlight for personal gain. But a brief glance beneath the surface of this particular gathering revealed something much more expansive. The march was just the tip of an organizing iceberg. Reverend Barber declared, "The Moral March inaugurates a fresh year of grassroots empowerment, voter education, litigation, and nonviolent direct action." In other words, this march wasn't a culmination but a catalyst: it dramatized an organizing effort (which preceded the gathering) that encompassed the courtroom, the ballot box, and the streets. For Barber, the work of democracy doesn't happen through marches or backroom deals but through concerted efforts "to change the context in which power operates." Of course, voting matters. But democracy is about the commitment to get one's hands dirty, and that work is often selfless and thankless. At the heart of those efforts is a more robust conception of government-a belief that government has the capacity to transform lives through focused legislation-and an insistence that we shift the center of moral gravity in North Carolina and in the nation. Five demands guide this insistence: (1) secure pro-labor, anti-poverty policies that ensure economic sustainability; (2) provide well-funded, quality public education to all; (3) stand up for the health of every North Carolinian by promoting health care access and environmental justice across all the state's communities; (4) address the continuing inequalities in the criminal justice system and ensure equality under the law for every person, regardless of race, class, creed, documentation, or sexual preference; and (5) protect and expand voting rights for people of color, immigrants, the elderly, and students to safeguard fair democratic representation. Each demand carries with it an expectation of the role of government in safeguarding the public good and an affirmation of the dignity and standing of all Americans. If we were to embrace these demands as policy, we would be well on our way to a revolution of value. As we marched from historic Shaw University, the place where the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee was founded in April 1960, to the state capitol, Americans from all walks of life expressed a radically egalitarian vision of this country. This vision did not require African Americans to leave their experiences at the door. Alongside demands for marriage equality, cries for support of public education, and calls for a more robust commitment to labor, marchers embraced the call for an anti-racist politics. As Reverend Barber said, "Some people wanted us to emphasize poverty instead of race. But you have to speak the truth. Race can be the Achilles' heel of the movement or lend itself to your moral positioning." We have to confront white supremacy, or what Barber calls "the corruption of the spirit and the conscience," as a fundamental contradiction of American democracy, or face the consequences of our silence. As the march concluded, I stood amazed at the power of ordinary people. Thousands of people had come together, for a moment, to declare their commitment to a radical vision of democracy. This is what has been missing in contemporary American politics. Reverend Barber's inspiring remarks struck a chord that reached back to the nineteenthcentury abolitionists, black and white, who decided to become traitors in the name of American democracy. They turned their backs on the slave regime. Barber called us to do the same with the political extremists of our times. We need the kind of language that's not left or right or conservative or liberal, but moral, fusion language that says look: it's extreme and immoral to suppress the right to vote. It's extreme and immoral to deny Medicaid for millions of poor people. . .. It's extreme and immoral to raise taxes on the working poor by cutting earned income taxes and to raise taxes on the poor and middle class in order to cut taxes for the wealthy. It's extreme and immoral to use power to cut off poor people's water in Detroit. That's immoral! What we need to cut off is that kind of abusive power! It's extreme and immoral to re-segregate our schools and underfund our public schools. It's extreme and immoral for people who came from immigrants to now have a mean amnesia and cry out against immigrants and the rights of children . ... That's not just bad policy, it's against the common good and a disregard for human rights. It's a refusal to lean toward the angels of our better selves . ... In policy and politics in America, we face two choices. One is the low road to political destruction, and the other is the pathway to higher ground. Barber finished speaking-preaching, really. The crowd joined hands to sing "We Shall Overcome." The voices were full of emotion and faith, not the sound of trepidation heard in the voices of those who sang the song after Reagan's speech in the Rose Garden. For much of the march, the day had been cloudy and cold. But as he spoke, the sun finally broke through. "The sun has come out," Reverend Barber started to shout. "The sun has come out. We are on our way to higher ground. Even the universe blesses this day. Even the universe says yes to justice, yes to equality, yes to higher ground." Marchers shouted. In front of me stood a white Episcopalian preacher in tears. I wiped my own eyes. This is the kind of social movement that will transform our idea of government. It insists on the dignity and standing of black people and other marginalized groups, and it argues for a dramatic change in what we as Americans care" most about. To be sure, the Forward Together moral movement isn't the only form of struggle we need. (In some ways, Reverend Barber represents the long-standing tradition of the charismatic preacher as leader, although he happens to be aware of the pitfalls of the model of leadership even as he exemplifies it.) It represents just one example of what a democratic awakening must do if we are to change the terms of political debate in this country: it must enact a different way of thinking about government and its relation to the most vulnerable among us.
We avoid the "local education disad." "Putting this room first" is net worse for those lacking privilege
Hoff '6
(et al, Dr. Dianne Hoff, professor in the College of Education and Human Development and president of Faculty Senate, University of Maine, Journal of Educational Administration, 44:3 – available via Emerald Management 120 database).
There is no question that helping educational leadership students become self-analytical and reflect upon the areas where their own leadership and decisions can be improved is an important aspect of self and school improvement. If, however, an educational leadership program fails to push students to reflect beyond their individual actions and their current setting, it can actually reinforce their tendency both to think and act locally. This confines their actions to the norms of their local schools and communities, which can only result in the maintenance of the status quo. More problematic, local thinking can mask deep prejudice that exists to sustain a system that advantages the dominant culture. School leaders who hesitate to challenge local norms may perpetuate a system of schooling that marginalizes people who are considered different. As Counts reminds us, all education includes the imposition of ideas and values, but educators have an obligation to be clear about what assumptions shape their practice. A narrow focus on local concerns may involve "the clothing of one's own deepest prejudices in the garb of universal truth" (Counts, 1932, p. 180).There is an alternative. Educational leaders have to decide in big and small ways every day whether to let local or global contexts shape their actions. School leaders who go out of their way to welcome immigrant students, hire openly gay teachers, support a multi-cultural curriculum, honor a variety of religious holidays, and routinely examine school practices that might reinforce privilege (to list just a few examples), perhaps even in the face of local disapproval, contribute to the important task of creating an arena for expanding local and parochial weltanschauungen. Exemplary acts by school leaders speak even louder than exemplary words. They send messages about the inclusiveness of the schools' social and intellectual environments. They quite literally set up a level playing field for the arena of ideas and beliefs. This is an arena from which a new social order can emerge.
Tournament: Emory | Round: 4 | Opponent: Cambridge Ridge and Latin AG | Judge: Castillo, Chris
6. Food inequality is immoral.
Watson, 77 (Richard, Professor of Philosophy at Washington University, World Hunger and Moral Obligation, p. 118-119)
These arguments are morally spurious. That food sufficient for well-nourished survival is the equal right of every human individual or nation is a specification of the higher principle that everyone has equal right to the necessities of life. The moral stress of the principle of equity is primarily on equal sharing, and only secondarily on what is being shared. The higher moral principle is of human equity per se. Consequently, the moral action is to distribute all food equally, whatever the consequences. This is the hard line apparently drawn by such moralists as Immanuel Kant and Noam Chomsky—but then, morality is hard. The conclusion may be unreasonable (impractical and irrational in conventional terms), but it is obviously moral. Nor should anyone purport surprise; it has always been understood that the claims of morality—if taken seriously—supersede those of conflicting reason. One may even have to sacrifice one's life or one's nation to be moral in situations where practical behavior would preserve it. For example, if a prisoner of war undergoing torture is to be a (perhaps dead) patriot even when reason tells him that collaboration will hurt no one, he remains silent. Similarly, if one is to be moral, one distributes available food in equal shares (even if everyone then dies). That an action is necessary to save one's life is no excuse for behaving unpatriotically or immorally if one wishes to be a patriot or moral. No principle of morality absolves one of behaving immorally simply to save one's life or nation. There is a strict analogy here between adhering to moral principles for the sake of being moral, and adhering to Christian principles for the sake of being Christian. The moral world contains pits and lions, but one looks always to the highest light. The ultimate test always harks to the highest principle—recant or die—and it is pathetic to profess morality if one quits when the going gets rough. I have put aside many questions of detail—such as the mechanical problems of distributing food—because detail does not alter the stark conclusion. If every human life is equal in value, then the equal distribution of the necessities of life is an extremely high, if not the highest, moral duty. It is at least high enough to override the excuse that by doing it one would lose one's life. But many people cannot accept the view that one must distribute equally even in f the nation collapses or all people die. If everyone dies, then there will be no realm of morality. Practically speaking, sheer survival comes first. One can adhere to the principle of equity only if one exists. So it is rational to suppose that the principle of survival is morally higher than the principle of equity. And though one might not be able to argue for unequal distribution of food to save a nation—for nations can come and go—one might well argue that unequal distribution is necessary for the survival of the human species. That is, some large group—say one-third of present world population—should be at least well-nourished for human survival. However, from an individual standpoint, the human species—like the nation—is of no moral relevance. From a naturalistic standpoint, survival does come first; from a moralistic standpoint—as indicated above—survival may have to be sacrificed. In the milieu of morality, it is immaterial whether or not the human species survives as a result of individual behavior.
7. Proximity to vital sea lanes makes escalation likely- ship attacks draw in foreign powers
Vaughan and Henderson 17
(Cmdr. Jeremy Vaughan, U.S. Navy, is a Federal Executive Fellow at The Washington Institute who has completed multiple deployments to the Persian Gulf. Simon Henderson is the Institute's Baker Fellow and director of its Gulf and Energy Policy Program. https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/bab-al-mandab-shipping-chokepoint-under-threat 3-1)
On February 9, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence issued an alert warning commercial vessels about the risk of mines in the Bab al-Mandab Strait: "The U.S. Government has reason to believe in late January, mines were laid by Houthi rebels in Yemeni territorial waters in the Red Sea close to the mouth of Mocha harbor." The alert follows a number of other troubling incidents in the strategic waterway over the past few months. Saudi and Emirati naval vessels have been attacked while trying to enforce a blockade on the Iranian-supported Houthi rebels who control large parts of Yemen. And last October, patrolling U.S. Navy ships were targeted as well. Diplomatic efforts to end Yemen's civil war appear to be getting nowhere, and the fighting on land is largely deadlocked, though forces loyal to the internationally recognized government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi recently captured Mocha port near the Bab al-Mandab. Iran's motives for helping the Houthis are unclear but have the effect of challenging Saudi Arabia, which views the fighting as a proxy war. More incidents at sea, especially involving civilian shipping, could further internationalize the conflict and spur other actors to intervene. In terms of capability and tradition, the leadership role in any such effort to safeguard freedom of passage would necessarily be taken by the U.S. Navy. A KEY CHOKEPOINT In a 2014 web post describing heavily transited oil chokepoints in the Middle East and elsewhere, the U.S. Energy Information Administration noted that blocking such waterways, even temporarily, "can lead to substantial increases in total energy costs and world energy prices." The Bab al-Mandab, which controls access to the Red Sea and the southern end of the Suez Canal, is particularly crucial at present because of Egypt's reliance on imported liquefied natural gas to maintain its electricity supplies. One LNG tanker destined for Egypt transits the strait each week. If passage were impeded, those shipments -- and all other vessels heading to Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea -- would have no alternative but to make the long voyage around the southern tip of Africa. The Bab al-Mandab is around ten miles wide at its narrowest point, where the Yemeni island of Perim protrudes into the waterway toward Eritrea and Djibouti. Under an international traffic separation scheme, northbound international shipping uses a two-mile-wide lane on the Arabian side just west of Perim, while southbound traffic uses a similar lane on the African side. Separated by just over a mile of water, the two lanes work well for international traffic but are ignored by smaller local ships and fishing vessels. More than sixty commercial ships transit the strait every day, and several passenger cruise liners use the route as well. THE THREATS Houthi rebels have attacked warships in or near the strait on at least four occasions since last fall. On October 1, antishipping cruise missiles fired from the Houthi-controlled coastline severely damaged the Swift, an Emirati-operated troop landing and logistics ship. In the following weeks, the destroyer USS Mason successfully defended itself against three similar attacks. The U.S. Navy launched a Tomahawk missile strike to knock out coastal radar sites that may have provided targeting information for the attacks. No further antishipping missile attacks have been reported since then, but radar sites can be rebuilt, and the Houthis' stores of such missiles have not been destroyed, so the threat remains. Additional threats have emerged in the past few weeks and may already be affecting international shipping patterns. The recent U.S. government warning about mines in the Bab al-Mandab advised ships to transit the strait only during daylight. Moored mines have a notorious tendency to break free of their tethers and could ramp up the risk to all ships in the area. Another new threat surfaced when a Saudi frigate was attacked off the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeida on January 30. Initially thought to be a suicide speedboat, the attacker is now assumed to have been a remote-controlled drone craft similar to the type Iranian smugglers employ to pick up contraband from Oman's Musandam Peninsula in the Strait of Hormuz, a Persian Gulf chokepoint. The UAE also has such craft (which it uses for target practice), so it is conceivable that the attack was conducted by a lost Emirati boat recovered by Iran. U.S. warships transiting the Strait of Hormuz are routinely harassed by small boats from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN), but weaponized speedboat drones, known in the military as unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), change the danger profile into a credible threat. An attacking USV must be disabled at distance from a warship's hull, a task that could prove exceptionally difficult during a swarming attack by multiple boats. Furthermore, Iran's familiarity with explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) means that such technology may soon be seen at sea. Fortunately, the difficulty in remotely placing such a narrowly focused explosive against a target's hull mitigates some of the risk; this could explain why the January 30 attack seemed to result in such minor damage, assuming an EFP was on board. Even so, an EFP-laden USV that gets through a ship's defenses could sink it.
8.Conflict would escalate to global nuclear war
(John, 6-30, https://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-weapons-of-mass-destruction-a-threat-to-peace-israel-s-nuclear-arsenal/4365)
Meanwhile,.the existence of an arsenal of mass destruction in such an unstable region in turn has serious implications for future arms control and disarmament negotiations, and even the threat of nuclear war. Seymour Hersh warns, "Should war break out in the Middle East again or should any Arab.nation fire missiles against Israel, as the Iraqis did, a nuclear escalation, once unthinkable except as a last resort would now be a strong probability."(41) and Ezar Weissman, Israel's current President said "The nuclear issue is gaining momentum(and the) next war will not be conventional. (42) Russia and before it the Soviet Union has long been a major(ifnot.the major) target of Israeli nukes. It is widely reported that .the principal purpose of Jonathan Pollard's spying for Israel was to furnish satellite images of Soviet targets and other super sensitive data relating to U.S. nuclear targeting strategy. (43) (Since launching its own satellite in 1988, Israel no longer needs U S. spy secrets.) Israeli nukes aimed at the Russian heartland seriously complicate disarmament and arms control negotiations and, at the very least, the unilateral possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is enormously destabilizing. and dramatically lowers the threshold for their actual use if not for all out nuclear war. In the words of Mark Gaffney, "... if the familar pattern(Israel refining its weapons of mass destruction with U.S. complicity) is not reversed, soon- for whatever reason- the deepening Middle East conflict could trigger a world conflagration." (44)
Uncertainty and social contract require governments use util
Gooden, 1995 (Robert, philsopher at the Research School of the Social Sciences, Utilitarianism as Public Philosophy. P. 62-63)
Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices—public and private alike—are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have on them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices. But that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus—if they want to use it at all—to choose general rules of conduct. Knowing aggregates and averages, they can proceed to calculate the utility payoffs from adopting each alternative possible general rules.
2. Intent focus reifies structures of domination
McCluskey 12 – JSD @ Columbia, Professor of Law @ SUNY-Buffalo
(Martha, "How the "Unintended Consequences" Story Promotes Unjust Intent and Impact," Berkeley La Raza, doi: dx.doi.org/doi:10.15779/Z381664)
By similarly making structures of inequality appear beyond the reach of law reform, the "unintended consequences" message helps update and reinforce the narrowing of protections against intentional racial harm. Justice is centrally a question of whose interests and whose harms should count, in what context and in what form and to whom. Power is centrally about being able to act without having to take harm to others into account. This power to gain by harming others is strongest when it operates through systems and structures that make disregarding that harm appear routine, rational, and beneficial or at least acceptable or perhaps inevitable. By portraying law's unequal harms as the "side effects" of systems and structures with unquestionable "main effects," the "unintended consequences" story helps affirm the resulting harm even as it seems to offer sympathy and technical assistance. In considering solutions to the financial market problems, the policy puzzle is not that struggling homeowners' interests are overwhelmingly complex or uncertain. Instead, the bigger problem is that overwhelmingly powerful interests and ideologies are actively resisting systemic changes that would make those interests count. The failure to criminally prosecute or otherwise severely penalize high-level financial industry fraud is not primarily the result of uncertainty about the harmful effects of that fraudulent behavior, but because the political and justice systems are skewed to protect the gains and unaccountability of wealthy executives despite the clear harms to hosts of others. The unequal effects of the prevailing policy response to the crisis are foreseeable and obvious, not accidental or surprising. It would not take advanced knowledge of economics to readily predict that modest-income homeowners would tend to be far worse off than bank executives by a policy approach that failed to provide substantial mortgage forgiveness and foreclosure protections for modest-income homeowners but instead provided massive subsidized credit and other protections for Wall Street. Many policy actions likely to alleviate the unequal harm of the crisis similarly are impeded not because consumer advocates, low-income homeowners, or racial justice advocates hesitate to risk major changes in existing systems, or are divided about the technical design of alternative programs or more effective mechanisms for enforcing laws against fraud and racial discrimination. Instead, the problem is that these voices pressing for effective change are often excluded, drowned out or distorted in Congress and in federal agencies such as the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, or in the media, in the mainstream economics profession, and to a large extent in legal scholarship about financial markets. More generally, those diverse voices from the bottom have been largely absent or marginalized in the dominant theoretical framework that constructs widespread and severe inequality as unforeseeable and largely inevitable, or even beneficial. Moreover, justice requires careful attention to both harmful intent and to complex harmful effects. But the concept of "unintended consequences" inverts justice by suggesting that the best way to care for those at the bottom is to not care to make law more attentive to the bottom. "Unintended consequences" arguments promote a simplistic moral message in the guise of sophisticated intellectual critique-the message that those who lack power should not seek it because the desire for more power is what hurts most. Further, like Ayn Rand's overt philosophy of selfishness, that message promotes the theme that those who have power to ignore their harmful effects on others need not-indeed should not-be induced by law to care about this harm, because this caring is what is harmful. One right-wing think tank has recently made this moral message more explicit with an economic values campaign suggesting that the intentional pursuit of economic equality is a problem of the immoral envy of those whose economic success proves they are more deserving.169 Legal scholars and advocates who intend to put intellectual rigor and justice ahead of service to financial elites should reject stories of "unintended consequences" and instead scrutinize the power and laws that have so effectively achieved the intention of making devastating losses to so many of us seem natural, inevitable, and beneficial.
3.Science proves non util ethics are impossible and our version of util solves all aff offense
Greene 10 – Joshua, Associate Professor of Social science in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University (The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul published in Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings, accessed: www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf)
What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human moral judgment is not a pristine rational enterprise, that our moral judgments are driven by a hodgepodge of emotional dispositions, which themselves were shaped by a hodgepodge of evolutionary forces, both biological and cultural. Because of this, it is exceedingly unlikely that there is any rationally coherent normative moral theory that can accommodate our moral intuitions. Moreover, anyone who claims to have such a theory, or even part of one, almost certainly doesn't. Instead, what that person probably has is a moral rationalization. It seems then, that we have somehow crossed the infamous "is"-"ought" divide. How did this happen? Didn't Hume (Hume, 1978) and Moore (Moore, 1966) warn us against trying to derive an "ought" from and "is?" How did we go from descriptive scientific theories concerning moral psychology to skepticism about a whole class of normative moral theories? The answer is that we did not, as Hume and Moore anticipated, attempt to derive an "ought" from and "is." That is, our method has been inductive rather than deductive. We have inferred on the basis of the available evidence that the phenomenon of rationalist deontological philosophy is best explained as a rationalization of evolved emotional intuition (Harman, 1977). Missing the Deontological Point I suspect that rationalist deontologists will remain unmoved by the arguments presented here. Instead, I suspect, they will insist that I have simply misunderstood what Kant and like-minded deontologists are all about. Deontology, they will say, isn't about this intuition or that intuition. It's not defined by its normative differences with consequentialism. Rather, deontology is about taking humanity seriously. Above all else, it's about respect for persons. It's about treating others as fellow rational creatures rather than as mere objects, about acting for reasons rational beings can share. And so on (Korsgaard, 1996a; Korsgaard, 1996b). This is, no doubt, how many deontologists see deontology. But this insider's view, as I've suggested, may be misleading. The problem, more specifically, is that it defines deontology in terms of values that are not distinctively deontological, though they may appear to be from the inside. Consider the following analogy with religion. When one asks a religious person to explain the essence of his religion, one often gets an answer like this: "It's about love, really. It's about looking out for other people, looking beyond oneself. It's about community, being part of something larger than oneself." This sort of answer accurately captures the phenomenology of many people's religion, but it's nevertheless inadequate for distinguishing religion from other things. This is because many, if not most, non-religious people aspire to love deeply, look out for other people, avoid self-absorption, have a sense of a community, and be connected to things larger than themselves. In other words, secular humanists and atheists can assent to most of what many religious people think religion is all about. From a secular humanist's point of view, in contrast, what's distinctive about religion is its commitment to the existence of supernatural entities as well as formal religious institutions and doctrines. And they're right. These things really do distinguish religious from non-religious practices, though they may appear to be secondary to many people operating from within a religious point of view. In the same way, I believe that most of the standard deontological/Kantian self-characterizatons fail to distinguish deontology from other approaches to ethics. (See also Kagan (Kagan, 1997, pp. 70-78.) on the difficulty of defining deontology.) It seems to me that consequentialists, as much as anyone else, have respect for persons, are against treating people as mere objects, wish to act for reasons that rational creatures can share, etc. A consequentialist respects other persons, and refrains from treating them as mere objects, by counting every person's well-being in the decision-making process. Likewise, a consequentialist attempts to act according to reasons that rational creatures can share by acting according to principles that give equal weight to everyone's interests, i.e. that are impartial. This is not to say that consequentialists and deontologists don't differ. They do. It's just that the real differences may not be what deontologists often take them to be. What, then, distinguishes deontology from other kinds of moral thought? A good strategy for answering this question is to start with concrete disagreements between deontologists and others (such as consequentialists) and then work backward in search of deeper principles. This is what I've attempted to do with the trolley and footbridge cases, and other instances in which deontologists and consequentialists disagree. If you ask a deontologically-minded person why it's wrong to push someone in front of speeding trolley in order to save five others, you will get characteristically deontological answers. Some will be tautological: "Because it's murder!" Others will be more sophisticated: "The ends don't justify the means." "You have to respect people's rights." But, as we know, these answers don't really explain anything, because if you give the same people (on different occasions) the trolley case or the loop case (See above), they'll make the opposite judgment, even though their initial explanation concerning the footbridge case applies equally well to one or both of these cases. Talk about rights, respect for persons, and reasons we can share are natural attempts to explain, in "cognitive" terms, what we feel when we find ourselves having emotionally driven intuitions that are odds with the cold calculus of consequentialism. Although these explanations are inevitably incomplete, there seems to be "something deeply right" about them because they give voice to powerful moral emotions. But, as with many religious people's accounts of what's essential to religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about the philosophy in question.
Tournament: Stanford | Round: 3 | Opponent: Independent NG | Judge: Bawany, Aisha
1AC vs Policy
7. Conflict would escalate to global nuclear war
7. No Russia shift - transition would take decades- no interoperability
8. Congress just cut aid to Saudi Arabia- thumps every disad
Harris 1-23-19
(Bryant https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/01/congress-cuts-deal-mideast-aid-package-saudi-arabia-turkey.html)
Although Congress has yet to coalesce around a path out of the monthlong government shutdown, it has at least reached a consensus on a Middle East aid package for 2019. The compromise contains good news for several US allies — namely Egypt, Morocco and Turkey — as it undoes significant setbacks they faced when the House passed a different spending bill earlier this year. But it also contains a significant blow to Saudi Arabia by shutting the kingdom out of a key US military training program. The provisions were all in the Democratic-held House's spending bill, which passed 234-180 today. The Republican-controlled Senate is set to vote on its own version of the bill on Thursday, but foreign aid provisions are identical to the House bill. The dueling bills differ on immigration and border security, so neither is likely to become law this week as the two chambers remain mired in partisan gridlock. Still, the Middle East aid provisions have already been agreed to in both chambers, indicating that they'll likely become law when the shutdown eventually ends. The agreement comes after the House passed a different spending bill on Jan. 3 that would have cut Egyptian military aid, rebuked Morocco over its occupation of the Western Sahara and banned the transfer of F-35 jets to Turkey. Although that bill originated in the Republican-held Senate last year, the upper chamber did not include President Donald Trump's more recent demand for funding to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. Notably, the House and Senate have agreed to a new provision in today's bill that would cut Saudi Arabia off from the State Department-run International Military Education and Training (IMET) program. While the Saudis only receive a few thousand dollars in IMET assistance every year, participation makes Riyadh eligible for savings on other US training programs needed to operate its US-made military arsenal.
Tournament: Berkeley | Round: 6 | Opponent: Anderson SJ | Judge: Rathod, Manav
Your ballot should be centered around relative solvency –outcomes are what matter
Bracey 6 (Christopher A. Bracey, Associate Professor of Law and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, B.S. from the University of North Carolina, J.D. from Harvard Law School, 2006. "The Cul De Sac of Race Preference Discourse," Southern California Law Review, September, 2006, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via Lexis-Nexis)
Second, reducing conversation on race matters to an ideological contest allows opponents to elide inquiry into whether the results of a particular preference policy are desirable. Policy positions masquerading as principled ideological stances create the impression that a racial policy is not simply a choice among available alternatives, but the embodiment of some higher moral principle. Thus, the "principle" becomes an end in itself, without reference to outcomes. Consider the prevailing view of colorblindness in constitutional discourse. Colorblindness has come to be understood as the embodiment of what is morally just, independent of its actual effect upon the lives of racial minorities. This explains Justice Thomas's belief in the "moral and constitutional equivalence" between Jim Crow laws and race preferences, and his tragic assertion that "Government cannot make us equal but can only recognize, respect, and protect us as equal before the law." 281 For Thomas, there is no meaningful difference between laws designed to entrench racial subordination and those designed to alleviate conditions of oppression. Critics may point out that colorblindness in practice has the effect of entrenching existing racial disparities in health, wealth, and society. But in framing the debate in purely ideological terms, opponents are able to avoid the contentious issue of outcomes and make viability determinations based exclusively on whether racially progressive measures exude fidelity to the ideological principle of colorblindness. Meaningful policy debate is replaced by ideological exchange, which further exacerbates hostilities and deepens the cycle of resentment.
Material conditions outweigh metaphysical claims. Jones 17
Mond Jones, "Metaphysics, Materialism and the Struggle for Black Liberation", Medium,com, https://medium.com/@DialecticalBlackness/metaphysics-and-the-struggle-for-black-liberation-1f7f954ba4d5#.eyw7k8xyg, 3/2/2017. NS
I remember my first introduction to "pro black" literature. I was young, couldn't have been older than 7 or 8 years old, when my father showed me the Willie Lynch letters and excerpts from the "Issys Papers". I thought these were the answers. I was taught that all Black people were descendents of kings and queens, and that all our people had to do was open our "third eye" to achieve full Black liberation. Documents like these taught that homosexuality was a European creation to destroy the Black family, and that a woman's servitude to a man was correct and natural. In many Black communities, class consciousness and materialism is replaced with metaphysics and mysticism in an attempt to create some kind of "National Culture" for the Black person in America. It wasn't until a decade later, I learned that it was all made up bullshit. Because Black oppression is a material struggle, Black liberation must also take on a material character, opposed to the metaphysical teachings of many separatists and the Hotep* school of thought. Why then, are so many Pro-Black types and Black nationalists so invested in studies of metaphysics? There are a few reasons for these dangerous trends. The first reason for the dangerous trend of metaphysics and hotepism is the fact that it is easy. By easy, I mean that it requires no real knowledge of history, no real analyses of social systems, and no class consciousness. Writers who contribute to this school of thought capitalize off of the anxiety of having very little knowledge of their national identity that masses of Blacks in America face. Using this, they attempt to create an artificial identity for Blacks in the US. "We are all descendents from kings and queens in egypt" is the usual narrative, which is not only historically inaccurate seeing as though a majority of slaves came from West African, but it also erases the importance of the actual history of the Black diaspora and tells us that we are only deserving of liberation if we are the descendents of royalty. The nature of so much of this metaphysical garbage places an obnoxious amount of emphasis on a falsified national identity, that there is no room for an actual class analysis. In fact, class analyses are rejected on the grounds of them being "divisive to the Black community and struggle". Black people (more specifically, cishet Black men) are not required to examine the relationships with groups within our own community. Our place in society is reduced to nothing more than this faux "blackness", which is at the center of their analyses. This reductionist outlook is dangerous because in lacking room for class analyses, the issues of class oppression, and the social hierarchies within our own nationality go completely ignored. This means that even if Black people ended up completely separate from White folks, there is no logical reason to believe that the oppressive hierarchies created by White supremacy and capitalism won't carry on into the "decolonized" society. Colonization leaves a nasty scar, two of them being the scars of capitalism and class oppression. Bourgeois status is romanticized, and issues of misogyny, hypermasculinity, and queerphobia (which are direct results of European colonization) go untouched. The decolonized society is the exact same as the colonized, White supremacist society except instead of White men, Black men are the overseers of the oppression of women, the poor and queer people within the community. An understanding of Marx's dialectical materialism and class oppression are necessary in not only decolonizing a colonized people, but fully liberating those people from the oppressive chains of capitalism. The metaphysical outlook focuses solely on things-in-themselves, and sees the world and world events as things that are outside of the control of the masses. Another reason for the popularity of these metaphysical, pseudo-historical theories are the fact that they provide a sort of "divine plan" for Black people. It brings comfort to a people who have been exploited their entire lives to believe that there is some supreme being looking out for their best interests. However, it should be understood that if liberation is the will of some divine creator, than the oppression of Black people worldwide was also the will of that same creator, and if that be the case this is a creator that I want no connections with. What can be observed however, is the objective truth that every liberation movement started with the actions of mortal people. Whether or not we are the descendents of this king or that god, it is our responsibility to take our liberation into our own hands, and not rely on the goodwill of some "divine overseer" who oversaw the oppression of black people for over 400 years. Lastly, within the Black community, given the non threatening and flexible nature of metaphysics, it is often the most accessible to Black folks who have been robbed of a proper education, looking to learn more about their history and place in society. History has shown us that Black nationalism on its own is not a threat to capitalism or white supremacy, the catalysts for our oppression. In fact, Black national consciousness can (and often does) exist alongside capitalist oppression and White supremacy. Marcus Garvey is a great example of Black nationalism cooperating with White supremacy. Garvey met with the KKK to help further his plot to send Black people "back to Africa" because he believed that Black people would not face the same forms of oppression as we did in the US, in colonized Africa. The first rule of liberation is that there can be no cooperation with the oppressor. The reason concepts like class consciousness and dialectical materialism are not as accessible in Black communities is that equipped with these tools we pose a direct threat to White supremacy. If Black people collectively understood that every economic system served a historic purpose, and that it was inevitable that each system proceed the last when its historic mission is completed, and that capitalism is in its final stages and a proletarian revolution that will do away with oppressive white supremacist social hierarchies is inevitable, we would be the most powerful people in this country. Which is why Black leaders who understood these concepts were assassinated, and or white washed, and systematically erased from history and school curriculums. These groups and individuals include W.E.B. Dubois, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, The Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, Thomas Sankara, and Nelson Mandela, who were all communists or socialists. In their place sprang up this pro-capitalist, bourgeois Hotep nonsense, and since it poses no threat to white supremacy, it was able to develop relatively unchallenged. It is absolutely 100 necessary for Black people in the US to abandon metaphysics and adopt dialectical and historical materialism if we ever plan on achieving total liberation from the systems of White supremacy. We must also understand that capitalism in itself is a tool of White supremacy and the social hierarchies it promotes are the justification for our oppression. "Third Eyes" don't exist, you can't "charge" crystals in the moonlight, and a diet without pork won't bring you closer to God, and even if it did, none of these things will help us overcome the systemic oppression we face at the hands of White supremacy. Metaphysics, Hotepism, and the works of writers like Francess Cress and the like, are obstacles in the movement for Black liberation, meant only to be trampled and exposed as the reactionary nonsense they are. They are weapons forged against the people. Our oppression is material, and only a materialist approach will liberate us.
Vote affirmative to write back to imperialism- intellectuals should focus criticism at their own government/material policies
Ashcroft and Ahluwalia, PhDs, 99
(Bill, English@SouthWales, Pal, Politics@Adelaide, Edward Said)
Once we take criticism out of the professional domain of the literary critic, we discover its transformative possibilities. Ultimately, criticism is important to Said because criticism is the key function of the concerned intellectual. Criticism locates the intellectual in the world, for the ultimate function of such a person is not to advance complex specialised 'theologies' but to 'speak truth to power', the title of an essay in Representations of the Intellectual (1994). 'How does one speak truth? What truth? From whom and where?' (1994:65). There is no way of providing a global answer, but the intellectual must strive for freedom of opinion and expression. The power of resistance comes in the ability of the author to 'write back' to imperialism, to speak 'truth' to injustice. Not only do human beings construct their truths, but 'the so-called objective truth of the white man's superiority built and maintained by the classical European colonial empires also rested on a violent subjugation of African and Asian peoples' (1994:67). Despite a proliferation of the liberal rhetoric of equality and justice, injustices continue in various parts of the globe. The task for the intellectual is to apply these notions and bring them to 'bear on actual situations' (1994:71). This means taking a stand against one's own government, as Said does in the Gulf War, or against one's own people, as he appears to be doing in speaking out against the Oslo peace accord at a time when there was considerable euphoria that it might have ended the long-running battle between Israel and the Palestinians. In retrospect, Said's position appears to have been vindicated (1994a). The point of speaking the truth to power in contemporary societies is to effect better conditions to achieve peace, reconciliation and justice. The intellectual follows such a path not for personal glory but to change the moral climate. 'Speaking the truth to power,' says Said, 'is no panglossian idealism: it is carefully weighing the alternatives, picking the right one, and then intelligently representing it where it can do the most good and cause the right change' (1994:75). (39)
Pessimism capitulates to fatalism-refusing to give up on universal humanity isn't optimism, its stubborn unreasonableness that resists dominant logic
Morrison, Pulitzer Prize Winner/MA, 19
(Toni, English@Princeton(emeritus) , The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Mediations)
Such is language, the vision, the memory bequeathed to us in this society. They said other things, and they did other things—some of which were good. But they also said, and more importantly felt, that. Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am not reasonable. A reasonable man adjusts to his environment. And unreasonable man does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man. I prefer not to adjust to my environment. I refuse the prison of "I" and choose the open spaces of "we." With such a past we cannot be optimistic about the possibility of a humane society, in which humane decision-making is the prime goal of educators, ever becoming imagined and therefore realized. We cannot be optimistic, but we can be clear. We can identify the enemy. We can begin by asking ourselves what is right rather than what is expedient. Know the difference between fever and the disease. Between racism and greed. We can be clear and we can be careful. Careful to avoid the imprisonment of the mind, the spirit, and the will of ourselves and those among whom we live. We can be careful of tolerating second-rate goals and secondhand ideas. We are humans. Humans who must have discovered by now what every three-year-old can see: "how unsatisfactory and clumsy is this whole business of reproducing and dying by the billions." We are humans, not rice, and therefore "we have not yet encountered any god who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet. There is not a people in the world that behaves as badly as praying mantises." We are the moral inhabitants of the globe. To deny this, regardless of our feeble attempts to live up to it, is to lie in prison. Of course there is cruelty. Cruelty is a mystery. But if we see the world as one long brutal game, then we bump into another mystery, the mystery of beauty, of light, the canary that sings on the skull….Unless all ages and all races of man have been deluded…there seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a thing as harmony…all wholly free and available to us.
Both emancipatory ethics and politics REQUIRES a future oriented "ought" Results matters – failure to have a course of action for mobilizing populations dooms the alt. EVEN if they win their ethics claims, you have to evaluate the question of alt solvency first.
Day 09 – (Christopher, The Historical Failure of Anarchism: Implications for the Future of the Revolutionary Project, http://mikeely.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/historical_failure_of_aanarchism_chris_day_kasama.pdf)
The strength of anarchism is its moral insistence on the primacy of human freedom over political expediency. But human freedom exists in a political context. It is not sufficient, however, to simply take the most uncompromising position in defense of freedom. It is neccesary to actually win freedom. Anti-capitalism doesn't do the victims of capitalism any good if you don't actually destroy capitalism. Anti-statism doesn't do the victims of the state any good if you don't actually smash the state. Anarchism has been very good at putting forth visions of a free society and that is for the good. But it is worthless if we don't develop an actual strategy for realizing those visions. It is not enough to be right, we must also win. Continues… Finally revolutionaries have a responsibility to have a plausible plan for making revolution. Obviously there are not enough revolutionaries to make a revolution at this moment. We can reasonably anticipate that the future will bring upsurges in popular opposition to the existing system. Without being any more specific about where those upsurges might occur it seems clear that it is from the ranks of such upsurges that the numbers of the revolutionary movement will be increased, eventually leading to a revolutionary situation (which is distinguished from the normal crises of the current order only by the existence of a revolutionary movement ready to push things further). People who are fed up with the existing system and who are willing to commit themselves to its overthrow will look around for likeminded people who have an idea of what to do. If we don't have a plausible plan for making revolution we can be sure that there will be somebody else there who will. There is no guarantee that revolutionary-minded people will be spontaneously drawn to anti-authoritarian politics. The plan doesn't have to be an exact blueprint. It shouldn't be treated as something sacred. It should be subject to constant revision in light of experience and debate. But at the very least it needs to be able to answer questions that have been posed concretely in the past. We know that we will never confront the exact same circumstances as previous revolutions. But we should also know that certain problems are persistent ones and that if we can't say what we would have done in the past we should not expect people to think much of our ability to face the future.
Results matters – failure to have a course of action for mobilizing populations dooms the alt. EVEN if they win their ethics claims, you have to evaluate the question of alt solvency first.
Bevernage 15 – (October 2015, Berber, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Ghent, "The Past is Evil/Evil is Past: On Retrospective Politics, Philosophy of History, and Temporal Manichaeism," History and Theory Volume 54, Issue 3, pages 333–352)
Torpey is certainly not the only intellectual expressing these worries. According to historian Pieter Lagrou, "our contemporary societies, for lack of future projects, shrink into a 'passeist' culture."12 In European public discourse, he argues, the focus on crimes of the distant past has become so strong that it tends to marginalize claims of victims of contemporary crimes and human rights violations. Therefore, Lagrou argues, "a commemorative discourse of victimhood is very much the opposite of a constructive and dynamic engagement with the present, but rather a paralyzing regression of democratic debate."13 Lagrou's argument closely resembles many others that turn against retrospective politics and "victim culture" such as Ian Buruma's warning about the peril of minorities defining themselves exclusively as historical victims and engaging in an "Olympics of suffering"14 and Charles Maier's claims about a "surfeit of memory."15 These warnings about the perils of a retrospective politics outweighing or even banning politics directed at contemporary injustices or striving for a more just future should be taken seriously. Yet the alternative of an exclusively present- or future-oriented politics disregarding all historical injustice is not desirable either. Contemporary injustice often manifests itself in the form of structural repetition or continuity of injustices with a long history. Moreover, totalitarian versions of progressivist politics have frequently abused the idea of a struggle for a more just future in order to justify past and present suffering. It could even be argued that the rise of dominant restrospective politics has been initiated partly on the basis of disillusionment with the exculpatory mechanisms of progressivist ideology.16 Some indeed claim that much of present-day retrospective politics and the "setting straight" of historical injustices would be unnecessary had totalitarian progressivist politics focused less exclusively on the bright future and shown more sensitivity to the contemporary suffering of its day. This claim certainly makes sense if one thinks of extreme examples such as Stalin's five-year plans and Mao's Great Leap Forward. Yet, as Matthias Frisch rightly argues, the risk of the justification of past and present suffering lurks around the corner wherever progressive logics of history or promises of bright and just futures are not counterbalanced by reflective forms of remembrance.17 Therefore, we should resist dualist thinking that forces us to choose between restitution for historical injustices and struggle for justice in the present or the future. Rather, we should look for types of retrospective politics that do not oppose but complement or reinforce the emancipatory and utopian elements in present- and future-directed politics—and the other way around: present- and future-oriented politics that do not forget about historical injustices. In this paper I want to contribute to this goal by focusing on the issue of retrospective politics and by analyzing how one can differentiate emancipatory or even utopian types of retrospective politics from retrospective politics that I classify here as anti-utopian. I argue that the currently dominant strands of retrospective politics indeed do tend to be anti-utopian and have a very limited emancipatory potential. Moreover, I claim that currently dominant retrospective politics do not radically break with several of the exculpatory intellectual mechanisms that are typically associated with progressivist politics but actually modify and sometimes even radicalize them. In that restricted sense, and only in this sense, it can be argued that currently dominant retrospective politics do not represent a fundamentally new way of dealing with historical evil and the ethics of responsibility. My perspective is not a pessimistic one, however. Besides the currently dominant retrospective politics, there exist other strands of retrospective politics that do have emancipatory or even utopian features and that do not force us to choose between restitution for historical injustices and struggle for justice in the present or the future. Anti-utopianism and ethical "passeism," I argue, are not inherent or necessary features of all retrospective politics but rather result from a specific, underlying type of historical thought or philosophy of history18 that treats the relation between past, present, and future in antinomic terms and prevents us from understanding "transtemporal" injustices and responsibilities. Sometimes this type of historical thought indeed stimulates a moralistic stance in which the past is charged with the worst of all evil, while the present becomes morally discharged by simple comparison. The latter type of "temporal Manichaeism" can be highly problematic, I argue, because it not only posits that the "past is evil" but also tends to turn this reasoning around and stimulates the wishful thought that "evil is past."
No presumption — fiat is good even if no one listens – not being able to enact our plan's reform doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it.
Shove and Walker 07 — Elizabeth Shove, Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster, and Gordon Walker, Professor of Geography at the University of Lancaster, 2007 ("CAUTION! Transitions ahead: politics, practice, and sustainable transition management," Environment and Planning C, Vol. 39, No. 4, Accessible Online at http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/761/2/A_cautionary_note_on_transition_managementv5.pdf, Accessed On 12-09-2015)
For academic readers, our commentary argues for loosening the intellectual grip of 'innovation studies', for backing off from the nested, hierarchical multi-level model as the only model in town, and for exploring other social scientific, but also systemic theories of change. The more we think about the politics and practicalities of reflexive transition management, the more complex the process appears: for a policy audience, our words of caution could be read as an invitation to abandon the whole endeavour. If agency, predictability and legitimacy are as limited as we've suggested, this might be the only sensible conclusion. However, we are with Rip (2006) in recognising the value, productivity and everyday necessity of an 'illusion of agency', and of the working expectation that a difference can be made even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. The outcomes of actions are unknowable, the system unsteerable and the effects of deliberate intervention inherently unpredictable and, ironically, it is this that sustains concepts of agency and management. As Rip argues 'illusions are productive because they motivate action and repair work, and thus something (whatever) is achieved' (Rip 2006: 94). Situated inside the systems they seek to influence, governance actors – and actors of other kinds as well - are part of the dynamics of change: even if they cannot steer from the outside they are necessary to processes within. This is, of course, also true of academic life. Here we are, busy critiquing and analysing transition management in the expectation that somebody somewhere is listening and maybe even taking notice. If we removed that illusion would we bother writing anything at all? Maybe we need such fictions to keep us going, and maybe – fiction or no - somewhere along the line something really does happen, but not in ways that we can anticipate or know.
SEPTOCT Democracy AC
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 2 | Opponent: Dougherty Valley TS | Judge: Kuffour, Julian
Contention 1: Attempts to outweigh the case will be both laughable and pathetic
The US is the only developed country without a shield law
Boutrous, JD et al., 14
(Theodore J., Counsel of Record, Theane Evangelis, Katie Townsend, Sarah Staveley Matthews, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher LLP, 333 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90071-3197, 213.229.7000, tboutrous @gibsondunn.com, Counsel for Amicus Curiae. 2014 WL 1246706 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. James RISEN, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent. No. 13-1009. March 26, 2014. On Petition For A Writ Of Certiorari To The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit Brief of the International Women's Media Foundation as Amicus Curiae in Support of Petitioner)
There is an overwhelming national and international consensus in favor of protections for journalists' confidential source information. Forty-nine States and the District of Columbia protect confidential source information through legislatively-enacted "shield" laws or judicially-created privilege doctrines. See Sterling, 724 F.3d at 532 (Gregory, J., dissenting); see also Petition at 24 - 25. Forty-eight States and the District of Columbia have protections that apply in the context of a criminal trial. Petition at 25-26 and n.20. And 16 jurisdictions have enacted absolute bars to compelling a journalist to divulge his or her sources. See Sterling, 724 F.3d at 532 (Gregory, J., dissenting). This demonstrates a " 'national referendum' attesting to this country's sense of the critical role that a vibrant press plays in a free society." Rodney A. Smolla, The First Amendment, Journalists, and Sources: A Curious Study in "Reverse Federalism", 29 Cardozo L. Rev. 1423, 1429 (2008); see also *14 Sterling, 724 F.3d at 531-32 (Gregory, J., dissenting); Petition at 24-25. As in Jaffee, the "uniform judgment of the States" calls for the recognition of a federal common law privilege. 518 U.S. at 14. Moreover, of particular interest to the IWMF, the principle that source protection is vital to the effective functioning of a free press has gained widespread acceptance internationally.4 It has been recognized by the United Nations, Council of Europe, Organization of American States, African Union, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Banisar, supra note 4, at 4; see also id. (noting that the European Court of Human Rights has held in several cases that a journalist's right to protect the identity of a confidential source is "an essential part of freedom of expression"). Today, more than 100 countries recognize legal protections for journalists' source information. Banisar, supra note 4, at 4, 21. The United *15 Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada, for example, recognize a qualified journalist's privilege and apply a balancing test to determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether disclosure of source information is warranted. Goodwin, 22 Eur. H.R. Rep. at 143 (recognizing "protection of journalistic sources" as a "basic condition for press freedom" under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which can only be overcome by "an overriding requirement in the public interest"); Contempt of Court Act 1981, c.49, § 10 (U.K.) (preventing disclosure of source information "unless it is established … that disclosure is necessary in the interests of justice or national security or for the prevention of disorder or crime"); see also Mahon Tribunal v. Keena, 2009 I.E.S.C. 64 (Ir.) (adopting qualified privilege involving case-by-case balancing test); R v. Nat'l Post, 2010 1 S.C.R. 477, 512-22 (Can.) (same). Likewise, Australia and New Zealand also provide qualified protections to confidential journalist-source communications. In Australia, a journalist cannot be compelled to disclose confidential source information unless a court determines that disclosure is warranted based on a balancing of the public interests and potential harms at stake. Evidence Amendment (Journalists' Privilege) Act 2011 s 126H (Aus.); see also The Australian Collaboration, Democracy in Australia: Protection of Journalists and Their Sources 1-2 (2013). And New Zealand's law, which was informed by decades of common law precedent recognizing a journalist's right to maintain the confidentiality of source information, similarly provides protection unless a judge finds that the interests involved weigh *16 in favor of disclosure. Evidence Act 2006 § 68 (N.Z.); Banisar, supra note 4, at 65. Protections are strongest in Europe, where member states of the Council of Europe (all European states except Belarus and the Holy See (Vatican)) are bound by rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, and nearly every country has recognized a journalist's right to maintain the confidentiality of his or her sources. Banisar, supra note 4, at 12, 71, 73; see, e.g., Law "On Dissemination of Mass Information" art. 5 (Arm.); Code de Procédure Pénal. C. Pr. Pén. art. 109(2) (Fr.); Strafprozessordnung StPO Code of Criminal Procedure Apr. 7, 1987, Bundesgesetzblatt § 53(1)(5) (Ger.); Regeringsformen RF Constitution 1:3 (Swed.); Tryckfrihetsförordningen TF Constitution 3:5 (Swed.) (requiring journalists to maintain confidentiality of sources or face criminal penalties). Mexico also protects journalists' source information,5 as does nearly every country in Latin America, and several countries consider it a constitutional right. See Banisar, supra note 4, at 82-83; Art. 43, Constitución Nacional Const. Nac (Arg.); Constituição Federal C.F. Constitution art. 5.XIV (Braz.); Constitution Politica de Colombia C.P. art. 73-74 (Colom.); Const. art. 20 (Ecuador); Const. art. 28-2 (Haiti); Const. art. 29 (Para.); Const. art. 2.18 (Peru). In Africa, at least 14 countries provide legal protection for sources. Banisar, supra *17 note 4, at 53. And about half of the 44 countries in Asia recognize such protections. Id. at 64. These protections generally apply to criminal proceedings. See, e.g., Voskuil v. Netherlands, 2008 E.M.L.R. 14 (Eur. Ct. H.R. 2008) (recognizing qualified privilege in criminal context); Nat'l Post, 1 S.C.R. at 520-22 (Can.) (same); Evidence Act § 68 (N.Z.); Contempt of Court Act § 10 (U.K.); Code de Procedure Penal, art. 109(2) (Fr.). The laws of various nations instruct courts to balance the competing interests that arise uniquely in the criminal context,6 and where national security interests are at stake.7 As this list demonstrates, the United States currently stands alone as the only "established democratic country that does not automatically respect the right of protection of sources." Banisar, supra note 2, at 4.
2. Lack of privilege constrains the press from performing their role as watchdog on government abuses. Free press is crucial to public knowledge/decision making
Levine, JD, et al., 14
(Lee, Brief of ABC, Inc., Advance Publications, Inc., The Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., Cable News Network, Inc., CBS Corporation, The Daily Beast Company LLC, Dow Jones and Company, Inc., The E.W. Scripps Company, First Amendment Coalition, Fox News Network, L.L.C., Gannett Co., Inc., The McClatchy Company, National Association of Broadcasters, National Public Radio, Inc., NBCUniversal Media, LLC, The New York Times Company, News Corporation, Newspaper Association of America, Radio Television Digital News Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Reuters America LLC, Tribune Company, The Washington Post and WNET as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioner Lee Levine*, Katherine M. Bolger, Julie B. Ehrlich, Levine Sullivan Koch, and Schulz, LLP, 1899 L Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036, (202) 508-1100, llevine@lskslaw.com, Counsel for Amici Curiae. Of Counsel: John W. Zucker, Indira Satyendra, ABC, Inc., 77 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023, Counsel for ABC, Inc. Richard A. Bernstein, Neil M. Rosenhouse, Sabin, Bermant and Gould LLP, 4 Times Square, 23rd Fl., New York, NY 10036, Counsel for Advance, Publications, Inc. Karen Kaiser, The Associated Press, 450 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001, Counsel for The Associated, Press. Randy L. Shapiro, Bloomberg L.P., 731 Lexington Ave., New York, NY 10022, Counsel for Bloomberg L.P. David Vigilante, Cable News Network, Inc., One CNN Center, Atlanta, GA 30303, Counsel for Cable News, Network, Inc. Anthony M. Bongiorno, CBS Corporation, 51 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019, Counsel for CBS, Corporation. Andrew Goldberg, The Daily Beast, Company LLC, 555 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011, Counsel for The Daily Beast, Company LLC. Mark H. Jackson, Jason P. Conti, Jacob P. Goldstein, Dow Jones and Company, Inc., 1211 Avenue of the Americas, 7th Fl., New York, NY 10036, Counsel for Dow Jones and Company, Inc. David M. Giles, The E.W. Scripps Company, 312 Walnut Street, Suite, 2800, Cincinnati, OH 45202, Counsel for The E.W., Scripps Company. Peter Scheer, First Amendment, Coalition, 534 4th Street, Ste. B, San Rafael, CA 94901, Counsel for First, Amendment Coalition. Dianne Brandi, Fox News Network, L.L.C., 1211 Avenue of the, Americas, 15th Fl., New York, NY 10036, Counsel for Fox News, Network, L.L.C. Barbara W. Wall, Gannett Co., Inc., 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22107, Counsel for Gannett Co., Inc. Juan Cornejo, The McClatchy Company, 2100 Q Street, Sacramento, CA 95816, Counsel for The McClatchy, Company. Jane E. Mago, Jerianne Timmerman, National Association of, Broadcasters, 1771 N Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036, Counsel for National, Association of Broadcasters. Denise Leary, Ashley Messenger, National Public, Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capital St. NE, Washington, DC 20002, Counsel for National Public, Radio, Inc. Susan E. Weiner, NBCUniversal, Media, LLC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112, Counsel for NBCUniversal, Media, LLC. David E. McCraw, The New York Times, Company, 620 Eighth Ave., 18th Fl., New York, NY 10018, Counsel for The New York, Times Company. Mark H. Jackson, News Corporation, 1211 Avenue of the, Americas, New York, NY 10036, Counsel for News, Corporation. Kurt Wimmer, Covington and Burling, LP, 1201 Pennsylvania, Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004, Counsel for Newspaper, Association of America. Kathleen A. Kirby, Wiley Rein LLP, 1776 K Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, Counsel for Radio, Television Digital News, Association. Bruce D. Brown, Gregg P. Leslie, The Reporters Committee, for Freedom of the Press, 1101 Wilson Blvd, Ste. 1100, Arlington, VA 22209, Counsel for Reporters, Committee for Freedom of, the Press. Gail C. Gove, Reuters America LLC, Three Times Square, 16th Fl., New York, NY 10036, Counsel for Reuters, America LLC. Karen H. Flax, Jeffrey Glasser, Tribune Company, 435 North Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611, Counsel for The Tribune, Company. Jay Kennedy, James A. McLaughlin, The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20071, Counsel for The Washington, Post. Robert A. Feinberg, WNET, 825 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10019, Counsel for WNET. 2014 WL 1275185 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. James RISEN, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent. No. 13-1009. March 26, 2014.)
The Fourth Circuit's conclusion in this case - that a journalist has no cognizable right to protection from compelled disclosure of confidential sources in a criminal proceeding absent evidence of government bad faith - cannot be squared either with our Nation's founding conception of the freedom of the press or with the role that promises of confidentiality have always played in contributing to an informed citizenry. There can be little question that, when the First Amendment was crafted, both the Framers and the broader citizenry reflexively understood the "freedom of the press" to include a journalist's or publisher's presumptive right to protect the identities of those who supplied them with information for dissemination to the public. Indeed, the incident credited with establishing uniquely American principles of freedom of the press - the prosecution of Jon Peter Zenger in 1735 - arose from Zenger's refusal to identify the source(s) of material he published in his newspaper. Even after Zenger was charged criminally as the publisher, he maintained his right to refuse to disclose his "sources." McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334, 361 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring). The then-common understanding that the law should protect the right that Zenger asserted was *18 unquestionably on the minds of the Framers when they included the freedom of the press in the First Amendment. In 1779, when some members of the Continental Congress sought to compel a newspaper publisher to identify the author of a column criticizing that body, arguments that " 'the liberty of the Press ought not to be restrained' " in that manner prevailed, and Congress declined to compel disclosure. Id. at 361-62 (citation omitted). As Justice Thomas concluded in McIntyre, based on these episodes and others, the Framers unanimously "believed that the freedom of the press included the right to publish without revealing the author's name." Id. at 367. In short, the Framers understood the value of protecting such promises of confidentiality, especially when they were made in the cause of securing information for dissemination to the public about its government, and they did so even when the subpoenaed journalist or publisher possessed firsthand knowledge of an allegedly criminal act. Zenger, after all, was an "eyewitness" to the events that led directly to the allegedly criminal criticisms of government leveled by the authors he published - he personally acquired their purportedly seditious works from them. In the modern era, the common understanding of what we mean by the "freedom of the press" similarly includes the presumptive right to protect confidential sources from compelled disclosure. With the exception of those courts that, like the Fourth Circuit below, feel constrained by Branzburg to hold *19 otherwise, federal judges have consistently recognized the obvious - there is a significant public interest in protecting reporters from compelled disclosure of their confidential sources regardless of whether that interest is grounded in the First Amendment or in federal common law.11 From the perspective of the reasonably informed citizen, there has never been any real question that such "protection exists. It is palpable; it is ubiquitous; it is widely relied upon; it is an integral part of the way in which the American public is kept informed and therefore of the American democratic process." Gonzales, 459 F.3d at 181 (Sack, J., dissenting). Indeed, putting aside its position in this case, the Department of Justice itself has consistently acknowledged that compelled disclosure of confidential sources threatens the freedom of the press. Its own guidelines for issuing subpoenas to the media reflect the express intent to "provide protection to members of the news media from certain law enforcement tools, whether criminal or civil, that might unreasonably impair ordinary *20 newsgathering activities" 28 C.F.R. § 50.10 (2014). As the Department has recently reaffirmed, there must be substantive limits on the Government's ability to compel reporters to disclose their confidential sources "because freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of members of the news media to investigate and report the news." Id. The states similarly understand that the "freedom of the press" encompasses a presumptive right to protect confidential sources. Forty-nine states and the District of Columbia recognize some form of reporters' privilege. App.106a-108a (Gregory, J., dissenting). Of those jurisdictions, thirty-nine have now enacted "shield laws" affording such protection in statutory form. App.l06a. Although these statutes vary in scope, they reflect a clear national consensus that freedom of the press necessarily encompasses at least some protection against compelled disclosure of journalists' confidential sources.12 Against this backdrop, it is difficult to understand how the law can be construed, as the Fourth Circuit now has, to foreclose any consideration of the press's and public's interests in assessing whether a subpoena issued in a criminal *21 proceeding and seeking the identity of a confidential source can lawfully be enforced. Simply put, whether rooted in the First Amendment or in the common law, our national commitment to a free press and to the democratic values it serves dictates that those interests must, at a minimum, be weighed in every case. Because the Fourth Circuit determined that Branzburg precluded it from undertaking any such balancing, under either the First Amendment or at common law, its decision is inconsistent with our historical conception of freedom of the press.
3. Confidentiality is crucial to reporting and checking government abuse- numerous empirical examples show the case outweighs any DA
(Lee, David A. Schulz, Nathan E. Siegel, Thomas Curley, Levine Sullivan Koch, and Schulz, L.L.P., 1050 17th Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington, D.C. 20036, Telephone: (202) 508-1100, Facsimile: (202)861-9888, Counsel for Amici Curiae. Of Counsel: Henry S. Hoberman, ABC, Inc., 77 West 66th Street, New York, NY 10023, Counsel for ABC, Inc. Richard A. Bernstein, Sabin, Bermant and Gould LLP, Four Times Square, New York, NY 10036, Counsel for Advance, Publications, Inc. David H. Tomlin, The Associated Press, 450 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001, Counsel for The Associated Press. Jonathan Bloom, Weil, Gotshal and Manges LLP, 767 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10153, Counsel for The Association of, American Publishers, Inc. David Vigilante, Johnita P. Due, Cable News Network LP, LLLP, One CNN Center, Atlanta, GA 30303, Counsel for Cable News, Network LP, LLLP. Susanna M. Lowy, Anthony M. Bongiorno, Naomi B. Waltman, CBS Broadcasting Inc., 1515 Broadway, 51st Floor, New York, NY 10036, Counsel for CBS, Broadcasting Inc. Stuart D. Karle, Dow Jones and Company, Inc., 200 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281, Counsel for Dow Jones and, Company, Inc. Mark A. Hinueber, Stephens Media Group, P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125, Counsel for DR Partners d/b/a, Stephens Media Group. Barbara W. Wall, Gannett Co., Inc., 7950 Jones Branch Drive, McLean, VA 22107, Counsel for Gannett Co., Inc. Robert Beizer, Gray Television, Inc., 1750 K Street N.W., No. 1200, Washington, DC 20006, Counsel for Gray, Television, Inc. Yvette Miller, Gruner + Jahr USA Publishing, 375 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10017, Counsel for Gruner + Jahr, USA Publishing. Eve Burton, Jonathan Donnellan, The Hearst Corporation, 1345 Sixth Avenue, Tenth Floor, New York, NY 10019, Counsel for The Hearst, Corporation. Guy R. Friddell, III, Landmark Communications, Inc., 150 W. Brambleton Avenue, Norfolk, VA 23510, Counsel for Landmark, Communications, Inc. Christopher J. Nolan, Magazine Publishers, of America, 919 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022, Counsel for Magazine Publishers, of America. Gregg D. Thomas, Holland and Knight LLP, 100 N. Tampa Street, Suite 4100, Tampa, FL 33602, Counsel for Media General, Inc. Tonda Rush, King and Ballow, P.O. Box 50301, Arlington, VA 22205, Counsel for National, Newspaper Association. Neal A. Jackson, Denise B. Leary, National Public Radio, Inc., 635 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20001, Counsel for National, Public Radio, Inc. Susan E. Weiner, NBC Universal, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112, Counsel for NBC Universal. Stephen Fuzesi, Jr., Randy Shapiro, Newsweek, Inc., 251 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019, Counsel for Newsweek, Inc. Katherine J. Trager, Jon P. Fine, Random House, Inc., 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019, Counsel for Random, House, Inc. Lucy A. Dalglish, Gregg P. Leslie, Reporters Committee for, Freedom of the Press, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Suite 1100, Arlington, VA 22209, Counsel for Reporters Committee, for Freedom of the Press. Bruce W. Sanford, Robert D. Lystad, Bruce D. Brown, Baker and Hostetler LLP, 1050 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Suite 1100, Washington, DC 20036, Counsel for Society of, Professional Journalists. David S. Bralow, Stephanie S. Abrutyn, Tribune Company, 220 E. 42nd Street, Suite 400, New York, NY 10017, Counsel for Tribune Company. Mary Ann Werner, Eric Lieberman, The Washington Post, 1150 15th Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20071, Counsel for The, Washington Post. 2005 WL 1199075 (U.S.) (Appellate Petition, Motion and Filing) Supreme Court of the United States. Judith MILLER, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent. Matthew Cooper and Time Inc., Petitioners, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Respondent. Nos. 04-1507, 04-1508. May 18, 2005.)
At bottom, the decision below warrants review because the uncertainty it has engendered threatens to jeopardize the flow of information to the public. The press "serves and was designed to serve by the Founding Fathers as a powerful *6 antidote to any abuses of power by governmental officials." Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 219 (1966). The press cannot effectively perform this constitutionally recognized role without the ability to maintain the confidentiality of those sources who will speak only on a promise of anonymity. Unless this Court acts, the public's ability to receive information about its government through the press will be substantially impaired. There can be no genuine dispute that journalists regularly depend on anonymous sources to report stories about the operation of government and other matters of public concern. One recent examination of roughly 10,000 news media reports concluded that fully thirteen percent of front-page newspaper articles relied at least in part on anonymous sources.5 While there is healthy debate within the journalism profession about the appropriate uses of anonymous sources, all sides of that debate agree that confidential sources are at times essential to effective news reporting.6 In recent proceedings in the federal courts, journalist after journalist has convincingly testified about the important role confidential sources play in enabling them to report about matters of manifest public concern.7 As WJAR reporter James Taricani testified before being sentenced to house arrest: *7 In the course of my 28-year career in journalism, I have relied on confidential sources to report more than one hundred stories, on diverse issues of public concern such as public corruption, sexual abuse by clergy, organized crime, misuse of taxpayers' money, and ethical shortcomings of a Chief Justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. App. at B40 ¶5. Indeed, Mr. Taricani described a host of important stories that he could not have reported without providing "a meaningful promise of confidentiality to sources," including a report on organized crime's role in the illegal dumping of toxic waste that sparked a grand jury investigation and a report on the misuse of union funds that led to the ouster of the union president. Id. ¶¶ 6-8. Pierre Thomas, recently held in contempt in the Wen Ho Lee case, recounted many similar examples in his testimony in that litigation. Information received from confidential sources enabled Mr. Thomas to report on the progress of the Oklahoma City bombing investigation in a manner that proved instrumental in helping a nervous public understand that the bombing was not the work of foreign terrorists, and his award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks unearthed important information, provided by confidential sources, about the FBI's advance knowledge of the activities of those responsible for that tragedy. As Mr. Thomas testified: "If I had no ability to promise confidentiality to these sources, they would not have furnished vital information for these articles." Id. at B22 ¶ 14(b). Confidential sources are not only critical to investigative journalists like Messrs. Taricani and Thomas, but are equally important to the daily reporting of more routine news stories. Reporters regularly consult background sources to confirm the accuracy of official news pronouncements and to understand their broader context and significance. A. at 38, *8 ¶ 5 (testimony of Jack Nelson, former Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief, explaining the crucial role that confidential sources played in his reporting through the administrations of six Presidents). Without the ability to speak off the record to sources in the government who are not officially authorized to speak, reporters would be relegated to spoon feeding the public with little more than the "official" statements of public relations officers. Id. at 49, ¶ 12 (testimony of Scott Armstrong). For this reason, among others, news reporting based on confidential source material regularly receives the nation's most coveted journalism awards, including the Polk Awards for Excellence in Journalism8 and the coveted Pulitzer Prize.9 Indeed, journalistic experience confirms that, in many circumstances, important information is provided to the press in confidence precisely because the government has taken steps to conceal it by making its unauthorized disclosure *9 unlawful. Standing alone, that latter fact cannot be sufficient justification to conclude, as did the court below, that no First Amendment or other public interest is served in allowing reporters to protect the anonymity of such sources. In the area of national security reporting, for example, journalists and public officials alike have come to recognize that "virtually everything is classified" so that verification of "something as mundane as a press briefing involves talking to scores of sources who are not authorized to add further detail and could be subject to sanctions for doing so." Id. at 50, ¶ 13. As a result, most high-level government officials serve as confidential sources at one time or another, in "an untidy but well-established accommodation" that functions as a safety valve allowing vitally important information to be transmitted to the public notwithstanding formal secrecy restrictions. Id. at 50, 53, ¶¶ 13, 19.10 The information anonymous sources make available to the public through the press is vitally important to the operation of our democracy and the oversight of our most powerful institutions, both public and private. Among the many compelling examples of valuable journalism that would never have been possible if a reporter could not credibly have pledged confidentiality to a source are the following: Pentagon Papers - The Pentagon's secret history of America's involvement in Vietnam was, of course, leaked to The New York Times and The Washington Post. See New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971). In *10 refusing to enjoin publication of the leaked information, members of this Court recognized that the newspapers' sources may well have broken the law, id. at 754 (Harlan, J., dissenting), and they were in fact prosecuted, albeit unsuccessfully, after later coining forward. See Sanford J. Ungar, Federal Conduct Cited As Offending 'Sense of Justice'; Charges Dismissed in 'Papers' Trial, Wash. Post, May 12, 1973, at A1. Nevertheless, "in revealing the workings of the government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders had hoped and trusted they would do," New York Times Co., 403 U.S. at 717 (Black, J., concurring), and there is now a broad consensus that there was no legitimate reason to hide the Papers from the public in the first place.11 Neutron Bomb - Journalist Walter Pincus relied on anonymous sources in reporting that President Carter planned to move forward with plans to develop a so-called "neutron bomb," a weapon that could inflict massive casualties through radiation without extensive destruction of property.12 The public outcry in the wake of these news reports spurred the United States to abandon plans for such a weapon and no Administration has since attempted to revive it.13 Mr. Pincus, *11 who never received a subpoena concerning the neutron bomb or any other matter in his decades-long career, has recently received two - one from Respondent and one in the Lee case. Fertility Fraud - In 1996, the Orange County Register received the Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the unethical practices of the previously acclaimed UCI fertility clinic in Irvine, California. Using putatively confidential medical records obtained from an anonymous source, the paper documented how eggs retrieved from one patient were implanted in another, without the knowledge or consent of the donor.14 The newspaper eventually discovered and reported that at least sixty women were victims of such theft by the clinic.15 The disclosure of these records to the Register may have violated applicable law, yet the facts that the newspaper reported resulted in the criminal prosecution of the physicians involved, "prompted the American Medical Association to rewrite its fertility-industry guidelines," and instigated legislative action.16 Enron - In a groundbreaking series of articles published in 2001, the Wall Street Journal relied on confidential sources and leaked corporate documents to reveal the illegal accounting practices of a company that had "routinely made published lists of the most-admired and innovative *12 companies in America."17 Among other things, confidential sources provided the Journal with "confidential" information about two partnerships operated by Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, which were used to hide corporate debt from the company's investors.18 Abu Ghraib - In April 2004, CBS News and Seymour Hersh, writing for The New Yorker, first reported accounts of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.19 Relying on photographs graphically depicting such abuse in the possession of Army officials and a classified report by Major General Antonio M. Taguba that was "not meant for public release,"20 CBS and Hersh documented the conditions of abuse in the Iraqi prison. After these incidents became public, other military sources who had witnessed abuse stepped forward, but only "on the condition that they not be identified because of concern that their military careers would be ruined."21 *13 BALCO - In 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle published details of grand jury testimony given by some of the most prominent athletes in professional sports, part of a Pulitzer-Prize winning series of articles about the extent to which performance-enhancing drugs had infiltrated both professional and amateur sports.22 Baseball players Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and other prominent athletes testified before the federal grand jury investigating the distribution of undetectable steroids by the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative ("BALCO"). In some instances, their testimony was squarely at odds with their public denial of steroid use.23 While the Chronicle's sources may have violated grand jury secrecy rules, the newspaper's reporting led to congressional hearings on steroid use in Major League Baseball as well as a decision by its Commissioner to tighten rules regarding the use of banned substances. The decision below plainly threatens this kind of journalism. The compelled disclosure of the sources that enabled the press to report these stories "undoubtedly would have a ripple effect, silencing whistleblowers and other government employees who might otherwise cooperate with the press in exposing government wrongdoing." A. at 39, ¶ 7. As has been explained by New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth, another Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who has recently been held in contempt by a federal court: Compelling journalists to testify about their conversations with confidential sources will inevitably hinder future attempts to obtain *14 cooperation from those or other confidential sources. It creates the inevitable appearance that journalists either are or can be readily converted into an investigative arm of either the government or of civil litigants. … Persons who would otherwise be willing to speak to me would surely refuse to do so if they perceived me to be not a journalist who keeps his word when he promises confidentiality…. App. at B37 ¶ 15. Los Angeles Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize recipient Bob Drogin, also now in contempt of a federal court, similarly expressed this undeniable truth during his deposition in the Lee litigation: I have thought long and hard about this, and unlike you attorneys here in the room, I do not have subpoena power or anything else to gather information. I have what credibility I have as a journalist, I have the word that I give to people to protect their confidentiality. If I violate that trust, then I believe I can no longer work as a journalist.24 Especially in the wake of the court of appeals' decision in this case, the Court's guidance is essential to preserve the ability of the American press to engage in this kind of reporting that would be impossible if journalists were powerless to make commitments of confidentiality in appropriate circumstances. Amici respectfully submit that a *15 compilation of those serious crimes that have in fact gone unresolved because a journalist was permitted to protect his source would be a very short list indeed and would pale in comparison to the scores of news reports containing valuable information gleaned from confidential sources. Thus, while it is undoubtedly true that "the right to remain anonymous may be abused when it shields fraudulent conduct," it remains the case that, "in general, our society accords greater weight to the value of free speech than to the dangers of its misuse." McIntyre, 514 U.S. at 357.
4. Now is key-even a flawed press is vital to preserve US democracy and check Trump
Feldman, JD/Prof Law@Harvaaaard, 18
(Noah, https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-08-19/trump-vs-the-press-why-opinion-journalism-matters-in-democracy, 8-19)
What's the main value in a free press? To hear the press tell it — as in many of the 350-plus editorials published in coordination last week in response to the president's anti-press rhetoric — the answer is factual, objective coverage of events. But that's not what the framers of the Constitution thought, or what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind when he crafted modern free-press jurisprudence during World War I. It also doesn't match how most newspaper writers thought of themselves until the emergence of journalism as a "profession" in the post-World War II period. The classic reason for valuing a free press is that it expresses a variety of opinions, especially those that differ from the government. That in turn fuels democracy, which requires disagreement with those in office so that the public can consider choosing new leaders instead. It's crucial to keep in mind the value of opinion in an era when editorials and opinion journalism are being constantly questioned. President Donald Trump accuses the media of being "the opposition party," implying a failure of objectivity. But it's not a bad thing for opinion journalism, including the editorial boards of major newspapers, to see themselves as the opposition to Trump. Opposition like that keeps democracy alive, and constitutes one of the core responsibilities of a free press. To be clear, I'm not speaking against the journalistic aspiration to discover and report facts. There is a difference between factual truth and lies. Because no one else in society seems to have the time or the interest to police that boundary, the press should try its best to do so. Rather, I'm pointing out that the need for fact-checking wasn't the basis for the traditional view that a free press is necessary for democracy. Consider James Madison, the author of the First Amendment. He gave press freedom little thought when he was actually drafting the amendment, coming to focus on it only when partisan battles between his Republican Party and Alexander Hamilton's Federalists began to define national politics. Hamilton and his supporters used a newspaper called the Gazette of the United States to promote Federalist views, even publishing anonymous essays by John Adams, then the serving as vice president. Madison, with encouragement and help from Thomas Jefferson (then secretary of state), facilitated the creation of a competing newspaper, the National Gazette, to combat Hamilton — by offering a Republican perspective. The dueling newspapers existed to present dueling opinions. No one on either side thought that either newspaper was objective. Indeed, it is doubtful whether the idea of factual objectivity as a journalistic goal was even imagined in 18th century America. When, as president, Adams signed the Sedition Act passed by the Federalist Congress, he used it to prosecute Republican newspaper editors. Many were convicted, imprisoned and fined for insulting the Adams administration. Madison sprung into action, composing a report adopted by the Virginia legislature that contained the first detailed defense of the First Amendment. He argued that a free press was necessary to ensure free elections, because only a free press could provide the people with the ideas they needed for "the just exercise of their electoral rights." This was a defense of opinion journalism — exactly what the Sedition Act punished. More than a century later, when the Supreme Court first articulated the value of a free press and free speech, Holmes famously wrote that the First Amendment should be understood in terms of the metaphor of a marketplace of ideas. "The best test of truth," he wrote, "is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market. ... That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution." Holmes left no doubt that he was thinking about opinions, not objective facts. "We should be eternally vigilant," he warned, "against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country." Holmes's whole theory rested on his philosophical pragmatism. Opinions were provisional, not objectively provable. Even the very idea of the freedom of speech, he said "is an experiment, as all life is an experiment." The upshot is that we need to remember that a free press preserves democracy mostly by allowing for the expression of alternative points of view. An autocratic or dictatorial government seeks to suppress differences of opinion just as much, or more, than it seeks to suppress facts. The coordinated editorials last week are a case in point. They are expressions of opinion, not fact. By airing those opinions, the newspapers created a news cycle of their own, one focused on the press itself, rather than Trump's criticisms of it. It's great that newspapers try to be objective. But the human limitations of editors and writers mean this can only ever be an aspiration, not a fully accomplished reality. That's OK. The justification for a free press doesn't depend on its being objective. To the contrary, a free press is necessary for democracy because it preserves the multiplicity of opinions and points of view.
5. US key to global democracy which reduces the risk of great power war
Basora and Yalowitz '17 -- director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute Eurasia Program AND director of the Conflict Resolution Program at Georgetown( Adrian and Kenneth, "Democracy Promotion Is Smart Security Policy", , 2/16/2017, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/democracy-promotion-smart-security-policy-19469)
We cannot "make America great again" unless America is secure both at home and in its global position. But what does this have to do with democracy? During the first decade after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, President George H. W. Bush's goal of "a Europe whole and free" and a wider world largely at peace seemed within reach. The deadly threats of the Cold War were gone, and the democratic revolutions that appeared to be sweeping through eastern Europe and elsewhere created optimism as to the continuing progress of a liberal international order. Now, two and a half decades later, that promising trend is being reversed. The authoritarian resurgence in Europe and elsewhere over the past decade has shaken our confidence that liberal democracy, free markets and peaceful borders will continue to dominate the post–Cold War international order. From our being the "sole superpower" in the 1990s, U.S. global influence and effective power are now challenged by China and Russia, the weakening of the European Union and the sharp domestic divisions revealed by the U.S. presidential campaign. The United States and Europe are threatened by radical terrorists, challenged by territorially expansionist autocracies, and targeted by covert action, massive disinformation and propaganda offensives. Russia and China, the world's two principal autocratic powers, lead the way in consolidating their model domestically, but also in advocating internationally for an alternative authoritarian model based on strident nationalism, autocratic leadership, and repression of human rights and the rule of law. Russia, through its covert intervention in the U.S. election, military actions in Ukraine and support of right-wing populist forces in Europe, is working to undermine the system of liberal institutions, laws and behavioral norms that have bound Europe and the United States. Sadly, this alternative model is gaining ground in Europe and elsewhere. The list includes formerly promising new democracies such as Hungary, Turkey, Thailand, the Philippines—and now even Poland. What is the connection between America's security and the state of democracy in the world? Democratic countries rarely, if ever, go to war with each other or prey on their neighbors. Democratic systems and free markets support each other and sustain individual and group freedoms. Also, the rule of law, which subsumes all, is best guaranteed by democratic systems. Protection of the democratic order, now under challenge, must therefore be one of the priorities weighed in our strategic decisionmaking analysis and policy process. And democracy promotion via a revised, realistic and targeted approach must remain a fundamental national-security objective for the United States and its allies. At a recent conference at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC on this subject, eleven experts of varying political and operational perspectives all concluded that the national-security interests of the United States and its allies not only permit, but require, America to support democracy abroad. Not to do so would ignore an existential threat to democracies, and to the international order that has allowed the United States to remain secure and prosper. The new administration will need a democracy-promotion strategy. We suggest a triage approach, which will concentrate on three categories of countries where external support is most likely to succeed. Excluded from these efforts will be countries like Russia and Uzbekistan, where the effort would be futile and/or discredit democracy promotion by validating regime propaganda that equates these programs with aggressive intrusion into domestic affairs. The most promising cases are found in countries where autocratic regimes have recently fallen or have agreed to a negotiated transition (e.g., Tunisia, Ukraine, Myanmar and Indonesia) or where semi-autocratic governments are visibly weak and opposed by broad-based indigenous movements (Venezuela). The second group is made up of countries undergoing democratic regression resulting from the aggressive nature and partial success of the authoritarian counteroffensive. Existing democracies such as Poland and Hungary must be helped from falling backwards. Emerging democracies such as Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia need assistance in fending off foreign attempts to subvert them. The third group is comprised of nondemocratic countries that fall in between regimes transitioning to democracy and consolidated dictatorships. This category includes autocratic countries such as Armenia, Thailand and Belarus, where the regimes have retained some democratic trappings such as controlled elections to maintain a degree of popular legitimacy. These openings may be used to lay the groundwork for democratic transition through carefully calibrated democracy promotion programs. Understandably, much of the focus of the new U.S. administration will be on countering terrorist threats and dampening the appeal of radical ideology to susceptible young people. Yet, we must pay attention to prospects for democratic transition and meet the authoritarian counteroffensive. At the same time, Americans must reaffirm their own democratic commitments and standards as they manage their economic divisions and challenges. If democracy is to continue to flourish, nothing is more important than being true to American values and principles and protecting them globally.
6. US democracy resolves a laundry list of existential threats
Kasparov '17 -- Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (Garry, "Democracy and Human Rights: The Case for U.S. Leadership" , 2/16/2017 http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021617_Kasparov_20Testimony.pdf)
The Soviet Union was an existential threat, and this focused the attention of the world, and the American people. There existential threat today is not found on a map, but it is very real. The forces of the past are making steady progress against the modern world order. Terrorist movements in the Middle East, extremist parties across Europe, a paranoid tyrant in North Korea threatening nuclear blackmail, and, at the center of the web, an aggressive KGB dictator in Russia. They all want to turn the world back to a dark past because their survival is threatened by the values of the free world, epitomized by the United States. And they are thriving as the U.S. has retreated. The global freedom index has declined for ten consecutive years. No one like to talk about the United States as a global policeman, but this is what happens when there is no cop on the beat. American leadership begins at home, right here. America cannot lead the world on democracy and human rights if there is no unity on the meaning and importance of these things. Leadership is required to make that case clearly and powerfully. Right now, Americans are engaged in politics at a level not seen in decades. It is an opportunity for them to rediscover that making America great begins with believing America can be great. The Cold War was won on American values that were shared by both parties and nearly every American. Institutions that were created by a Democrat, Truman, were triumphant forty years later thanks to the courage of a Republican, Reagan. This bipartisan consistency created the decades of strategic stability that is the great strength of democracies. Strong institutions that outlast politicians allow for long-range planning. In contrast, dictators can operate only tactically, not strategically, because they are not constrained by the balance of powers, but cannot afford to think beyond their own survival. This is why a dictator like Putin has an advantage in chaos, the ability to move quickly. This can only be met by strategy, by long-term goals that are based on shared values, not on polls and cable news. The fear of making things worse has paralyzed the United States from trying to make things better. There will always be setbacks, but the United States cannot quit. The spread of democracy is the only proven remedy for nearly every crisis that plagues the world today. War, famine, poverty, terrorism–all are generated and exacerbated by authoritarian regimes. A policy of America First inevitably puts American security last. American leadership is required because there is no one else, and because it is good for America. There is no weapon or wall that is more powerful for security than America being envied, imitated, and admired around the world. Admired not for being perfect, but for having the exceptional courage to always try to be better. Thank you
7. Unchecked Trump risks extinction – Environment, structural violence and war
Chomsky '17 – (Noam, "Noam Chomsky: With Trump Election, We Are Now Facing Threats to the Survival of the Human Species", https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/2/noam_chomsky_with_trump_election_we//JC)
NOAM CHOMSKY: For the young people among you, a special word: You'll be facing problems that have never arisen in the 200,000 years of human history—hard, demanding problems. It's a burden that you can't ignore. And we'll all—you, in particular, and all the rest of us—will have to be in there struggling hard to save the human species from a pretty grim fate. Well, my wife and I happened to be in Europe on November 8th, that fateful day, in fact, in Barcelona, where we watched the results come in. Now, that had special personal resonance for me. The first article I wrote, or at least that I can remember, was in February 1939 at the—it was about the fall of Barcelona to Franco's fascist forces. And the article, which I'm sure it was not very memorable, was about the apparently inexorable spread of fascism over Europe and maybe the whole world. I'm old enough to have been able to listen to Hitler's speeches, the Nuremberg rallies, not understanding the words, but the tone and the reaction of the crowd was enough to leave indelible memories. And watching those results come in did arouse some pretty unpleasant memories, along with what is happening in Europe now, which, in many ways, is pretty frightening, as well. Well, the reaction to November 8th in Europe was disbelief, shock, horror. It was captured pretty eloquently in the—on the front cover of the major German weekly, Der Spiegel. It depicted a caricature of Donald Trump presented as a meteor hurtling towards Earth, mouth open, ready to swallow it up. And the top headline read "Das Ende Der Welt!" "The End of the World." Small letters below, "as we have known it." There might be some truth to that concern, even if not exactly in the manner in which the artist, the authors, the others who echoed that conception, had in mind. It had to do with other events that were taking place right at the same time, November 8th, events that I think were a lot more important than the ones that have captured the attention of the world in such an astonishing fashion, events that were taking place in Morocco, Marrakech, Morocco. There was a conference there of 200 countries, the so-called COP 22. Their goal at this conference was to implement the rather vague promises and commitments of the preceding international conference on global warming, COP 21 in Paris in December 2015, which had in fact been left vague for reasons not unrelated to what happened on November 8th here. The Paris conference had the goal of establishing verifiable commitments to do something about the worst problem that humans have ever faced—the likely destruction of the possibility for organized human life. They couldn't do that. They could only reach a nonverifiable commitment—promises, but not fixed by treaty and a real commitment. And the reason was that the Republican Congress in the United States would not accept binding commitments. So they were left with something much weaker and looser. The Morocco conference intended to carry this forward by putting teeth in that loose, vague agreement. The conference opened on November 7th, normal way. November 8th, the World Meteorological Organization presented an assessment of the current state of what's called the Anthropocene, the new geological epoch that is marked by radical human modification, destruction of the environment that sustains life. November 9th, the conference basically ceased. The question that was left was whether it would be possible to carry forward this global effort to deal with the highly critical problem of environmental catastrophe, if the leader of the free world, the richest and most powerful country in history, would pull out completely, as appeared to be the case. That's the stated goal of the president-elect, who regards climate change as a hoax and whose policy, if he pursues it, is to maximize the use of fossil fuels, end environmental regulations, dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency—established by Richard Nixon, which is a measure of where politics has shifted to the right in the past generation—and, in other ways, accelerate the race to destruction. Well, that was essentially the end of the Marrakech conference. It terminated without any issue. So that might signal the end of the world, even if not quite in the intended sense. And, in fact, what happened in Marrakech was a quite astounding spectacle. The hope of the world for saving us from this impending disaster was China—authoritarian, harsh China. That's where hopes were placed. At the same time, the leader of the free world, the richest, most powerful country in history, was acting in such a way as to doom the hopes to total disaster. It's an astonishing spectacle. And it's no less astounding that it received almost no comment. You can—something to think about. Well, the effects are quite real. COP 21, the Paris negotiations, could not reach a verifiable treaty because of the refusal of the Republican Congress to accept binding commitments. The follow-up conference, COP 22, ended without any issue. We will soon see, in the not very distant future, even more dangerous, horrifying consequences of this failure right here to come to term to address in a serious way this impending crisis. So, say, take the country of Bangladesh. Within a few years, tens of millions of people will be fleeing from the low-lying coastal plains simply because of the rise of sea level with the melting of the huge Antarctic glaciers much more quickly than was anticipated and the severe weather associated with global warming. That's a refugee crisis of a kind that puts today's crisis, which is more a moral crisis of the West than an actual refugee crisis—it will put this current crisis into a—it will seem like a footnote to a tragedy. And it's—the leading climate scientist in Bangladesh has reacted by saying that these migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States and—United States and, indeed, the other rich countries that have grown wealthy, as we all have, while bringing this new geological epoch—bringing about this new geological epoch, which may well be the final one for the species. And the catastrophic consequences can only increase. Just keeping to South Asia, temperatures which are already intolerable for the poor are going to continue to rise as the Himalayan glaciers melt, also destroying the water supply for South Asia. In India already, 300 million people are reported to lack water to drink. And it will continue both for India and Pakistan. And at this point, the two major threats to survival begin to converge. One is environmental catastrophe. The other is nuclear war, another threat that is increasing right before our eyes. India and Pakistan are nuclear states, nuclear—states with nuclear weapons. They were already almost at war. Any kind of real war would immediately turn into a nuclear war. That might happen very easily over water—over struggles over diminishing water supplies. A nuclear war would not only devastate the region, but might actually be terminal for the species, if indeed it leads to nuclear winter and global famine, as many scientists predict. So, the threats of survival—to survival converge right there, and we're going to see much more like it. Meanwhile, the United States is leading the way to disaster, while the world looks to China for leadership. It's an incredible, astounding picture, and indeed only one piece of a much larger picture. The U.S. isolation at Marrakech is symptomatic of broader developments that we should think about pretty carefully. They're of considerable significance. U.S. isolation in the world is increasing in remarkable ways. Maybe the most striking is right in this hemisphere, what used to be called "our little region over here"—Henry Stimson, secretary of war under Roosevelt, "our little region over here," where nobody bothers us. If anybody gets out of line, we punish them harshly; otherwise, they do what we say. That's very far from true. During this century, Latin America, for the first time in 500 years, has freed itself from Western imperialism. Last century, that's the United States. The International Monetary Fund, which is basically an agency of the U.S. Treasury, has been kicked out of the—of South America entirely. There are no U.S. military bases left. The international organizations, the—the hemispheric organizations are beginning to exclude the United States and Canada. In 2015, there was a summit coming up, and the United States might have been excluded completely from the hemisphere over the issue of Cuba. That was the crucial issue that the hemisphere—on which the hemisphere opposed U.S. policy, as does the world. That's surely the reason why Obama made the gestures towards normalization, that were at least some step forward—and could be reversed under Trump. We don't know. On a much more far-reaching scale, something similar is happening in Asia. As you know, one of Obama's major policies was the so-called pivot to Asia, which was actually a measure to confront China, transparently. One component of the pivot to Asia was the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which excluded China, tried to bring in other Asia-Pacific countries. Well, that seems to be on its way to collapse, for pretty good reasons, I think. But at the same time, there's another international trade agreement that is expanding and growing, namely, China's—what they call the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which is now drawing in U.S. allies, from Peru to Australia to Japan. The U.S. will probably choose to stay out of it, just as the United States, virtually alone, has stayed away from China's Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, a kind of counterpart to the World Bank, that the U.S. has opposed for many years, but has now been joined by practically all U.S. allies, Britain and others. That's—at the same time, China is expanding to the West with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the China-based Silk Roads. The whole system is an integrated system of energy resource sharing and so on. It includes Siberia, with its rich resources. It includes India and Pakistan. Iran will soon join, it appears, and probably Turkey. This will extend all the way from China to Europe. The United States has asked for observer status, and it's been rejected, not permitted. And one of the major commitments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the whole of the Central Asian states, is that there can be no U.S. military bases in this entire region. Another step toward isolation may soon take place if the president-elect carries through his promise to terminate the nuclear weapons—the nuclear deal with Iran. Other countries who are parties to the deal might well continue. They might even—Europe, mainly. That means ignoring U.S. sanctions. That will extend U.S. isolation, even from Europe. And in fact Europe might move, under these circumstances, towards backing off from the confrontation with Russia. Actually, Brexit may assist with this, because Britain was the voice of the United States in NATO, the harshest voice. Now it's out, gives Europe some opportunities. There were choices in 1990, '91, time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mikhail Gorbachev had a—what he called a vision of a common European home, an integrated, cooperative system of security, commerce, interchange, no military alliances from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The U.S. insisted on a different vision—namely, Soviet Union collapses, and NATO remains and, indeed, expands, right up to the borders of Russia now, where very serious threats are evident daily. Well, all of this, these are significant developments. They're related to the widely discussed matter of decline of American power. There are some conventional measures which, however, are misleading in quite interesting ways. I'll just say a word about it, because there's no time, but it's something to seriously think about. By conventional measures, in 1945, the United States had reached the peak of global dominance—nothing like it in history. It had perhaps 50 percent of total world's wealth. Other industrial countries were devastated or destroyed by the war, severely damaged. The U.S. economy had gained enormously from the war, and it was in—and the U.S., in general, had a position of dominance with no historical parallel. Well, that, of course, couldn't last. Other industrial countries reconstructed. By around 1970, the world was described as tripolar: three major economic centers—a German-based Europe, a U.S.-based North America and the Northeast Asian area, at that time Japan-based, now China had moved in as a partner, conflict then partner. By now—by that time, U.S. share in global wealth was about 25 percent. And today it's not far below that. Well, all of this is highly misleading, because it fails to take into account a crucial factor, which is almost never discussed, though there's some interesting work on it. That's the question of ownership of the world economy. If you take a look at the corporate—the multinational corporations around the world, what do they own? Well, that turns out to be a pretty interesting matter. In virtually every—this increasingly during the period of neoliberal globalization of the last generation, corporate wealth is becoming a more realistic measure of global power than national wealth. Corporate wealth, of course, is nationally based, supported by taxpayers like us, but the ownership has nothing to do with us. Corporate ownership, if you look at that, it turns out that in virtually every economic sector—manufacturing, finance, services, retail and others—U.S. corporations are well in the lead in ownership of the global economy. And overall, their ownership is close to 50 percent of the total. That's roughly the proportion of U.S. national wealth in 1945, which tells you something about the nature of the world in which we live. Of course, that's not for the benefit of American citizens, but of those who own and manage these private—publicly supported and private, quasi-totalitarian systems. If you look at the military dimension, of course, the U.S. is supreme. Nobody is even close. No point talking about it. But it is possible that Europe might take a more independent role. It might move towards something like Gorbachev's vision. That might lead to a relaxation of the rising and very dangerous tensions at the Russian border, which would be a very welcome development. Well, there's a lot more to say about the fears and hopes and prospects. The threats and dangers are very real. There are plenty of opportunities. And as we face them, again, particularly the younger people among you, we should never overlook the fact that the threats that we now face are the most severe that have ever arisen in human history. They are literal threats to survival: nuclear war, environmental catastrophe. These are very urgent concerns. They cannot be delayed. They became more urgent on November 8th, for the reasons you know and that I mentioned. They have to be faced directly, and soon, if the human experiment is not to prove to be a disastrous failure.
8. Independent of modeling US support for reporter privilege is crucial to Middle east democracy- Arab Spring proves
Davidson, PhD/JD, and Herrera, MA, 12
(Sandra, Law@Missouri, David, MORE THAN A PAPER SHIELD Copyright (c) 2012 Publications Council of the College of William and Mary William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal May, 2012 William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 20 Wm. and Mary Bill of Rts. J. 1277)
"When governments repress their people, press freedom is among the most powerful vehicles for exposing misdeeds," declared United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon on World Press Freedom Day 2011. n2 "Today it is the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East mobilizing for their democratic rights and freedoms," Secretary Ban continued, "and they are doing so with a heavy reliance on new media." n3 WikiLeaks could not have been far from the Secretary's mind. The website's slow release of 251,287 diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department, beginning in November 2010, n4 has been cited as a contributing cause of the 2011 "Arab Spring" uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. n5 *1278 For those interested in shield laws for journalists, WikiLeaks exemplifies the new, complex reality facing the legal community. n6 The website maintains a policy of protecting its sources, even from news outlets with which it collaborates on document releases. n7 But protecting it from whom? WikiLeaks' servers are located worldwide, n8 *1279 so it has no real home. One scholar termed it "the world's first stateless news organization." n9 And protecting WikiLeaks against what? WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange, n10 has not clearly stated how he received n11 the diplomatic cables-nor the Brobdingnagian caches of military reports from the Afghanistan n12 and Iraq n13 wars released in July and October 2010-so it is not clear that he or WikiLeaks would qualify as "journalists" under existing shield laws. n14 *1280 The situation in the United States, which lacks a federal shield law, is equally thorny. WikiLeaks' release of the War Logs arguably affected support for a federal shield law. n15 According to Washington Post reporter Paul Farhi, "news organizations thought they were cruising toward a long-cherished goal: Congressional passage of a federal shield law to protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources. Then came WikiLeaks." n16 WikiLeaks "complicated, and possibly imperiled," passage of a shield law, he said. n17 But supporters of a shield law say it would not cover WikiLeaks, anyway, because WikiLeaks is a "virtual" organization, devoid of a physical address or "country of origin." n18 *1281 WikiLeaks has collaborated with the New York Times and the Washington Post. n19 Those relationships have become rockier over time, starting with a debate among the newspapers and WikiLeaks over redacting names from the Afghanistan documents. n20 Although WikiLeaks ultimately attempted to scrub documents for informants' names, Assange at first was reluctant to do any redaction, and the "harm minimization" process, as Assange called it, was not totally successful. n21 Some vulnerable people were still exposed, and less than forty-eight hours after publication of the Afghan War Logs, according to Nick Davies, an investigative reporter at the Guardian, competitors of "The Guardian and The New York Times ran big stories saying, 'We've been on the WikiLeaks Web site. We found material which could get people killed.'" n22 The New York Times said that its search through a sample of the WikiLeaks documents found "the names of dozens of Afghans credited with providing credible information to American and NATO troops" and that the Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel had only posted a selection of redacted WikiLeaks documents containing no identifying information that could jeopardize informants' safety. n23 Martin Smith said *1282 that the New York Times "lost trust" in Assange's redaction process and would not link to WikiLeaks. n24 Could the United States government order Assange to identify his source? Leaving aside jurisdictional considerations, Assange could not be ordered to name a source if indeed his software design prevented him from gaining that knowledge. n25 Is Assange, himself, a "source" for the news media he works with? Bill Keller, the top editor at the New York Times, wrote in January 2011 that the Times "regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda." n26 *1283 Is Assange a journalist? Adam L. Penenberg argues that "Assange has wrapped himself in the cloak of journalism. . . . WikiLeaks has peppered its 'about' page with the words 'journalism' and 'journalist,' which appear a combined 19 times, and as a self-described 'not-for-profit media organization' lists its primary goal as bringing 'important news and information to the public.'" n27 While Penenberg says that Assange "fits the definition of a journalist" under many shield law statutes, he acknowledges that opponents of Assange would not classify Assange as a journalist. n28 His evidence for that includes the State Department calling Assange "an anarchist," former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin calling him "an anti-American operative with blood on his hands," and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D- Cal.) calling him an "agitator intent on damaging our government." n29 *1284 Glenn Greenwald considers Assange to be "engaging in the crux of investigative journalism" with his push for "transparency and whistleblowing." n30 Assange, sensing the legal risk he might face in America, has followed a strategy to try to provide WikiLeaks with First Amendment protection. n31 The domestic issues have expanded beyond Assange and WikiLeaks, however. What will happen when the government seeks documents submitted to news organizations through their own versions of WikiLeaks, such as SafeHouse, a place to "securely share information with The Wall Street Journal?" n32 Pierce-proof shield laws are, thus, important not only for journalists but also for this country. The United States, if it is to be a leader for press freedom in our complex world, n33 must not dissemble by crafting shield-law exceptions that inevitably create bias against reporters. *1285 This Article presents a brief history of cases relevant to shield laws, critiques current state statutes and offers suggestions for their improvement, and proposes a model shield law. The model law would afford protection for persons who promise sources confidentiality that is equivalent to the protection current law offers to attorneys and priests. In short, this Article argues for absolute shield law protection, even in the age of WikiLeaks. The United States and its constituent states should send a clear message to the world: The democratic imperative of freely flowing information from journalists means no jailing of journalists who are keeping their promises to their sources. n34
9. Middle east democracy k2 reduce terrorism/war
Hamid, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center, 10
(Shadi, is and a fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Steven Brooke is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. He was formerly a research associate at the Nixon Center. "Promoting Democracy to Stop Terror, Revisited," Hoover Institute, February 1, 2010 http://www.hoover.org/research/promoting-democracy-stop-terror-revisited, ava)
U.s. democracy promotion in the Middle East has suffered a series of crippling defeats. Despite occasionally paying lip service to the idea, few politicians on either the left or right appear committed to supporting democratic reform as a central component of American policy in the region. Who can really blame them, given that democracy promotion has become toxic to a public with little patience left for various "missions" abroad? But as the Obama administration struggles to renew ties with the Muslim world, particularly in light of the June 2009 Cairo speech, it should resist the urge to abandon its predecessor's focus on promoting democracy in what remains the most undemocratic region in the world. Promoting democratic reform, this time not just with rhetoric but with action, should be given higher priority in the current administration, even though early indications suggest the opposite may be happening. Despite all its bad press, democracy promotion remains, in the long run, the most effective way to undermine terrorism and political violence in the Middle East. This is not a very popular argument. Indeed, a key feature of the post-Bush debate over democratization is an insistence on separating support for democracy from any explicit national security rationale. This, however, would be a mistake with troubling consequences for American foreign policy. A post-Bush reassessment The twilight of the Bush presidency and the start of Obama's ushered in an expansive discussion over the place of human rights and democracy in American foreign policy. An emerging consensus suggests that the U.S. approach must be fundamentally reassessed and "repositioned." This means, in part, a scaling down of scope and ambition and of avoiding the sweeping Wilsonian tones of recent years. That certainly sounds good. Anything, after all, would be better than the Bush administration's disconcerting mix of revolutionary pro-democracy rhetoric with time-honored realist policies of privileging "stable" pro-American dictators. This only managed to wring the worst out of both approaches. For its part, the Obama administration has made a strategic decision to shift the focus to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which it sees, correctly, as a major source of Arab grievance. This, in turn, has led the administration to strengthen ties with autocratic regimes, such as Egypt and Jordan, which it sees as critical to the peace process. Some might see such developments as a welcome re-prioritization. However, by downgrading support of Middle East democracy to one among many policy priorities, we risk returning to a pre-9/11 status quo, where the promotion of democracy would neither be worn on our sleeve nor trump short-term hard interests. The "transformative" nature of any democracy promotion project would be replaced by a more sober, targeted focus on providing technical assistance to legislative and judicial branches and strengthening civil society organizations in the region. In many ways, this would be a welcome change from the ideological overload of the post-9/11 environment. But in other ways, it would not. Those who wish to avoid a piecemeal approach to reform and revive U.S. efforts to support democracy often come back to invocations of American exceptionalism and the argument that the United States, as the world's most powerful nation, has a responsibility to advance the very ideals which animated its founding. These arguments are attractive and admirable, but how durable can they be when translated into concrete policy initiatives? In the wake of a war ostensibly waged in the name of democracy, can a strategy resting on gauzy moral imperatives garner bipartisan support and therefore long-term policy stability? In an ideal world, there would not be a need to justify or rationalize supporting democracy abroad; the moral imperative would be enough. But in the world of politics and decision-making, it rarely is. Democracy and terrorism after 9/11 After the attacks of September 11th, a basic, intuitive proposition surfaced — that without basic democratic freedoms, citizens lack peaceful, constructive means to express their grievances and are thus more likely to resort to violence. Accordingly, 9/11 did not happen because the terrorists hated our freedom, but, rather, because the Middle East's stifling political environment had bred frustration, anger, and, ultimately, violence. Many in the region saw us as complicit, in large part because we were actively supporting — to the tune of billions of dollars in economic and military aid — the region's most repressive regimes. The realization that our longstanding support of dictatorships had backfired, producing a Middle East rife with instability and political violence, was a sobering one, and grounded the policy debate in a way that has since been lost. The unfolding debate was interesting to watch, if only because it contradicted the popular perception that Republicans were uninterested in the "root causes" of terrorism. In fact, they were. And their somewhat novel ideas on how to address them would begin to figure prominently in the rhetoric and policies of the Bush administration. In a landmark speech at the National Endowment for Democracy in November 2003, President Bush argued that "as long as the Middle East remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment, and violence ready for export." This theme would become the centerpiece of his inaugural and State of the Union addresses in early 2005. In the latter, the president declared that "the best antidote to radicalism and terror is the tolerance and hope kindled in free societies." In the summer of 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Cairo audience that "things have changed. We had a very rude awakening on September 11th, when I think we realized that our policies to try and promote what we thought was stability in the Middle East had actually allowed, underneath, a very malignant, meaning cancerous, form of extremism to grow up underneath because people didn't have outlets for their political views." The aggressive rhetoric was initially supported by the creation of aid programs with strong democracy components such as the Middle East Partnership Initiative (mepi). But with a deteriorating Iraq, an expansionist Iran, and the electoral success of Islamist parties throughout the region, American enthusiasm for promoting democracy began to wane. One Egyptian human rights activist despondently told us in the summer of 2006 that Washington's rhetoric "convinced thousands that the U.S. was serious about democracy and reform. We also believed this, but we were being deceived." Perhaps the most disheartening sign of how far the democratic wave receded in the Middle East came during the 2007 State of the Union address. President Bush singled out "places like Cuba, Belarus, and Burma," for democracy promotion, all safely away from his chaotic, failing experiment in the Arab World. It is safe to say that the Bush administration's project to promote Middle East democracy failed. It failed because it was never really tried. It is safe to say that the Bush administration's project to promote Middle East democracy failed. It failed because it was never really tried. With the exception of a brief period in 2004 and 2005 when significant pressure was put on Arab regimes, democracy promotion was little more than a rhetorical device. But lost in the shuffle is the fact that one of the strongest rationales for the "freedom agenda" — that the way to defeat terrorism in the long run is by supporting the growth of democratic institutions — hasn't necessarily been proven wrong, nor should it be so readily discarded due to its unfortunate association with the wrong methods and messengers. But this is precisely what seems to have happened. In the Fall 2007 Washington Quarterly, Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul argued that "the loudly proclaimed instrumentalization of democracy promotion in pursuit of U.S. national interests, such as the war on terrorism, taints democracy promotion and makes the United States seem hypocritical when security, economic, or other concerns trump its interests in democracy, as they inevitably will." Around the same time, Thomas Carothers, writing in the Washington Post, was more explicit in wishing to disassociate supporting democracy from the fight against terror: "Democracy promotion will need to be repositioned in the war on terrorism, away from the role of rhetorical centerpiece. It's an appealing notion that democratization will undercut the roots of violent Islamic radicalism. Yet democracy is not an antiterrorist elixir. At times democratization empowers political moderates over radicals, but it can also have the opposite effect." Carothers and others are correct that democracy is not, nor has it ever been, some kind of panacea. To embrace such lofty expectations will only hasten disappointment. Promoting democracy is a difficult business with risks and consequences, among them the chance that emerging or immature democracies might, in the short-term, experience increased political violence and instability. And lack of democracy cannot take the blame for those, like the July 7th London bomber Mohammed Siddique Khan, whose paths to terrorism began in the freest nations in the world. As the histories of some of these jihadists illustrate, powerful cultural and religious forces cannot be ignored. That said, decoupling support for democracy from the broader effort to combat terrorism and religious extremism in the Middle East would be a costly strategic misstep. If there is indeed a link between lack of democracy and terrorism — and we will argue that there is — then the matter of Middle East democracy is more urgent than it would otherwise be. The question of urgency is not an inconsequential one. Most policymakers and analysts would agree that the region's democratization should, in theory at least, be a long-term goal. But, if it is only considered as such, then it will not figure high on the agenda of an administration with a whole host of other problems, both foreign and domestic, to worry about. However, if the continued dominance of autocratic regimes in the region translates into a greater likelihood of political violence and terrorism, then it becomes an immediate threat to regional stability that the U.S. will need to address sooner rather than later. It is worth emphasizing that democracy promotion does not involve only our relationships with authoritarian allies. It is worth emphasizing that democracy promotion does not involve only our relationships with authoritarian allies like Egypt, Jordan, or Saudi Arabia. Our ability and willingness to understand the relationship between autocracy and terror is also intimately tied to future success in Iraq. Drawing on captured documents previously unavailable to the public, a 2008 study by West Point's Combating Terrorism Center found that "low levels of civil liberties are a powerful predictor of the national origin of foreign fighters in Iraq." Of nearly 600 al Qaeda in Iraq fighters listed in the declassified documents, 41 percent were from Saudi Arabia while 19 percent were of Libyan origin. The study also notes that "Saudi Arabian jihadis contribute far more money to al Qaeda in Iraq than fighters from other countries." According to the Freedom House index, the Saudi regime is one of the 17 most repressive governments in the world. Because the kingdom brooks no dissent at home, it has, since the early 1980s, sought to bolster its legitimacy by encouraging militants to fight abroad in support of various pan-Islamist causes. Since the late 1990s, those militants have tended to target the United States. In other words, Saudi Arabia's internal politics can have devastating external consequences. Democratic reform also holds out hope for confronting other Middle Eastern flashpoints. In recent years, the notion of incorporating violent political actors in nonviolent, democratic processes has gained some currency, particularly in light of the successful integration of insurgents in Iraq. Meanwhile, in the Palestinian territories, whatever else one wishes to say about Hamas, the group's electoral participation since 2006 has coincided with a precipitous drop in the suicide bombings that had long been their hallmark. Recognizing the relevance of democracy to some of the thorniest Middle Eastern conflicts — whose effects reverberate to our shores — makes democracy promotion much harder to dismiss as a luxury of idealism and a purely moral, long-term concern. In short, understanding the interplay between tyranny and terror can allow us to better judge — and, if necessary, elevate — the place of democracy promotion in the hierarchy of national priorities. When we say we want democracy but do very little about it, our credibility suffers and we are left open to charges of hypocrisy. De-emphasizing support for democracy, on the other hand, will have significant consequences at a time when Arabs and Muslims are looking to us for moral leadership and holding out great expectations for an American president who many continue to see as sympathetic to their concerns. Obama's Cairo speech, hailed throughout the Middle East, was a step in the right direction, but disappointment has since grown as the administration has failed to follow up with tangible policy changes on the ground. Dropping democracy down on the agenda would ignore the fact that our ideals coincide with those of the majority of Middle Easterners who are angry at us not for promoting democracy, but because we do not. When we say we want democracy but do very little about it, our credibility suffers and we are left open to charges of hypocrisy. This credibility gap should not be dismissed. Ultimately, the fight against terror is not simply about "connecting the dots," improving interagency coordination, and killing terrorists; it is just as important to have a broader vision that addresses the sources of political violence. Any long-term strategy must take into account an emerging body of evidence which shows that lack of democracy can be a key predictor of terrorism, and correlates with it more strongly than other commonly cited factors like poverty and unemployment. If understood and utilized correctly, democracy promotion can become a key component of a revitalized counterterrorism strategy that tackles the core problem of reducing the appeal of violent extremism in Muslim societies. It has the potential to succeed where the more traditional, hard power components of counterterrorism strategy have failed. The link between lack of democracy and terrorism also has consequences for American domestic politics. It provides a unifying theme for Democrats and Republicans alike, one that honors our ideals while helping keep us safe and secure. To the extent that politicians have had difficulty selling democracy promotion to the American people, the "tyranny-terror link" provides a promising narrative for U.S. policy in managing the immense challenges of today's Middle East. Is there a "tyranny-terror link"? The post-9/11 emphasis on democracy promotion as an essential component of counterterrorism did not go unchallenged. A group of dissenters offered a number of provocative articles arguing the contrary. And as the "freedom agenda" began to stumble, their voices grew more influential. The most noteworthy of these efforts was F. Gregory Gause's 2005Foreign Affairs article "Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?" Gause offers what, at first blush, appears a systematic dismantling of a convenient myth: The numbers published by the U.S. government do not bear out claims of a close link between terrorism and authoritarianism either. Between 2000 and 2003, according to the State Department's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, 269 major terrorist incidents around the world occurred in countries classified as "free" by Freedom House, 119 occurred in "partly free" countries, and 138 occurred in "not free" countries . . . This is not to argue that free countries are more likely to produce terrorists than other countries. Rather, these numbers simply indicate that there is no relationship between the incidence of terrorism in a given country and the degree of freedom enjoyed by its citizens. They certainly do not indicate that democracies are substantially less susceptible to terrorism than are other forms of government. Yes, Gause is correct: There is no relationship between, as he puts it, "the incidence of terrorism in a given country and the degree of freedom enjoyed by its citizens." But this is the right answer to the wrong question. It is certainly true that democracies, such as the United States and Britain, are often targets of terrorism. But Gause's argument tells us nothing about how, why, and when terrorists resort to violence. The tyranny-terror hypothesis is concerned with which kinds of countries — specifically what regime types — are more likely to produce terrorists. This requires us to examine individual terrorists' country of origin, rather than their targets. Other scholars have essentially replicated Gause's findings. In a 2006 article in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence, James A. Piazza argues that higher levels of democracy are actually associated with increased incidence of international terrorism. He comes to this conclusion because, like Gause, he is interested in which states are terrorist targets, not which states produce the terrorists in the first place. In a later 2008 International Politics article that expands and modifies his arguments, Piazza continues to record terrorist attacks "based on the country of occurrence, not the nationality or national legal status of the perpetrator." While this approach may tell us whether democracies are more likely to experience terrorism, it does not answer the question the tyranny-terror hypothesis seeks to explore. A second concern is that Piazza, like Gause, uses data from the State Department's Patterns of Global Terrorism serial publication. There are deficiencies with this data set. Primarily, it tracks only "global terrorism" and therefore tells us nothing about domestic terrorism (e.g., an Egyptian citizen attacking the Egyptian government). This is not just a casual oversight. Before the rise of al Qaeda, radical Islamist groups were doctrinally committed to attacking only their own governments. The original objective of most jihadist groups, such as Egypt's al-Jihad, the Armed Islamic Group (gia) in Algeria, and Juhayman al-Otaibi's ragtag group of fighters who took over the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979, was to overthrow ruling elites. Before there was the "far enemy" of the United States, there was the "near enemy," those regimes seen as traitors to Islam. Before the rise of al Qaeda, radical Islamist groups were doctrinally committed to attacking only their own governments. In another effort worth noting, published as a 2006 Harvard University working paper, Erica Chenoweth attempts to tackle the terrorism issue. She states in her introduction that one of her goals "is to contribute to the growing policy literature endorsing democracy as a way to eradicate terrorism. This project is a critique of the latter perspective, offering some considerations for scholars and policymakers who advocate democratization without taking into account all of its potential ramifications." But, again, the fact that she is interested primarily in where terrorists operate, rather than how and why countries produce terrorists in the first place, makes her study, while commendable for other reasons, less relevant for our purposes. Meanwhile, Michael Freeman, in a thought-provoking 2008 study that appeared in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, attempts to disaggregate the effects of democracy on the underlying factors he contends motivate al Qaeda and affiliated networks, one of them being frustration over illegitimate authoritarian regimes. The article is a step forward in attempting a more focused analysis of the relationship between democracy and global jihadism, but it contains a significant flaw in its rejection of the tyranny-terror link. Freeman argues that for jihadists, "their own governments are illegitimate because they are insufficiently religious; secular democratic governments would be even worse." First of all, with mainstream Islamist parties likely to do well in free elections, democratically elected governments in the Middle East would almost certainly be more religiously-inclined rather than less. In any case, proponents of a link between autocracy and terror have never argued that progress on political reform will completely eradicate terrorism. Democracy, whether in its liberal or Islamist manifestations, will not convince al Qaeda to give up arms or channel its efforts into the political process. Those in the jihadist hardcore can only be defeated through military and law enforcement means. For them, it is too late. What democracy can do, though, is prevent those most susceptible to extremist recruitment — tens of millions of frustrated Arabs and Muslims throughout the Middle East — from turning to political violence, by giving them alternative outlets for peaceful political expression. This recognition is crucial to moving our counterterrorism strategy beyond crisis management and towards prevention. Polls have consistently shown widespread support for democratic ideals among Muslims worldwide. By choosing to focus specifically on the motivations of al Qaeda jihadists, Freeman neglects the Muslim population at large. It is true that among most doctrinaire Salafists, democracy is seen as an intrusion by man into God's sacred domain. But neither these Salafists, nor al Qaeda, are representative of Islamists, let alone the broader Muslim community. Polls have consistently shown widespread support for democratic ideals among Muslims worldwide, while popular Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood have, in recent years, publicly committed to many of the foundational components of democratic life. The 2006 Pew global attitudes survey notes that: There is enduring belief in democracy among Muslim publics, which contrasts sharply with the skepticism many Westerners express about whether democracy can take root in the Muslim world. Pluralities or majorities in every Muslim country surveyed say that democracy is not just for the West and can work in their countries. This is America's audience, not the jihadists who refuse to accept the legitimacy of anything other than the most restrictive interpretations of Sharia law. In short, although the articles by Gause, Piazza, Chenoweth, and Freeman purport to cast doubt on tyranny-terror linkages, a close reading reveals flawed methodologies that lead them to fall short in addressing the relationship between autocracy and terrorism. A 2006 paper in the Economics of National Security by Harvard's Alberto Abadie attempts to address some of these limitations. He correctly notes that international terrorism represents only a small fraction of the total amount of terrorist activity. According to the mipt Terrorism Knowledge Base, from 1998 to 2008, only 9.2 percent of recorded terrorist events were international in nature. Limiting the field to the Middle East reveals a similar percentage of international attacks: 10.1 percent. To help account for this deficiency, Abadie uses a data set from an international risk agency — the World Market Research Center's Global Terrorism Index — that has, as Abadie explains, "the advantage of reflecting the total amount of terrorist risk for every country in the world" by considering a number of factors, including presence, motivation, efficacy, scale, and prevention of terrorism. While risk ratings do not say much about the perpetrators' country of origin, the fact that they take into account not only international but also domestic terrorist attacks means they provide a more balanced sample. For example, if autocracies are more likely to produce terrorists, then we can expect the risk ratings of repressive dictatorships, like those in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to be relatively high. Abadie's findings seem to support the existence of a link between authoritarianism and terrorist activity. He observes that "over most of the range of the political rights index, lower levels of political rights are associated with higher levels of terrorism." No compelling evidence debunks the tyrannyterror link and, instead, the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction. A 2005 Freedom House study went further and found a strong correlation between autocracy and terrorism, noting that "between 1999 and 2003, 70 percent of all deaths from terrorism were caused by terrorists and terrorist groups originating in Not Free societies, while only 8 percent of all fatalities were generated by terrorists and terror movements with origins in Free societies." In addition to this quantitative difference, the study noted that terrorists from "not free" societies were even more brutal and their attacks over twice as lethal as those of their counterparts from "free" societies. In our view, of the recent studies on autocracy-terror linkages, a relatively early 2003 article by Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova stands apart (Krueger builds on the article in his excellent 2007 book What Makes a Terrorist?). The authors employ innovative methods to get around the data limitations highlighted earlier. Using the descriptions of terrorist attacks in the State Department's Patterns of Global Terror, they try to determine the perpetrator's national origin. For instance, instead of recording the September 11th attacks as occurring in the U.S., they look instead at the nationalities of the 19 hijackers, which for their purposes, and ours, is the more relevant measure. Like many other scholars, Krueger and Maleckova do not examine domestic terrorism, which is obviously a matter of concern. However, their study, which explores the effects of several different factors on terrorism including education and poverty, is nearly alone in addressing the implied causal hypothesis of the tyranny-terror link as it relates to recent developments in the Middle East — that one's political environment has a bearing on whether he or she will resort to political violence. Drawing on their results, Krueger and Maleckova conclude that "the only variable that was consistently associated with the number of terrorists was the Freedom House index of political rights and civil liberties." In What Makes a Terrorist? Krueger notes the same finding, that "terrorists are more likely to come from countries that suppress political and civil rights." Krueger and David Laitin build on this argument in their chapter in Terrorism, Economic Development, and Political Openness(2008), again observing that "countries that afford a low level of political rights are more likely to be the springboards of terrorism." These findings suggest that democracy promotion and the fight against terror should not be treated as discrete policy concerns. There is still much work to be done. The very nature of autocratic regimes makes gathering data on domestic terrorist events difficult, because governments have strong inducements to either suppress or exaggerate the incidence of violent opposition in the service of their political goals. Still, no compelling evidence debunks the tyranny-terror link and, instead, the evidence seems to point in the opposite direction. A new strategy A multitude of factors — economic, political, cultural, and religious — contribute to Islamic radicalism and terror. However, one important factor, and one that appears to have a strong empirical basis, is the Middle East's democracy deficit. Any long-term strategy to combat terrorism should therefore include a vigorous, sustained effort to support democracy and democrats in a region long debilitated by autocracy. Obviously, this is an enormous challenge and should not be taken lightly. However, abandoning such a critical task would mean more of the same — a Middle East that continues to fester as a source of political instability and religious extremism. And, in today's world, such instability, and the violence that so often results, cannot be contained; it will spill over and harm America and its allies. A new democracy promotion strategy in the Middle East should include a variety of measures, including making aid to autocratic regimes conditional on political and human rights reforms; elevating democracy as a crucial part of all high-level bilateral discussions with Arab leaders; coming to terms with the inclusion of nonviolent Islamist parties in the political process; using membership in international organizations as leverage; increasing the budget for programs like the Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Millennium Challenge Account; deepening cooperation with the European Union to spread responsibility; and sponsoring initiatives that bring together Islamist and secular groups to forge inclusive pro-democracy platforms. The pace of democratization should take into account local contexts yet must maintain a consistent focus on expanding the rights of citizens, supporting the development of viable opposition parties, and moving toward free and fair elections. Before moving in such a direction, the idea of Middle East democracy must be rehabilitated in the eyes of policymakers and the public alike. But before moving in such a direction, the idea of Middle East democracy must be rehabilitated in the eyes of policymakers and the public alike. Absent a bipartisan political commitment, any new effort will falter. We realize that elevating democracy promotion will mean breaking with the last several decades of U.S. policy, which has relied upon close relationships with Arab regimes at the expense of Arab publics. But our long-term national security, as well as our broader interests in the region, demand such a reorientation. The first step, however, is to reestablish a consensus here at home on both the utility and value of democracy promotion. Once that happens, the discussion of how to actually do it can be conducted with greater clarity. If, on the other hand, we choose to continue along the current path — paying lip service to the importance of democracy abroad but doing increasingly less to actually support it — a great opportunity will be lost. Turning away from the Arabs and Muslims who overwhelmingly support greater freedom and democracy will rob us of perhaps our strongest weapon in the broader struggle of ideas. For decades, the people of the region have been denied the ability to chart their own course, ask their own questions, and form their own governments. Lack of democratic outlets has pushed people towards extreme methods of opposition and made the resort to terrorist acts more likely. Recognizing this is a crucial step toward a sustained effort to promote Middle East democracy and represents our best chance at a durable and effective counterterrorism policy that protects our vital interests while remaining true to our ideals.
The Supreme Court ought to recognize a reporter privilege based on US common law
Contention 2: We actually have cards we solve this
Court recognition of privilege is key to reinvigorate US democracy
Whether and to what extent a journalist may be compelled to disclose information concerning confidential sources is a question that has long divided the circuits, and now - more than ever - requires an answer from this Court. The petition presents two questions with far-reaching implications for constitutionally protected newsgathering. The first concerns the degree to which the First Amendment, of its own force, establishes protections against compelled disclosure of confidential source information in a criminal trial. As petitioner amply demonstrates, this Court's review is necessary to eliminate decades of confusing and conflicting rulings. See Petition at 15-21. As the IWMF demonstrates below, this Court should also grant review to decide the second question - whether this Court should recognize a journalist's privilege as a matter of federal common law under Federal Rule of Evidence 501. This Court's decision in Jaffee v. Redmond, 518 U.S. 1 (1996), compels recognition of such a privilege especially when considered against the backdrop of this Court's First Amendment jurisprudence. 1. Since Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665 (1972), was decided over 40 years ago, the lower courts have been sharply divided as to its meaning, and have reached conflicting conclusions regarding whether it permits recognition of a journalist's privilege under Rule 501. As the Fourth Circuit's opinion below illustrates, the lower courts need this Court's guidance. 2. The Fourth Circuit's conclusion that Branzburg forecloses recognition of a federal common law privilege against the compelled disclosure of *4 journalists' confidential source information in criminal trials contradicts both Branzburg itself, and Rule 501. The Court in Branzburg expressly addressed only the First Amendment issue before it. 408 U.S. at 667. Moreover, it could not have decided whether a privilege protecting journalists' confidential source information should be recognized under Rule 501, which was enacted three years after Branzburg and instructed federal courts to develop new testimonial privileges as appropriate in light of "reason and experience." In adopting this flexible approach, Congress rejected the rule originally promulgated by this Court - which enumerated nine specific privileges - in favor of an open-ended grant of authority to federal courts "to 'continue the evolutionary development of testimonial privileges.' " Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 8-9 (citation omitted). 3. The Fourth Circuit's refusal to recognize any common law protection for journalists' confidential source information in criminal trials also contradicts this Court's decision in Jaffee. There, the Court recognized a psychotherapist-patient privilege under Rule 501 after considering three factors: whether such a privilege is widely recognized by the States; (ii) whether the proposed privilege serves significant public and private interests; and (iii) whether recognition of those interests outweighs the burden on truth-seeking that might be imposed by the privilege. Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 10-13. Each of these factors strongly supports recognition of a journalist's privilege. When Branzburg was decided, 17 States recognized protections for journalists' confidential source information. 408 U.S. at 689 n.27. Since then, a broad national and international consensus has emerged in favor of such protections: 49 States *5 and the District of Columbia, as well as an ever-expanding list of foreign jurisdictions, recognize some form of journalist's privilege. See infra Part III.1. The United States is now the only "established democratic country that does not automatically respect the right of protection of sources."2 Moreover, recognition of a journalist's privilege serves powerful public and private interests. Protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of confidential source information fosters First Amendment freedoms and serves the health of our democracy by ensuring our citizenry access to information needed "to make informed political, social, and economic choices." Zerilli v. Smith, 656 F.2d 705, 711 (D.C. Cir. 1981). These vital interests serve "a public good of transcendent importance," Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 11, and far outweigh any burden on truth-seeking that may result from recognition of a journalist's privilege. This Court has repeatedly recognized the importance to our democracy of the free speech and free press protections enshrined in the First Amendment. In the last five years alone, this Court has - at virtually every opportunity - reaffirmed the importance of the First Amendment as a necessary check on government power. The same principles that led this Court to invoke the First Amendment to *6 protect corporate campaign expenditures, Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), anti-gay protests, Snyder v. Phelps, 131 S. Ct. 1207 (2011), pharmaceutical marketing, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., 131 S. Ct. 2653 (2011), and depictions of animal cruelty, United States v. Stevens, 130 S. Ct. 1577 (2010), apply with at least as much force to petitioner's reporting on national security issues of significant public concern. See, e.g., Citizens United, 558 U.S. at 329 (unable to resolve case "on a narrower ground" where to do so would chill "speech that is central to the meaning and purpose of the First Amendment"). Indeed, this case implicates the freedom of the press, which is central to the First Amendment.
2. Plan restores US leadership on press freedom- we are a key global model
The International Women's Media Foundation ("IWMF") is a nonprofit charitable organization based in Washington, D.C., with tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3). Founded in 1990, the IWMF is dedicated to strengthening the role of women journalists worldwide. The work of the IWMF is focused on journalist safety, women's leadership, entrepreneurship, and press freedom. See www.iwmf.org. Through its Courage in Journalism Awards, the IWMF honors women journalists who set themselves apart by their extraordinary bravery and efforts to break down barriers for other women. This case is of central importance to the IWMF because it implicates the ability of journalists to maintain the confidentiality of their sources against compelled disclosure by the government. The Fourth Circuit's ruling threatens to undermine the vital, constitutionally-established role of a free press in *2 ensuring the existence of an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy. The United States has long served as a beacon of press freedom. Recognizing protections for journalists' confidential source information - through constitutional or federal common law - would be consistent with the national and international consensus, and would reinforce this country's commitment to what this Court 50 years ago described as "the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 270 (1964).
3. The plan restores US leadership and demopromo- reverse causal evidence
Rule 501 "authorizes federal courts to define new privileges by interpreting 'common law principles … in the light of reason and experience.' " Jaffee, 518 U.S. at 8 (alteration in original) (citation omitted). This flexible test is capacious enough to encompass the uniform judgment of the international community, and the experience of other *18 nations in recognizing and applying similar protections within their own borders. Indeed, this Court has long recognized that the laws and practices of other nations demonstrate "respected reasoning" that merits consideration.8 See, e.g., Graham v. Florida, 130 S. Ct. 2011, 2033-34 (2010) (considering "global consensus" in Eighth Amendment analysis of sentencing for juveniles); Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 575-78 (2005) (finding in death penalty case that "the opinion of the world community, while not controlling our outcome, does provide respected and significant confirmation for our own conclusions"); Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 576-77 (2003) (acknowledging views of countries with similar values in Fourteenth Amendment analysis). It would be highly anomalous if the United States, with its profound commitment to free speech and a free press, were to deny protections to journalists that have been recognized by nations with far more restrictive notions of such freedoms.9 Conversely, federal recognition of a journalist's privilege would enable the United States to advocate more forcefully for robust legal protections for *19 journalists internationally,10 and would serve as an important example for other countries, which look to the United States for leadership on these issues. See, e.g., Mahon Tribunal, 2009 I.E.S.C. 64 at ¶¶ 53-55 (observing lack of U.S. "journalistic privilege"); Nat'l Post, 1 S.C.R. at 511-12 (discussing U.S. jurisprudence on journalist-source privilege).
4. Anonymous sources are key to check government overreach- only federal shield laws solve
Rottman, JD Georgetown, 18
(Gabe , is the director of the Reporters Committee's Technology and Press Freedom Project. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-trump-administrations-pursuit-of-ali-watkins-proves-we-need-federal-shield-law-now?ref=home)
The government and the news media have always had a complicated relationship, but under a president who routinely derides the media as "fake news" or the "enemy of the people," that relationship has only become more fraught. Fortunately, despite all the saber rattling, overt legal action against the press by the current administration has yet to materialize — perhaps until now. Revelations this week that federal prosecutors in a criminal investigation secretly seized years of email and phone records from a national security reporter — the first time that's happened (as far as we know) under the Trump administration — indisputably raised the First Amendment stakes. Details continue to trickle out, but here's what we know. On Thursday night, the FBI arrested the recently retired security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, James Wolfe. Federal prosecutors charged him with lying to investigators about his contacts with several reporters, including Ali Watkins, formerly with Buzzfeed and Politico, and now with The New York Times, with whom he had a romantic relationship. The FBI appears to have been investigating the disclosure of classified information concerning Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide suspected of potentially illegal dealings with Russian intelligence officials. At some point, investigators seized several years' worth of phone and email records from Watkins' Verizon and Google accounts. Among other things, the records reveal intimate details about who Watkins communicated with and when — meaning investigators could potentially identify her confidential sources in their search to see if Wolfe had been one. Crucially, it's unclear why the Justice Department felt the need to get Watkins' data to build its case when it could have gathered evidence from Wolfe, as the security director for the Senate Intelligence Committee, much more easily. That the government sought records from a reporter, any reporter, in this case is troubling. Internal guidelines at the Justice Department prohibit investigators from targeting a reporter unless they cannot get the relevant information from a non-media source and the information is truly essential to the case. For instance, prosecutors ultimately dropped a demand that New York Times investigative reporter James Risen testify in a case involving unauthorized disclosures about Iran's weapons program because, the government ultimately found, the case could be made without forcing Risen to identify his sources. Those principles — that journalists should be subject to investigation only when absolutely necessary — implicate both sound public policy concerns and the First Amendment. Journalism doesn't work in a democracy if reporters can't protect the identity of their sources. Anonymous sources are often the only way to report on sensitive national security stories like the Pentagon Papers, which detailed government lies to the American people in the lead-up to the Vietnam War, or the torture of secret detainees in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Protecting journalists' ability to do their jobs without government interference ultimately protects the public's right to information about what's happening inside the government. Absent a federal law — more on that in a second — the news media must rely on the Justice Department's discretion. Law enforcement traditionally has recognized the essential role journalists play in a democracy, and, as noted, will only target journalists in investigations when other options have failed. Indeed, that discretion serves the interests of the government itself. Historically, every time the government has overreached in investigating members of the news media, authorities have had to contend with a rapid and dramatic backlash from the public and from lawmakers. That's exactly what happened with the Obama-era guidelines, which the Justice Department adopted to mollify critics after investigators used a dragnet subpoena to seize the phone records of almost 100 Associated Press reporters and labeled a Fox News journalist an unindicted co-conspirator in an Espionage Act case simply because he asked a source for information — something that reporters do every day. The same pushback may already be taking shape in this case. Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio on the House Government Oversight Committee, suggested Friday that he may try and hold hearings on the records seizure. All of this boils down to one simple truth: journalists, now more than ever, need federal legal protections to ensure that the government can't indiscriminately seize their confidential records or force them to disclose anonymous sources. Virtually all states have some form of such a "shield law" that protects journalists from being forced to reveal their communications with sources and other work product, but Congress has yet to act at the federal level. As the Watkins case may indicate that the Justice Department intends to draw journalists into investigations, democracy demands that Congress debate and pass such a law to ensure our free press remains free.
SEPTOCT Democracy AC V2
Tournament: Loyola | Round: Doubles | Opponent: Cupertino HK | Judge: Panel
1AC Democracy
Contention 1: Democracy
7. The alternative to democracy is violent civil wars, ethnic cleansing, and genocide---the best research confirms
Cortright 13, David Cortright is the director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Fourth Freedom Forum, and author of 17 books, Kristen Wall is a Researcher and Analyst at the Kroc Institute, Conor Seyle is Associate Director of One Earth Future, Governance, Democracy, and Peace How State Capacity and Regime Type Influence the Prospects of War and Peace, http://oneearthfuture.org/sites/oneearthfuture.org/files//documents/publications/Cortright-Seyle-Wall-Paper.pdf
The classic statement of Kantian peace theory applies to interstate conflict and focuses on dyadic relations between states. This leaves out the most common form of armed violence in the world today, civil conflicts and one-sided violence within states. In recent years, researchers have found evidence that the democratic peace phenomenon applies within states as well as between them. Regime type matters not only externally but internally. Mature democratic governments are not only less likely to wage war on each other, they also experience fewer armed uprisings and major civil wars and are more reluctant to use armed violence against their own citizens. As the studies below indicate, the evidence of a democratic peace phenomenon within states is strong and compelling. Walter observes a direct relationship between levels of democracy and the likelihood of internal armed conflict. In her examination of the problem of war recurrence, she finds that countries characterized by open political systems and economic well-being—i.e., developed democracies— have a much lower probability of renewed civil war than autocratic countries with low levels of economic development.91 Walter measures the degree of political openness and democratic 'voice' by using Polity and Freedom House indicators. High scores on these indices correlate directly with a reduced risk of civil war. She notes, as other scholars have observed, that major civil wars do not occur in mature democratic states. She concludes: It may be that liberal democracies are really the only types of regimes that can truly insulate themselves from violent internal challenges. This suggests that citizens who are able to express their preferences about alternative policies and leaders, who are guaranteed civil liberties in their daily lives and in acts of political participation, are less likely to become soldiers. Offering citizens a real outlet for their concerns and having a government that is open to democratic change considerably reduces the likelihood of a civil war.92 Civil conflicts within mature democracies are not only less frequent but also less lethal. Bethany Lacina assesses the severity of civil conflicts by measuring casualty levels according to several variables: regime type, state capacity, ethnic and religious diversity, and the impact of foreign military intervention. She finds that the political characteristics of a regime correlate significantly with differing casualty levels and are the strongest predictor of conflict severity. Democratic governments experience much lower casualty levels during civil conflict than autocratic states. Lacina's analysis finds that civil wars occurring within democratic states have less than half the battle deaths of conflicts in non-democracies.93 State-sponsored violence against civilians is also less likely to occur in democracies than in autocracies. In his important book, Death by Government, Rudolph Rummel assembles mind numbing data and numerous examples demonstrating the myriad ways governments kill their citizens—directly through genocide and mass terror and indirectly through starvation and repression. He finds a stark contrast between the behavior of autocracies and democracies. Autocratic governments readily "slaughter their people by the tens of millions; in contrast, many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers."94 Through statistical analysis, Rummel shows that genocidal killing is directly associated with the absence of democracy, holding constant other variables such as regime type, ethnic diversity, economic development level, population density, and culture.95 The lack of democracy is the most significant indicator of the likelihood of mass repression again the civilian population. As Rummel documents the appalling litany of governments murdering their own people, he is unequivocal about what he considers the necessary remedy—"The solution is democracy. The course of action is to foster freedom."95 Barbara Harff's research on genocidal violence comes to similar conclusions. She examines 126 cases of internal war and regime collapse between 1955 and 1997 to identify the factors that led to genocidal violence in 35 of these cases. Her results match the findings of other studies. Autocratic regimes facing state failure are three and a half times more likely to experience genocidal violence than democratic regimes facing such failure.97 She finds that genocidal violence is more likely in regimes that advocate exclusionary ideologies, an approach that is rare in mature democratic states. Harff observes that the lowest levels of mass killing occur in states with a high degree of economic interdependence, which is characteristic of mature democratic regimes.98 Her conclusion is that states are less likely to employ genocidal violence when they have inclusive democratic systems and trade extensively with other countries. As Steven Pinker notes, these findings fit well with the Kantian triad of democracy, cosmopolitanism and trade— "another trifecta" for liberal peace theory.99
10. Middle east democracy k2 reduce terrorism/war
Science proves non util ethics are impossible and our version of util solves all aff offense
Reducing existential risks is the top priority in any coherent moral theory
Plummer, PhD, 15
(Theron, Philosophy @St. Andrews http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2015/05/moral-agreement-on-saving-the-world/)
There appears to be lot of disagreement in moral philosophy. Whether these many apparent disagreements are deep and irresolvable, I believe there is at least one thing it is reasonable to agree on right now, whatever general moral view we adopt: that it is very important to reduce the risk that all intelligent beings on this planet are eliminated by an enormous catastrophe, such as a nuclear war. How we might in fact try to reduce such existential risks is discussed elsewhere. My claim here is only that we – whether we're consequentialists, deontologists, or virtue ethicists – should all agree that we should try to save the world. According to consequentialism, we should maximize the good, where this is taken to be the goodness, from an impartial perspective, of outcomes. Clearly one thing that makes an outcome good is that the people in it are doing well. There is little disagreement here. If the happiness or well-being of possible future people is just as important as that of people who already exist, and if they would have good lives, it is not hard to see how reducing existential risk is easily the most important thing in the whole world. This is for the familiar reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. There are so many possible future people that reducing existential risk is arguably the most important thing in the world, even if the well-being of these possible people were given only 0.001 as much weight as that of existing people. Even on a wholly person-affecting view – according to which there's nothing (apart from effects on existing people) to be said in favor of creating happy people – the case for reducing existential risk is very strong. As noted in this seminal paper, this case is strengthened by the fact that there's a good chance that many existing people will, with the aid of life-extension technology, live very long and very high quality lives. You might think what I have just argued applies to consequentialists only. There is a tendency to assume that, if an argument appeals to consequentialist considerations (the goodness of outcomes), it is irrelevant to non-consequentialists. But that is a huge mistake. Non-consequentialism is the view that there's more that determines rightness than the goodness of consequences or outcomes; it is not the view that the latter don't matter. Even John Rawls wrote, "All ethical doctrines worth our attention take consequences into account in judging rightness. One which did not would simply be irrational, crazy." Minimally plausible versions of deontology and virtue ethics must be concerned in part with promoting the good, from an impartial point of view. They'd thus imply very strong reasons to reduce existential risk, at least when this doesn't significantly involve doing harm to others or damaging one's character. What's even more surprising, perhaps, is that even if our own good (or that of those near and dear to us) has much greater weight than goodness from the impartial "point of view of the universe," indeed even if the latter is entirely morally irrelevant, we may nonetheless have very strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Even egoism, the view that each agent should maximize her own good, might imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. It will depend, among other things, on what one's own good consists in. If well-being consisted in pleasure only, it is somewhat harder to argue that egoism would imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk – perhaps we could argue that one would maximize her expected hedonic well-being by funding life extension technology or by having herself cryogenically frozen at the time of her bodily death as well as giving money to reduce existential risk (so that there is a world for her to live in!). I am not sure, however, how strong the reasons to do this would be. But views which imply that, if I don't care about other people, I have no or very little reason to help them are not even minimally plausible views (in addition to hedonistic egoism, I here have in mind views that imply that one has no reason to perform an act unless one actually desires to do that act). To be minimally plausible, egoism will need to be paired with a more sophisticated account of well-being. To see this, it is enough to consider, as Plato did, the possibility of a ring of invisibility – suppose that, while wearing it, Ayn could derive some pleasure by helping the poor, but instead could derive just a bit more by severely harming them. Hedonistic egoism would absurdly imply she should do the latter. To avoid this implication, egoists would need to build something like the meaningfulness of a life into well-being, in some robust way, where this would to a significant extent be a function of other-regarding concerns (see chapter 12 of this classic intro to ethics). But once these elements are included, we can (roughly, as above) argue that this sort of egoism will imply strong reasons to reduce existential risk. Add to all of this Samuel Scheffler's recent intriguing arguments (quick podcast version available here) that most of what makes our lives go well would be undermined if there were no future generations of intelligent persons. On his view, my life would contain vastly less well-being if (say) a year after my death the world came to an end. So obviously if Scheffler were right I'd have very strong reason to reduce existential risk. We should also take into account moral uncertainty. What is it reasonable for one to do, when one is uncertain not (only) about the empirical facts, but also about the moral facts? I've just argued that there's agreement among minimally plausible ethical views that we have strong reason to reduce existential risk – not only consequentialists, but also deontologists, virtue ethicists, and sophisticated egoists should agree. But even those (hedonistic egoists) who disagree should have a significant level of confidence that they are mistaken, and that one of the above views is correct. Even if they were 90 sure that their view is the correct one (and 10 sure that one of these other ones is correct), they would have pretty strong reason, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, to reduce existential risk. Perhaps most disturbingly still, even if we are only 1 sure that the well-being of possible future people matters, it is at least arguable that, from the standpoint of moral uncertainty, reducing existential risk is the most important thing in the world. Again, this is largely for the reason that there are so many people who could exist in the future – there are trillions upon trillions… upon trillions. (For more on this and other related issues, see this excellent dissertation). Of course, it is uncertain whether these untold trillions would, in general, have good lives. It's possible they'll be miserable. It is enough for my claim that there is moral agreement in the relevant sense if, at least given certain empirical claims about what future lives would most likely be like, all minimally plausible moral views would converge on the conclusion that we should try to save the world. While there are some non-crazy views that place significantly greater moral weight on avoiding suffering than on promoting happiness, for reasons others have offered (and for independent reasons I won't get into here unless requested to), they nonetheless seem to be fairly implausible views. And even if things did not go well for our ancestors, I am optimistic that they will overall go fantastically well for our descendants, if we allow them to. I suspect that most of us alive today – at least those of us not suffering from extreme illness or poverty – have lives that are well worth living, and that things will continue to improve. Derek Parfit, whose work has emphasized future generations as well as agreement in ethics, described our situation clearly and accurately: "We live during the hinge of history. Given the scientific and technological discoveries of the last two centuries, the world has never changed as fast. We shall soon have even greater powers to transform, not only our surroundings, but ourselves and our successors. If we act wisely in the next few centuries, humanity will survive its most dangerous and decisive period. Our descendants could, if necessary, go elsewhere, spreading through this galaxy…. Our descendants might, I believe, make the further future very good. But that good future may also depend in part on us. If our selfish recklessness ends human history, we would be acting very wrongly." (From chapter 36 of On What Matters)
A focus on purely intent based frameworks crush our ability to respond to violence.
Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 6 | Opponent: Westwood AZ | Judge: Torson, Adam
The US is the only democratic country without a shield law
2. As a signatory to the ICCPR the US is obligated under international law to respect reporters privilege
Carter, LLM, 17
(Edward L., Comm@BrighamYoung, NOT TO DISCLOSE INFORMATION SOURCES": JOURNALISTIC PRIVILEGE UNDER ARTICLE 19 OF ICCPR Communication Law and Policy Autumn, 2017 Communication Law and Policy 22 Comm. L. and Pol'y 399)
Following years of efforts by government prosecutors and private litigants to obtain journalists' evidence in a variety of international and foreign legal proceedings, the United Nations Human Rights Committee formally endorsed a journalistic privilege in 2011. n1 As parties to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (known as ICCPR), the Human Rights Committee said, nations "should recognize and respect that element of the right of freedom of expression that embraces the limited journalistic privilege not to disclose information sources." n2 In establishing the standard, the committee did not reference journalistic privilege cases -- discussed below -- that were previously decided in regional human-rights tribunals. Instead, the *400 committee referred to its own commentary, in July 2000, on the human-rights record of Kuwalt. n3 That country, the committee wrote, had failed to protect journalists from being compelled to "reveal their sources" in legal proceedings, which the committee said could be in violation of Kuwait's obligations under Article 19 of ICCPR. n4 The committee tied its concern for protection of journalists' sources in Kuwait to other restrictions on journalists in that country, including the government closing a newspaper, banning books, and prosecuting and imprisoning authors and journalists in legal proceedings that placed the burden on them to prove good faith or innocence. These actions, the committee said, did not appear to be compatible with Article 19's requirement that any restrictions on freedom of expression be justified as both necessary to accomplish a legitimate government objective and proportional to societal need. n5 Since 1966, 168 nations around the world, including the United States, have signed and ratified ICCPR, thus binding themselves to an international law standard that now clearly protects reporter's privilege within the freedom of expression. Article 19 allows restrictions on this right only in case of conflict with the rights or reputations of others, need for protection of national security or public order, or to preserve public health or morals. n6 Even if one of those rights is asserted, national officials bear the burden to demonstrate the restriction on reporter's privilege is provided by law, necessary and proportional. Given the committee's endorsement of journalistic privilege, any of the 168 nations that lack a reporter's privilege protection, or that fail to ensure its enforcement in line with the standard above, could be in violation of international law. The reporter's privilege in the United States has been the subject of extensive scholarship ever since the Supreme Court of the United States decided Branzburg v. Hayes n8 more than four decades ago. n9 Although Branzburg's meaning has been the subject of much debate, one thing appears clear: A right for journalists to maintain the confidentiality of their sources in case of a grand jury's criminal investigation does not exist in the United States. That much was placed beyond dispute when the former New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent eighty-five days in jail in 2005, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected her claim of journalistic privilege. n10 That is not *402 to say the journalist's privilege in the United States is non-existing, given the presence of approximately forty state shield laws, the common law, and Department of Justice regulatory guidelines. n11 Any extended analysis of U.S. law is beyond the scope of this article, but examination of the international law privilege is relevant to U.S. legal scholars, legal practitioners and journalists because the United States is a party to ICCPR and thus bound to apply the journalistic privilege in its Article 19.
3. Current lack of citation of foreign law specifically locks the US out of developing I-law norms---plan's critical
Austen L. Parrish 7, Associate Professor of Law @ Southwestern Law School; J.D. from Columbia University; Director of Southwestern's Summer Law Program where he teaches international and comparative law at the University of British Columbia, 2007, University of Illinois Law Review, 2007 U. Ill. L. Rev. 637
The citation to foreign law is not only sensible for transparency reasons, it also can serve to legitimize the Court as an institution, both within the United States and around the world. Legitimacy "emanates from the persuasiveness of the arguments and the enhancement of communal knowledge." 278 In some contexts, "foreign and international law are actually necessary to legitimate decision-making." 279 Early on in our nation's history, Americans "self-consciously" appealed to the views of other nations "to win global legitimacy for their fledgling republic." 280 In others, foreign law legitimizes why our courts are doing something different. 281 *677 As Frank Michelman has described it, by comparative encounters, we "clarify our picture of ourselves." 282 ¶ Lastly, apart from issues of transparency and legitimacy in judicial reasoning, the use of foreign materials is particularly appropriate if one considers dialogical (as distinguished from particularist or universal) methods of constitutional interpretation. Tellingly, despite a fair amount of literature on the topic, those who condemn the use of foreign sources generally ignore the dialogic models. 283¶ In recent years, theories of constitutional dialogue have emerged "as one of the principal contenders in the quest for a satisfactory theory" that legitimizes judicial review. 284 Dialogical theories are based on "the notion that judicial review is part of a "dialogue' between the judges and the legislatures." 285 Rather than focusing on interpretative criteria, dialogic models of interpretation focus on the "institutional process through which decisions about constitutional meaning are made." 286¶ Dialogical models are particularly well suited to justify the use of foreign law, a point generally well accepted. Indeed, the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to engage more vigorously in international dialogue leaves the U.S. judiciary out-of-step and behind the times. 287 A significant amount of scholarship has emphasized the essential nature of this dialogue and its benefits. 288 "Courts should be talking with each other ... and even with academics. All are engaged in a search for the meaning of common concepts. The unique authority of each does not speak at *678 all to the common substance of their interpretative effort." 289 Melissa Waters has captured the problem in a nutshell: ¶ This is not simply a debate over the relevance of foreign legal materials in the work of the U.S. courts. In a larger sense, it is a debate over what role U.S. courts will play in the emerging transnational judicial dialogue among the world's courts. Moreover, the outcome of this debate will ... have a tremendous impact on the ability of the Supreme Court and other U.S. courts to influence the emerging transnational judicial dialogue, and through that dialogue, the development of international legal norms on a wide range of legal issues. 290
4. Even if international law can be gridlocked by competing interests – it still advances pluralism that diffuses great power conflicts and maximizes US interests – collapse is worse
Burke-White*, 14 - Visiting Professor, Harvard Law School; Professor and Deputy Dean for International Programs, University of Pennsylvania Law School. William W. "POWER SHIFTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: STRUCTURAL REALIGNMENT AND SUBSTANTIVE PLURALISM" http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1598andcontext=faculty_scholarship
Three implications of this redistribution of power have already become clear. First, international law has transitioned from a unipolar structure to a multi-hub structure. In this new structure, leadership has diversified such that far more states are capable of acting as hubs and driving international legal processes. This multi-hub structure is comprised of numerous, flexible subsystems that operate in a kind of variable, issuespecific geometry. It is a structure in which non-hubs often have multiple choices as to which hubs to follow on any given issue. And it is a structure in which legal processes are migrating into these subsystems, often at the expense of global-level alternatives. Second, this multi-hub structure is promoting pluralism within international law. Whereas, during the transatlantic moment, the US and Europe were largely able to limit international legal discourse and rule development in accordance with their preferences, the multi-hub structure fosters the articulation of alternative preferences. Pluralism has already become evident at three tension points: sovereignty, legitimacy, and economic development. Additional points of pluralism are likely to emerge in the years ahead. Even if these preferences themselves are not new, the new power of the states that articulate them is altering the substantive development of international legal rules. The distinct preferences advanced by hubs will challenge the preferences the US and Europe have successfully embedded in many international legal regimes over the past half century. Overtime, these regimes will adapt to accommodate new preferences, both within separate subsystems and globally. Third, while this new pluralism will have distinct implications in specific areas of the law, a common element emerges from the alternative preferences for sovereignty, legitimacy, and economic development now being articulated. At each of these tension points rising powers are advancing a far more state-centric vision of international law. It is a vision of international law that reaffirms state sovereignty, bases the legitimacy of international legal processes and institutions on long standing principles of sovereign equality, and puts the state back into the center of economic development. This reassertion of the centrality of the state conflicts with the individualization of international law, a hallmark of the period of US leadership. For legal rules and regimes that seek to advance this individualization or draw their effectiveness from it —human rights law, the law of investment protection, and the law of humanitarian intervention, for example—the return of the state will likely have pronounced negative consequences. Over time these regimes may be ratcheted back as international law returns closer to its Westphalian origins as a system of sovereigns, among sovereigns. It is, however, premature to draw final conclusions. The multi-hub model, as developed here, depends on two assumptions that, while presently valid, could shift. First, the model has assumed that the preferences of rising powers are not consistently aligned483 in a way that would create a stable coalition to replace US hegemony.484 Second, the model has assumed that hub leadership and subsystems remain flexible, changing on different issues, and providing non-hubs with choices as followers of different hubs and subsystems. If either of these assumptions proves wrong, the resulting international legal system would look quite different and far less appealing from the US perspective. Imagine two different versions of the international legal system that might develop if these assumptions are relaxed. First, should the preferences of rising powers coalesce such that a collective of new powers replaces the US as hegemon, the system itself might look more like a bipolar one with the US and Europe on one side, and rising powers on the other. The system might well break down into two larger, relatively rigid subsystems engaged in a protracted struggle. The preferences of the US and Europe might prevail on one side of this competition, while a largely separate international legal system that reflects the preferences of rising powers would develop on the other. Or, should the assumption that hub leadership remains flexible prove incorrect, a second scenario arises. If several hubs developed such a predominance of power in their respective regions that non-hubs had no choice but to follow, leadership would lock in and subsystems would become rigid. Variable geometry would give way to comprehensive spheres of influence. The behavior of some new hubs, notably Russia, suggests a desire to move in this direction. The resulting international legal system would be one of fixed, fragmented regions. International legal process would devolve into these subsystems of increasing rigidity, in which the substance of international law would develop separately. Substantive norms would divide and fragment as hubs impose their particular preferences on non-hubs in their subsystems. In the rare cases where global legal processes would still occur, outcomes would be determined by great power rivalry. Pluralism would be transformed into fragmentation and indeterminacy. The few international lawyers who have considered the implications of the redistribution of global power have largely agreed that it bodes poorly for the future of international law as an institution and, particularly, for the US.485 Perhaps they have envisioned one of these two negative scenarios. The good news, however, is that neither of these scenarios seem likely today. Power and leadership remain diffuse. Preferences are differentiated. Subsystems remain flexible. Pluralism is enriching the normative content of international law. The multi-hub system appears to be successfully accommodating both power shifts and substantive change. Perhaps most surprisingly, the multi-hub structure actually serves US interests very well. Admittedly, in this new structure the US will not be able to prevail on every issue or in every legal process. Even during the period of US hegemony, however, it could not do so. Yet, the US stands to benefit in the multi-hub system for three reasons. First, the US has long sought flexibility in international law so that it could use the system to advance whatever preference or strategic interest it might have at a given time. As a hegemon, the US enjoyed the flexibility that comes with shaping and running the system.486 The greater pluralism of the multi-hub structure allows the US to continue to enjoy this flexibility even as its hegemony declines. The US can pick and chose among different preferences being articulated by other hubs or articulate its own preferences when necessary. Pluralism may mean that international law provides less constraint or certainty, but that is exactly what the US has long sought. Second, in a system in which legal processes migrate downward into flexible subsystems, the US can advance its interests through international legal processes contained within such subsystems. During the period of US hegemony, the US often undertook the arduous and costly task of building global consensus. Relying on "coalitions of the willing" was a second best alternative subject to significant criticism. In the multi-hub system, in contrast, legal processes are occurring within such subsystems with greater regularity. As a result, the US can work through smaller, less costly coalitions of states that share its interests on particular issues. Given the groundwork laid during the period of US hegemony, the US is the beneficiary when variable geometry becomes the norm, not the exception, for international legal processes.487 Third, the fact that rising powers have chosen to operate within the international legal system, rather than challenge the system itself, means that, in order to advance their own interests, rising powers will share the costs of leadership. New hubs are beginning to lead legal processes within their own subsystems, assuming costs of enforcement, and helping bear the burdens previously carried by the US alone. The US may not always see its preferences articulated in the rules and interpretations other hubs are advancing. It may not always like the rules that new hubs choose (or refuse) to enforce. But, if it embraces pluralism, the US can share the overall costs of managing a surprisingly robust system.
5. A credible international treaty regime is needed to solve a host of global problems – including accidental war, nuclear proliferation, genocide, and global warming
Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, May 2002 (Rule of Power or Rule of Law) http://www.lcnp.org/pubs/RuleofLawPDF.pdf
Treaties by their very nature involve some sacrifice of sovereignty for the sake of the common good. Moreover, powerful countries usually exercise great influence on the shape of treaties, and that has been generally true of the United States in relation to the security treaties discussed in this report. And treaty regimes contribute to national and global security in important ways, including by: • articulating global norms; • promoting and recognizing compliance with norms; • building monitoring and enforcement mechanisms; • increasing the likelihood of detecting violations and effectively addressing them; • providing a benchmark for measurement of progress; • establishing a foundation of confidence, trust, experience, and expertise for further progress; • providing criteria to guide states' activities and legislation, and focal points for discussion of policy issues. Over the long term, treaty regimes are a far more reliable basis for achieving global policy objectives and compliance with norms than "do as we say, not as we do" directives from an overwhelmingly powerful state. The concept of the rule of law was integral to the founding of the United States, which has been one of its staunchest advocates. The rule of law in international affairs is still emerging, evolving quickly as global forces drive countries closer together. Its development is largely a response to the demands of states and individuals living within a global society with a deeply integrated world economy. In this global society, the repercussions of the actions of states, non-state actors and individuals are not confined within borders, whether we look to greenhouse gas accumulations, nuclear testing, the danger of accidental nuclear war, or the vast massacres of civilians that have taken place over the course of the last hundred years and still continue. The people of the United States are part of this global society and failures at the global level will affect their security and well-being adversely, along with that of people elsewhere. The importance and weight of the United States makes a U.S. withdrawal from the global legal process except when its gets its own way a dangerous course for security as well as the environment.
We cannot "make America great again" unless America is secure both at home and in its global position. But what does this have to do with democracy? Du