702 Reform AFF
Summary
Background
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is a law that was passed in 1978 in the aftermath of the Nixon
administration and Watergate. In 2008 Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act (FAA). Section 702 refers to the
part of the FAA that authorizes the two following surveillance programs:
1. Upstream collection--The FISA Court approves a Section 702 order allowing NSA to work with telecoms to copy,
scan, and filter Internet and phone traffic coming through their physical infrastructure.
2. PRISM---Other Section 702 orders are directed at specific companies to compel the disclosure of content of
communications, so long as it is “targeted” at sufficiently (51%) foreign people.
The stated purpose of the authority is to “to facilitate the acquisition of foreign intelligence information concerning
non-U.S. persons located outside the United States”
Harms produced by this program
This version of the AFF claims two main problems as a result of section 702:
1. Damages the economy: Section 702 undermines trust in US technology companies by creating the perception they
are involved in broad unnecessary surveillance. Additionally, it creates momentum in other countries for internet
data to remain within national borders. US is spying is greatly facilitated due to the fact so much internet traffic and
data physically passes through actual US borders. These proposals are commonly referred to as data localization.
This hinders the economy because it undermines access to internet services particularly in developing countries and
emerging markets.
2. US legitimacy—aggressive surveillance programs undermine the notion the US is a defender of political freedom,
human rights, etc. It also creates great stress among allied relationships.
What the AFF does to resolve these harms
The AFF does two things to reform section 702:
1. It changes the purpose from foreign intelligence to information pertaining to national security. The former is very
broad and intrusive. The latter is seen as more reasonable to most people, particularly foreign populations.
2. It clarifies that if a specific communication is ordered to be collected from an American company the only
authority upon which that order will be given is section 702 of the FAA. The purpose of this reform is increase
awareness and transparency of how and why surveillance happens which is a big part of the backlash against the
NSA and by extension American technology companies.
1AC
Economy Adv – 1AC
Failure to limit the scope and increase trust in NSA surveillance will collapse global
economic growth.
Two internal links:
First, US technological competitiveness—NSA related backlash has severely hampered it
Eshelman, Generation Opportunity staff writer, 2-26-15
(Kristie, “NSA SURVEILLANCE IS KILLING U.S. TECH INDUSTRY”,
https://generationopportunity.org/articles/2015/02/26/nsa-surveillance-is-killing-u-s-tech-industry/)
U.S. Tech giants like Cisco systems, IBM, and Apple used to be able to count on large international markets to boost
business. But thanks to the NSA and the global extent of its massive surveillance programs, foreign customers are
backing away from doing business with U.S. tech companies because they are concerned about NSA monitoring. The trend
could cost the tech industry billions in lost contracts—an estimated $22 billion through 2016—causing U.S.
companies to scramble to create “NSA-resistant products.” NSA surveillance hasn’t been great for international politics,
either. German Chancellor Angela Merkel began putting the pressure on for European Union-based alternatives to the U.S.-dominated Internet
infrastructure in Europe when she found out that her phone had been tapped by U.S. spy agencies earlier this month. She said in a statement,
Above all, we’ll talk with European providers that offer security for our citizens, so that one shouldn’t have to send e-mails and other information
across the Atlantic. Trevor Timm, Executive Director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, warns that NSA surveillance is worse overseas
than it is at home. He says, The natural reaction is to move outside the U.S. if you are trying to get away from the NSA.
But mass surveillance happens with more frequency overseas, because the NSA thinks there are little to no legal
protections for data overseas. That’s not encouraging for foreign customers. The United States has the potential to
become an international leader in tech, and young people are flocking to the tech scene because they see the
opportunity to revolutionize the way the world works. At a time when youth unemployment is at 14.2 percent,
we need more jobs, not less. The U.S. tech industry is growing fast and has the potential to provide a lot of those
jobs. The last thing young Americans need is for invasive NSA surveillance programs to stifle business overseas,
limiting our ability to maximize our potential on a global scale. It’s encouraging to see how much the tech scene has
grown in the U.S. in the past few years, and we want to see that continue.
Technological competitiveness is the lynchpin of the entire US economy
Muro, Brookings senior fellow, 2015
(Mark, “America’s Advanced Industries: What they are, where they are and why they matter”, February,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Research/Files/Reports/2015/02/03-advancedindustries/final/AdvancedIndustry_FinalFeb2lores.pdf?la=en)
But the advanced industries sector also represents a compelling economic fact. As the leading location of
technological development and its application in the United States, the sector plays a pivotal role in generating
prosperity across the nation. Specifically, the advanced industries sector: ● Encompasses many of the nation’s most crucial industries. Advanced
industries are in many respects their nations’ linchpin industries—the industries that, in developed economies,
establish technological advantage and embody national competitiveness. Sizable in their own right, these industries
frequently make disproportionate contributions to GDP through above-average productivity, which is a
leading predictor of worker wages. Likewise, because of the complexity of their products and services, these
industries support long chains of raw materials providers, specialized parts suppliers, and assorted service providers.
Although it is certainly true that supply chains are increasingly global, trade data suggest that the United States retains many of their highest-value portions.9
Economic literature also suggests that advanced industries have high employment and output multipliers—measures
of the ancillary economic activity one job spurs elsewhere in the economy—given the above-average wages they
pay and their strong links to other sectors of the economy, both for inputs and through their broader impacts.10 Yet the sector’s significance
goes far beyond its size. Advanced industries possess outsized economic importance for the nation and its regions. Nearly every advanced industry
resides in the traded sector—the sector that competes internationally, sells abroad at least partially, and returns sales
revenue to America. Traded sector industries are essential to a nation’s prosperity. As innovation experts Stephen Ezell and Robert
Atkinson write, “It’s simply impossible to have a vibrant national economy without a globally competitive traded
sector.”11 For a nation that has been running significant trade deficits for years, including in “advanced technology
products,” advanced industries will be instrumental in reducing them.12 Beyond matters of productivity and trade, the advanced
industries sector looms large in supporting such national and global objectives as national security, energy independence, food sustainability, health, and rising
standards of living. The aerospace, electronics, and communications industries play a significant role in delivering the goods and services that help nations respond to
threats such as terrorism, environmental disasters, and pandemics.13 The electric power, oil and gas, and scientific research industries are helping the world maintain
access to—and store—low-cost, secure sources of energy, including clean energy. (Witness the progress that “cleantech” advanced industries have made in reducing
the cost of photovoltaics and boosting the energy density of storage devices.) As the world’s population grows, biotechnology industries are enabling the world to feed
its population through innovations in plant genomics, high-yield seeds, and improved crop and water management. Likewise, medical, pharmaceutical, genomic,
electronic, and “big-data” advanced industries are all working to advance the health of the nation and world through the development of remote monitoring, new
prevention and treatments, and personalized medicines. Consumer-oriented advanced industries such as electronics, computers, motor vehicles, and appliances, for
their part, have materially improved household standards of living by expanding purchasing options, bringing time- and money-saving capabilities to the average
person, and driving prices down and quality up.14 In short, U.S. advanced industries are engaged in delivering highly important goods and services that respond
directly to the nation’s most pressing challenges. How the Economic Impact of Advanced Industries Radiates
High and rising standards of living
are generated largely in two ways: through trade and through economic growth. A dvanced industries lie at the center of both.
Advanced industries anchor the traded sector, which, by earning money from other locations, serves as the primary
generator of wealth for cities, regions, and nations. Furthermore, trade encourages specialization, which increases
productivity. The potential to export also encourages investment by promising increased sales, economies of scale, and therefore profits. Advanced
industries encompass the competitive heart of the U.S. traded sector—and for that reason pay well. Yet the advanced
industries sector’s role in the economy extends well beyond trade. Advanced industries support large numbers of indirect jobs (a
multiplier effect) and generate the technologies that enhance productivity and increase economic growth. The sector’s substantial
“multiplier effect” on jobs explains why it plays such an outsized role in U.S. employment. As income earned by advanced industries is paid out to employees,
The non-traded sector of the economy—where
most people work—in fact depends heavily on income from the traded sector. Yet the impact of advanced industries radiates even
further. As Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt state, “ In order to sustain a positive growth rate in output per capita in the long
run, there must be continual advances in technological knowledge. ” Advanced industries represent the prime site
of that technological knowledge in the economy. New knowledge and technology in turn enable the economy to
increase the value of output from a fixed quantity of inputs. In other words, it powers productivity growth economy-wide, which is the only
suppliers, and service providers, money radiates out to the broader economy, supporting more jobs.
durable means by which a society’s living standards can rise. In sum, advanced industries are the nation’s crown jewel industries because they prime the economy
with income, knowledge, and technology. In doing so, they generate employment, value, and progress across the entire economy. Sources: Robert Solow, “A
Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 70(1)(1956); Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, Endogenous Economic Growth
Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), p. 11; Douglass North, “Location Theory and Regional Economic Growth,” Journal of Political Economy, 63(3) (1955);
Paul Romer, “Endogenous Technological Change,” Journal of Political Economy, 98(5) (1990); Paul Krugman, The Age of Diminished Expectations (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1994). Represents a key site of innovative activity. Related
to their orientation toward key national challenges is the fact
that advanced industries are the nation’s principle locus of industrial innovation. Innovation matters to nations, states, regions,
companies, and families because it represents the only viable avenue for high-wage economies to increase productivity and continue to improve their citizens’
standard of living in the long run.15 Advanced
industries matter inordinately because, by definition, they draw together
society’s innovation resources. In particular, they are the primary site of the R&D spending that drives product and
process innovation in the economy.16 As such, the sector is the nation’s top source of the innovation that drives
increased productivity, which in turn generates increased profits and market share for firms, growth for industries,
and broad economic benefits for households, regions, and the natio n.17 The sector’s significance as a source of innovation is likely
undercounted. Considering that three-fourths of U.S. firms perform no R&D, economist David Audretsch asks, “Where do innovative firms with little or no R&D get
Because
innovative companies cannot capture all of the knowledge generated from their R&D investments, other firms that
employ similar processes or create complementary products often acquire the new knowledge through imitation,
use, worker turnover, or other ways.19 So advanced industry innovation investments, activities, and advances “spill
over” to other areas. They radiate. And in some cases, such as with IT products and services, advanced industry
technologies have emerged as “general purpose technologies” that have enabled truly significant productivity
advances throughout the economy.20 Consider, for example, the IT ecosystem. Although iconic firms such as IBM, AT&T, Microsoft, and Google
the knowledge inputs?”18 The answer is from “spillovers” from the most R&D-intensive firms such as those in the advanced industries sector.
created the IT ecosystem, thousands of other firms and entrepreneurs in nearly every other industry have reaped the bulk of the economic rewards. Altogether, the
application of IT advancements in the United States has been responsible for more than 30 percent of labor productivity growth economy-wide over the past decade.21
How Advanced Industry Innovations Spill Over to the Larger Economy No
technology better epitomizes how advanced industries support
U.S. economic growth through innovation and its wide adoption than information technology (I T). Prior to the mid-1990s
productivity growth from IT remained almost exclusively within those firms producing software and hardware (all in advanced industries). Yet in the decade
following 1995, productivity gains from IT came predominately from firms outside of the IT sector, particularly in high-value advanced industries such as
management and R&D consulting, medical devices, and precision instrument manufacturing. These firms began leveraging IT to improve operations and to grow.
During this period, IT was responsible for two-thirds of U.S. productivity growth, despite the IT sector only
employing 2.5 percent of the workforce directly. Research by Jorgenson, Ho, and Samuels shows that total factor
productivity increased sharply in sectors that used IT extensively during the 1990s and fell in those that did not . During
the years 1995–2000 sectors using IT registered 10 times higher total factor productivity than other sectors. Since then, the retail, wholesale, and hospitality sectors
have begun to invest heavily in IT, and IT was responsible for more than one-third of total labor productivity growth between 2002 and 2012. The further
dissemination of IT into large and conspicuously lagging sectors—namely health care and education—promises even greater productivity gains. The
30-year
trajectory of IT illustrates a critical economic point: U.S. economic growth is contingent on waves of gamechanging technologies that are typically introduced by a subset of advanced industry firms, then adopted by
whole industries, and finally diffused into every corner of the economy.
The US is the driving force behind global economic recovery
Economist 2015
(“American shopper”, 2-14, http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21643188-world-once-again-relying-toomuch-american-consumers-power-growth-american-shopper)
A GLOBAL economy running on a single engine is better than one that needs jump leads. The American
economy is motoring again, to the relief of exporters from Hamburg to Hangzhou . Firms added more than 1m net new jobs
in the past three months, the best showing since 1997 (see article). Buoyed up by cheap petrol, Americans are spending; in January consumer sentiment jumped to its
highest in more than a decade. The
IMF reckons that American growth will hit 3.6% in 2015, faster than the world economy
as a whole. All this is good. But growing dependence on the American economy—and on consumers in particular—has unwelcome echoes. A decade ago
American consumers borrowed heavily and recklessly. They filled their ever-larger houses with goods from China; they fuelled gas-guzzling cars with imported oil.
Big exporters recycled their earnings back to America, pushing down interest rates which in turn helped to feed further borrowing. Europe was not that different.
There, frugal Germans financed debt binges around the euro area’s periphery.After the financial crisis, the hope was of an end to these imbalances. Debt-addicted
Americans and Spaniards would chip away at their obligations; thrifty German and Chinese consumers would start to enjoy life for once. At first, this seemed to be
But now the world is slipping back into
some nasty habits. Hair grows faster than the euro zone, and what growth there is depends heavily on exports. The
countries of the single currency are running a current-account surplus of about 2.6% of GDP, thanks largely to
exports to America. At 7.4% of GDP, Germany’s trade surplus is as large as it has ever been. China’s growth,
meanwhile, is slowing—and once again relying heavily on spending elsewhere. It notched up its own record trade surplus in
happening. America’s trade deficit, which was about 6% of GDP in 2006, had more than halved by 2009.
January. China’s exports have actually begun to drop, but imports are down by more. And over the past year the renminbi, which rose by more than 10% against the
dollar in 2010-13, has begun slipping again, to the annoyance of American politicians. America’s
economy is warping as a result.
Consumption’s contribution to growth in the fourth quarter of 2014 was the largest since 2006. T he trade deficit is widening.
Strip out oil, and America’s trade deficit grew to more than 3% of GDP in 2014, and is approaching its pre-recession peak of about 4%. The world’s
reliance on America is likely to deepen. Germans are more interested in shipping savings abroad than investing at home (see article). Households
and firms in Europe’s periphery are overburdened with debt, workers’ wages squeezed and banks in no mood to lend. Like Germany, Europe as a whole is relying on
exports. China is rebalancing, but not fast enough: services have yet to account for more than half of annual Chinese output.
Second is data-localization----backlash to NSA surveillance is creating the impetus for data
localization that will fracture a global open Internet.
Kehl, Open Technology Institute senior policy analyst, 2014
(Danielle, “Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity”, July,
http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf)
The NSA disclosures have prompted some foreign leaders to propose new policies for data localization and data
protection that could have serious ramifications for the Internet ecosystem. In the name of strengthening privacy and
security, many of these changes could hurt American tech companies, impact the future growth of the network as a
whole, and endanger human rights and Internet Freedom.99 In particular, proposals that would require data
localization or strengthen data protection laws could fundamentally alter the way traffic flows over the
Internet and create significant additional compliance costs for American technology companies operating overseas. Major
economic powers such as Germany, Brazil, and India have discussed requiring that all Internet traffic be routed or
stored locally. Various leaders in these countries have also urged government agencies and their citizens to stop using American tools altogether because of
concerns about backdoors or other arrangements with the NSA.100 Meanwhile, legislators in the European Union have passed strict new data protection rules for the
continent and considered various privacy-focused proposals, including the development of “national clouds” and the suspension of key trade agreements with the
United States.101 “The
vast scale of online surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden is leading to the breakup of the
Internet as countries scramble to protect privacy or commercially sensitive emails and phone records from UK and
US security services,” reported The Guardian in November 2013.102 In combination, these various proposals could threaten the Internet economy while
endangering privacy and free expression. Mandatory Data Localization and the Costs of a Bordered Internet Internet jurisdiction and borders were contentious issues
long before the Snowden leaks, but the debate has become significantly more complex in the past year. For decades, the borderless nature of cyberspace103 has raised
concerns about sovereignty and how governments can regulate and access their citizens’ personal information or speech when it is stored on servers that may be
located all over the world.104 Various data localization and national routing proposals have been put forth by governments that seek greater control of the information
that flows within their borders, often in order to make censorship and surveillance over the local population easier.105 On the other side, free speech advocates,
technologists, and civil society organizations generally advocate for a borderless cyberspace governed by its own set of internationally-agreed upon rules that promote
the protection of human rights, individual privacy, and free expression.106 The
revelations about NSA surveillance have heightened
concerns on both sides of this debate. But the disclosures appear to have given new ammunition to proponents of
greater governmental control over traffic and network infrastructure, accelerating the number and scope of national
control proposals from both long-time advocates as well as governments with relatively solid track records on
human rights.107 There are now more than a dozen countries that have introduced or are actively discussing
data localization laws.108 Broadly speaking, data localization can be defined as any measures that
“specifically encumber the transfer of data across national borders,” through rules that prevent or limit these
information flows.109 The data localization proposals being considered post-Snowden generally require that foreign ICT companies maintain infrastructure
located within a country and store some or all of their data on that country’s users on local servers.110 Brazil, for example, has proposed that Internet companies like
Facebook and Google must set up local data centers so that they are bound by Brazilian privacy laws.111 The Indian government’s draft policy would force
companies to maintain part of their IT infrastructure in-country, give local authorities access to the encrypted data on their servers for criminal investigations, and
prevent local data from being moved out of country.112 Germany, Greece, Brunei, and Vietnam have also put forth their own data sovereignty proposals. Proponents
argue that these policies would provide greater security and privacy protection because local servers and infrastructure can give governments both physical control and
legal jurisdiction over the data being stored on them—although the policies may come with added political and economic benefits for those countries as well. “Home
grown and guaranteed security in data storage, hardware manufacture, cloud computing services and routing are all part of a new discussion about ‘technological
sovereignty,’” write Mascolo and Scott. “It is both a political response and a marketing opportunity.” 113 At the same time, data localization can also facilitate local
censorship and surveillance, making it easier for governments to exert control over the Internet infrastructure.
Data localization significantly hampers the global economy—particularly in emerging
economies.
Chander, UC-Davis California International Law Center director, 2014
(Anupam, “Breaking the Web: Data Localization vs. the Global Internet”, April,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Papers.cfm?abstract_id=2407858)
Many governments believe that by forcing companies to localize data within national borders they will increase
investment at home. Thus, data localization measures, whether explicitly or not, are often motivated by desires to
promote local economic development. In fact, however, data localization raises costs for local businesses, reduces access
to global services for consumers, hampers local startups, and interferes with the use of the latest technological
advances. In an Information Age, the global flow of data has become the lifeblood of economies across the world . While some
in Europe have raised concerns about the transfer of data abroad, the European Commission has recognized “the critical importance of data flows notably for the transatlantic economy.”147
The Commission observes that international data transfers “form an integral part of commercial exchanges across
the Atlantic including for new growing digital businesses, such as social media or cloud computing, with large amounts of data going from the EU to the
US.”148 Worried about the effect of constraints on data flows on both global information sharing and economic development, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) has urged nations to avoid “barriers to the location, access and use of cross-border data facilities and functions” when consistent with other fundamental rights, in order to “ensure cost
The worry about the impact of data localization is widely shared in the business community
as well. The value of the Internet to national economies has been widely noted.150 The Information Technology
Industry Council, an industry association representing more than 40 major Internet companies, argu es that Brazilian “in-country data storage
requirements would detrimentally impact all economic activity that depends on data flows."151 The Swedish government agency, the
effectiveness and other efficiencies.”149
National Board of Trade, recently interviewed fifteen local companies of various sizes across sectors and concluded succinctly: “trade cannot happen without data being moved from one location
to another.” 152 Data localization, like most protectionist measures, leads only to small gains for a few local enterprises and workers, while causing significant harms spread across the entire
The domestic benefits of data localization go to the few owners and employees of data centers, and the few
companies servicing these centers locally. Meanwhile, the harms of data localization are widespread, felt by small,
medium, and large businesses that are denied access to global services that might improve productivity. Critics worry, for
economy.
example, that the Brazilian data localization requirement would “deny[] Brazilian users access to great services that are provided by US and other international companies.”153 Marilia Marciel, a
Data localization
affects domestic innovation by denying entrepreneurs the ability to build on top of global services based
abroad. Brasscom, the Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication Companies, argues
that such obligations would “hurt[] the country’s ability to create, innovate, create jobs and collect taxes from the
proper use of the Internet.”155 Governments implementing in-country data mandates imagine that the various global services used in their country will now build infrastructure
locally. Many services, however, will find it uneconomical and even too risky to establish local servers in certain
territories.156 Data centers are expensive, all the more so if they have the highest levels of security. One study finds
Brazil to be the most expensive country in the Western hemisphere in which to build data centers.157 Building a data center in
digital policy expert at Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro, observes, “[e]ven Brazilian companies prefer to host their data outside of Brazil.”154
Brazil costs $60.9 million on average, while building one in Chile and the United States costs $51.2 million and $43 million, respectively.158 Operating such a data center remains expensive
because of enormous energy and other expenses— averaging $950,000 in Brazil, $710,000 in Chile, and $510,000 in the United States each month.159 This cost discrepancy is mostly due to
high electricity costs and heavy import taxes on the equipment needed for the center.160 Data centers employ few workers, with energy making up three-quarters of the costs of operations.161
According to the 2013 Data Centre Risk Index—a study of thirty countries on the risks affecting successful data center operations—Australia, Russia, China, Indonesia, India, and Brazil are the
Not only are there significant economic costs to data localization, the potential gains are
more limited than governments imagine. Data server farms are hardly significant generators of employment , populated
riskiest countries for running data centers.162
instead by thousands of computers and few human beings. The significant initial outlay they require is largely in capital goods, the bulk of which are often imported into a country. The diesel
Ironically, it is often American suppliers of
servers and other hardware that stand to be the beneficiaries of data localization mandates. One study notes, “Brazilian suppliers of
components did not benefit from this [data localization requirement], since the imported products dominate the market.”163 By increasing capital purchases from
abroad, data localization requirements can in fact increase merchandise trade deficits. Furthermore, large data farms
are enormous consumers of energy, and thus often further burden overtaxed energy grids. They thereby harm other
industries that must now compete for this energy, paying higher prices while potentially suffering limitations in
supply of already scarce power. Cost, as well as access to the latest innovations, drives many e-commerce enterprises in Indonesia to use foreign data centers. Daniel
generators, cooling systems, servers and power supply devices tend to be imported from a few global suppliers.
Tumiwa, head of the Indonesian Internet association IdEA, states that ‘[t]he cost can double easily in Indonesia.”164 Indonesia’s Internet start-ups have accordingly often turned to foreign
countries such as Australia, Singapore, or the United States to host their services. One report suggests that “many of the ‘tools’ that start-up online media have relied on elsewhere are not fully
available yet in Indonesia.”165 Another report suggests that a weak local hosting infrastructure in Indonesia means that sites hosted locally experience delayed loading time.166 Similarly, as the
Vietnamese government attempts to foster entrepreneurship and innovation,167 localization requirements effectively bar start-ups from utilizing cheap and powerful platforms abroad and
potentially handicap Vietnam from “join[ing] in the technology race.”168 Governments worried about transferring data abroad at the same time hope, somewhat contradictorily, to bring foreign
data within their borders. Many countries seek to become leaders in providing data centers for companies operating across their regions. In 2010, Malaysia announced its Economic
Transformation Program to transform Malaysia into a “world-class data centre hub” for the Asia- Pacific region.169 Brazil hopes to accomplish the same for Latin America, while France seeks to
Instead of spurring local investment, data localization can lead to the loss of
investment. First, there’s the retaliation effect. Would countries send data to Brazil if Brazil declares that data is
unsafe if sent abroad? Brasscom notes that the Brazilian Internet industry’s growth will be hampered if other countries engage in similar reactive policies, which “can stimulate the
stimulate its economy via a “Made in France” digital industry.170
migration of datacenters based here, or at least part of them, to other countries….”171 Some in the European Union sympathize with this concern. European Commissioner for the Digital
Then there’s the
avoidance effect. Rio de Janeiro State University Law Professor Ronaldo Lemos, who helped write the original
Marco Civil, and currently Director of the Rio Institute for Technology and Society, warns that the localization
provision would cause foreign companies to avoid the country altogether: “It could end up having the opposite effect
to what is intended, and scare away companies that want to do business in Bra zil.”173 Indeed, such burdensome local
laws often lead companies to launch overseas, in order to try to avoid these rules entirely. Foreign companies, too,
might well steer clear of the country in order to avoid entanglement with cumbersome rules . For example, Yahoo!, while very
Agenda, Neelie Kroes, has expressed similar doubts, worrying about the results for European global competitiveness if each country has its own separate Internet.172
popular in Vietnam, places its servers for the country in Singapore.174 In these ways we see that data localization mandates can backfire entirely, leading to avoidance instead of investment.
localization requirements place burdens on domestic enterprises not faced by those operating in more liberal
jurisdictions. Countries that require data to be cordoned off complicate matters for their own enterprises, which must
turn to domestic services if they are to comply with the law. Such companies must also develop mechanisms to
segregate the data they hold by the nationality of the data subject. The limitations may impede development of new, global services. Critics argue that
South Korea’s ban on the export of mapping data, for example, impedes the development of next generation services in Korea: “ Technology services, such as Google
glasses, driverless cars, and information programs for visually impaired users, are unlikely to develop and grow in
Korea. Laws made in the 60s are preventing many venture enterprises from advancing to foreign markets via
location/navigation services.”175 The harms of data localization for local businesses are not restricted to Internet
enterprises or to consumers denied access to global services. As it turns out, most of the economic benefits from
Internet technologies accrue to traditional businesses. A McKinsey study estimates that about 75 percent of the value added
created by the Internet and data flow is in traditional industries, in part through increases in productivity.176 The
potential economic impact across the major sectors—healthcare, manufacturing, electricity, urban infrastructure, security, agriculture, retail, etc.—is estimated at $2.7 to $6.2 trillion per year.17 7 This is particularly
important for emerging economies, in which traditional industries remain predominant. The Internet raises profits as
well, due to increased revenues, lower costs of goods sold, and lower administrative costs.178 With data localization
mandates, traditional businesses will lose access to the many global services that would store or process
information offshore.
Data
The risk of conflict is high—economic disruptions have a high propensity to spillover and
escalate
James, Princeton history professor, 2014
(Harold, “Debate: Is 2014, like 1914, a prelude to world war?”, 7-2, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globedebate/read-and-vote-is-2014-like-1914-a-prelude-to-world-war/article19325504/)
ome of the dynamics of the pre-1914 financial world are now re-emerging. Then an economically declining power,
Britain, wanted to use finance as a weapon against its larger and faster growing competit ors, Germany and the United States. Now
America is in turn obsessed by being overtaken by China – according to some calculations, set to become the world’s largest economy in 2014. In the
aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, financial institutions appear both as dangerous weapons of mass destruction , but
S
also as potential instruments for the application of national power. In managing the 2008 crisis, the dependence of foreign banks on U.S. dollar funding constituted a major weakness, and
required the provision of large swap lines by the Federal Reserve. The United States provided that support to some countries, but not others, on the basis of an explicitly political logic, as Eswar
Geo-politics is intruding into banking practice elsewhere
Prasad demonstrates in his new book on the “Dollar Trap.”
. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russian
banks were trying to acquire assets in Central and Eastern Europe. European and U.S. banks are playing a much reduced role in Asian trade finance. Chinese banks are being pushed to expand
their role in global commerce. After the financial crisis, China started to build up the renminbi as a major international currency. Russia and China have just proposed to create a new credit rating
The next stage in this logic is to think about how financial
power can be directed to national advantage in the case of a diplomatic tussle. Sanctions are a routine (and not terribly successful) part of the
agency to avoid what they regard as the political bias of the existing (American-based) agencies.
pressure applied to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. But financial pressure can be much more powerfully applied to countries that are deeply embedded in the world economy. The test
is in the Western imposition of sanctions after the Russian annexation of Crimea. President Vladimir Putin’s calculation in response is that the European Union and the United States cannot
The
threat of systemic disruption generates a new sort of uncertainty, one that mirrors the decisive feature of the
crisis of the summer of 1914. At that time, no one could really know whether clashes would escalate or not. T hat
possibly be serious about the financial war. It would turn into a boomerang: Russia would be less affected than the more developed and complex financial markets of Europe and America.
feature contrasts remarkably with almost the entirety of the Cold War, especially since the 1960s, when the strategic doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction left no doubt that any superpower
The idea of network disruption relies on the ability to achieve advantage by surprise, and to win
at no or low cost. But it is inevitably a gamble, and raises prospect that others might, but also might not be
able to, mount the same sort of operation. Just as in 1914, there is an enhanced temptation to roll the dice,
even though the game may be fatal.
conflict would inevitably escalate.
Global economic down turn triggers multiple scenarios for conflict and nuclear escalation.
Duncan, Blackhorse Asset Management chief economist, 2012
(Richard, The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, google books)
The consequences of a
New Great Depression would extend far beyond the realm of economics. Hungry people will fight to
survive. Governments will use force to maintain internal order at home. This section considers the geopolitical repercussion of economic collapse, beginning with
the United States. First, the U.S. government’s tax revenues would collapse with the depression. Second, because global trade would
shrivel up, other countries would no longer help finance the U.S. budget deficit by buying government bonds because they
would no longer have the money to do so. At present, the rest of the world has a $500 billion annual trade surplus with the United States. The central
banks of the United States’ trading partners accumulate that surplus as foreign exchange reserves and invest most of those reserves into U.S. government bonds. An
economic collapse would cause global trade to plummet and drastically reduce (if not eliminate altogether) the U.S. trade deficit.
Therefore, this source of foreign funding for the U.S. budget deficit would dry up. Consequently, the government would have to
sharply curtail its spending, both at home and abroad. Domestically, social programs for the old, the sick, and the unemployed would have to be
slashed. Government spending on education and infrastructure would also have to be curtailed. Much less government spending would result in a
dramatic increase in poverty and, consequently, in crime. This would combine to produce a crisis of the current two-party political system.
Astonishment, frustration, and anger at the economic breakdown would radicalize politics. New parties would form at both extremes of the political
spectrum. Given the great and growing income inequality going into the crisis, the hungry have-nots would substantially outnumber the remaining wealthy. On the
one hand, a hard swing to the left would be the outcome most likely to result from democratic elections. In that case, the tax rates on the top income brackets could be
raised to 80 percent or more, a level last seen in 1963. On the other hand, the possibility of a right-wing putsch could not be ruled out. During the Great Depression,
the U.S. military was tiny in comparison with what it became during World War II and during the decades of hot, cold, and terrorist wars that followed. In
this
New Great Depression, it might be the military that ultimately determines how the country would be governed . The
political battle over America’s future would be bitter, and quite possibly bloody. It cannot be guaranteed that the U.S. Constitution
would survive. Foreign affairs would also confront the United States with enormous challenges. During the Great Depression, the United States did not have a
global empire. Now it does. The United States maintains hundreds of military bases across dozens of countries around the world. Added to this
is a fleet of 11 aircraft carriers and 18 nuclear-armed submarines. The country spends more than $650 billion a year on its military. If the U.S.
economy collapses into a New Great Depression, the United States could not afford to maintain its worldwide military
presence or to continue in its role as global peacekeeper. Or, at least, it could not finance its military in the same way it does at
present. Therefore, either the United States would have to find an alternative funding method for its global military presence or else it would have to radically
scale it back. Historically, empires were financed with plunder and territorial expropriation. The estates of the vanquished ruling classes were given to the conquering
generals, while the rest of the population was forced to pay imperial taxes. The
U.S. model of empire has been unique. It has financed its
government debt, thereby taxing future generations of Americans to pay for this generation’s global supremacy.
That would no longer be possible if the economy collapsed. Cost–benefit analysis would quickly reveal that much of America’s global
presence was simply no longer affordable. Many—or even most—of the outposts that did not pay for themselves would have to be abandoned.
global military presence by issuing
Priority would be given to those places that were of vital economic interests to the United States. The Middle East oil fields would be at the top of that list. The United
States would have to maintain control over them whatever the price. In this global depression scenario, the
price of oil could collapse to $3 per
barrel. Oil consumption would fall by half and there would be no speculators left to manipulate prices higher. Oil at that level would
impoverish the oil-producing nations, with extremely destabilizing political consequences. Maintaining control over
the Middle East oil fields would become much more difficult for the United States. It would require a much larger military presence than it does
now. On the one hand, it might become necessary for the United States to reinstate the draft (which would possibly meet with violent
resistance from draftees, as it did during the Vietnam War). On the other hand, America’s all-volunteer army might find it had more than enough volunteers with the
national unemployment rate in excess of 20 percent. The army might have to be employed to keep order at home, given that mass
unemployment would inevitably lead to a sharp spike in crime. Only after the Middle East oil was secured would the country know how much more of its global
military presence it could afford to maintain. If international trade had broken down, would there be any reason for the United States to keep a military presence in
Asia when there was no obvious way to finance that presence? In
a global depression, the United States’ allies in Asia would most
likely be unwilling or unable to finance America’s military bases there or to pay for the upkeep of the U.S. Pacific fleet. Nor would
the United States have the strength to force them to pay for U.S. protection. Retreat from Asia might become unavoidable. And Europe? What
would a cost–benefit analysis conclude about the wisdom of the United States maintaining military bases there? What valued added does Europe provide to the United
States? Necessity may mean Europe
will have to defend itself. Should a New Great Depression put an end to the Pax
Americana, the world would become a much more dangerous place. When the Great Depression began, Japan was the rising
industrial power in Asia. It invaded Manchuria in 1931 and conquered much of the rest of Asia in the early 1940s. Would China, Asia’s new rising power, behave the
same way in the event of a new global economic collapse? Possibly. China is the only nuclear power in Asia east of India (other than North Korea, which is largely a
Chinese satellite state). However, in this disaster scenario,
it is not certain that China would survive in its current configuration. Its economy
would be in ruins. Most of its factories and banks would be closed. Unemployment could exceed 30 percent. There would most likely be starvation both in the
cities and in the countryside. The Communist Party could lose its grip on power , in which case the country could break apart, as it
has numerous times in the past. It was less than 100 years ago that China’s provinces, ruled by warlords, were at war with one another. United or divided, China’s
nuclear arsenal would make it Asia’s undisputed superpower if the United States were to withdraw from the region. From Korea and Japan in the North to New
hunger among China’s population of 1.3 billion people could
necessitate territorial expansion into Southeast Asia. In fact, the central government might not be able to prevent mass migration southward, even if it
Zealand in the South to Burma in the West, all of Asia would be at China’s mercy. And
wanted to. In Europe, severe economic hardship would revive the centuries-old struggle between the left and the right. During the 1930s, the Fascists movement arose
and imposed a police state on most of Western Europe. In the East, the Soviet Union had become a communist police state even earlier. The far right and the far left of
the political spectrum converge in totalitarianism. It
is difficult to judge whether Europe’s democratic institutions would hold up
better this time that they did last time. England had an empire during the Great Depression. Now it only has banks. In a severe worldwide depression, the
country— or, at least London—could become ungovernable. Frustration over poverty and a lack of jobs would erupt into antiimmigration riots not only in the United Kingdom but also across most of Europe. The extent to which Russia would menace its European neighbors is unclear.
On the one hand, Russia would be impoverished by the collapse in oil prices and might be too preoccupied with internal unrest to threaten
anyone. On the other hand, it could provoke a war with the goal of maintaining internal order through emergency wartime
powers. Germany is very nearly demilitarized today when compared with the late 1930s. Lacking a nuclear deterrent of its own, it could be subject to Russian
intimidation. While Germany could appeal for protection from England and France, who do have nuclear capabilities, it is uncertain that would buy Germany enough
time to remilitarize before it became a victim of Eastern aggression. As for the rest of the world, its prospects in this disaster scenario can be summed up in only a
couple of sentences. Global economic output could fall by as much as half, from $60 trillion to $30 trillion. Not all of the world’s seven billion people would survive
in a $30 trillion global economy. Starvation would be widespread. Food
riots would provoke political upheaval and myriad big and small conflicts
around the world. It would be a humanitarian catastrophe so extreme as to be unimaginable for the current generation, who, at least in the industrialized world,
has known only prosperity. Nor would there be reason to hope that the New Great Depression would end quickly. The Great Depression was only ended by an even
more calamitous global war that killed approximately 60 million people.
Hegemony Adv – 1AC
NSA overreach significantly hampers global US leadership
Three internal links:
First, allied relationships---NSA backlash makes them ineffective
Reichman, Associated Press State Department correspondent, 2013
(Deb, “NSA Spying Threatens U.S. Foreign Policy Efforts”, 10-26, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/26/nsaspying-foreign-policy_n_4166076.html)
President Barack Obama has defended America's surveillance dragnet to leaders of Russia, Mexico, Brazil, France and Germany, but the
international anger
over the disclosures shows no signs of abating in the short run. Longer term, the revelations by former National Security
Agency contractor Edward Snowden about NSA tactics that allegedly include tapping the cellphones of as many as 35 world leaders threaten to
undermine U.S. foreign policy in a range of areas. This vacuum-cleaner approach to data collection has rattled allies. "The magnitude
of the eavesdropping is what shocked us," former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said in a radio interview. "Let's be honest, we
eavesdrop too. Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which
makes us jealous." So where in the world isn't the NSA? That's one big question raised by the disclosures. Whether the tapping of allies is a step too far might
be moot. The British ambassador to Lebanon, Tom Fletcher, tweeted this past week: "I work on assumption that 6+ countries tap my phone. Increasingly rare that
diplomats say anything sensitive on calls." Diplomatic
relations are built on trust. If America's credibility is in question, the
U.S. will find it harder to maintain alliances, influence world opinion and maybe even close trade deals. Spying
among allies is not new. Madeleine Albright, secretary of state during the Clinton administration, recalled being at the United Nations and having the French
ambassador ask her why she said something in a private conversation apparently intercepted by the French. The French government protested revelations this past
week that the NSA had collected 70.3 million French-based telephone and electronic message records in a 30-day period. Albright
says Snowden's
disclosures have hurt U.S. policymakers. "A lot of the things that have come out, I think are specifically damaging
because they are negotiating positions and a variety of ways that we have to go about business," Albright said at a
conference hosted by the Center for American Progress in Washington. "I think it has made life very difficult for Secretary Kerry. ...
There has to be a set of private talks that, in fact, precede negotiations and I think it makes it very, very hard." The spy flap could give the Europeans leverage in talks
with the U.S. on a free trade agreement, which would join together nearly half of the global economy. "If we go to the negotiations and we have the feeling those
people with whom we negotiate know everything that we want to deal with in advance, how can we trust each other?" asked Martin Schulz, president of the European
Parliament. Claude Moniquet, a former French counterintelligence officer and now director of Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center,
said the controversy came at a good time for Europe "to have a lever, a means of pressure ... in these negotiations." To Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore at George
Washington University, damage from the NSA disclosures could "undermine Washington's ability to act hypocritically and get away with it." The
danger in
the disclosures "lies not in the new information that they reveal but in the documented confirmation they provide of
what the United States is actually doing and why," they wrote in Foreign Affairs. "When these deeds turn out to
clash with the government's public rhetoric, as they so often do, it becomes harder for U.S. allies to overlook
Washington's covert behavior and easier for U.S. adversaries to justify their own." They claim the disclosures forced
Washington to abandon its "naming-and-shaming campaign against Chinese hacking." The revelations could undercut Washington's effort to
fight terrorism, says Kiron Skinner, director of the Center for International Relations and Politics at Carnegie Mellon University. The broad nature of
NSA surveillance goes against the Obama administration's claim that much of U.S. espionage is carried out to
combat terrorism, she said. "If Washington undermines its own leadership or that of its allies, the collective ability
of the West to combat terrorism will be compromised," Skinner said. "Allied leaders will have no incentive to put
their own militaries at risk if they cannot trust U.S. leadership."
Alienating allies risk a dramatic disruption of the international order
Chen, Zhejiang professor, 2015
(Jiming, “US Seeks To Offload Cost of Hegemony on Allies”, 2-13,
http://watchingamerica.com/WA/2015/02/19/us-seeks-to-offload-cost-of-hegemony-on-allies/)
In the 2011 Libyan Civil War, the "leading from behind" policy adopted by the Obama administration won clear
results. Through this, the United States came to realize that even without large-scale military deployments, it can
realize its strategic goals by strengthening cooperative relationships with its partners and allies and acting in a
leadership role when necessary. By doing so, it can lighten the burden of U.S. hegemony while at the same time
guaranteeing the continued existence of that same hegemony, and has therefore become a key feature of
Obama's international strategy. In his new National Security Strategy, Obama expressed a desire to utilize
collective action, and not unilateral action, to protect the United States' core interests . He emphasized that the United States is
"stronger when we mobilize collective action." The
truth is that at present, moving with caution is simply the wisest strategy for
the U.S. government. This is because the United States currently lacks imminent threats to its security, its
responsibility-sharing coalition strategy has gained considerable results and its interests around the globe have not
suffered as a consequence. In international strategy, at least, the Obama administration has been somewhat withdrawn and relatively low key, reallocating
resources toward helping the U.S. economy recover. But in this, it has also undertaken certain risks. The primary risks for the United States are
twofold, with the first part lying in the confidence of its allies. Bo th European allies and Asian ones like Japan
harbor concerns about Obama's international strategy, especially as they have all come under security pressures of their own. Obama has
stressed many times that the United States will honor its security promises to its allies. In other words, the loyalty of its allies to the coalition is
a factor of how many security benefits they stand to receive in the bargain . The second risk is that the United States will likely be
pulled into regional disputes and conflicts. In order to gain the trust of its allies, the United States will occasionally need to take substantive action on behalf of those
allies and partner nations in international disputes, including providing military armaments, deploying sophisticated weapon systems to certain regions, and holding
joint military exercises. The U.S. government is seeking a balance between its obligations from agreements with allies and avoiding involvement in regional conflicts.
In sum, this all arises from the need to maintain U.S. power and its continued position as global leader . Obama
is well aware that without the support of the coalition that this system provides, the United States would be hard
pressed to keep its claim to that leadership. But from this perspective, it also seems likely that we will never again see a return to an age where the
United States is "second to none."
Second is China—NSA scandals let them strategically undermine US leadership.
O’Reilly, China based freelance journalist, 2013
(Brendan, “China to reap harvest of NSA scandals”, Asia Times, 10-31,
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-311013.html)
A growing chorus of nations is decrying Washington's unrestrained cyber espionage. However, there is only one
country with both the means and motivation for using mounting international resentment to challenge American
hegemony. The NSA surveillance of America's allies has opened up two vital fronts in which China can erode
American global dominance. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying has claimed the rhetorical high ground, calling cyber security "a
matter of sovereignty". She said Beijing is eager to address the issue through the framework of the United Nations, and to do so "China and Russia have submitted a
draft plan, in an effort to help the world jointly tackle the problem." [1] This
joint Sino-Russian proposal to combat the NSA's electronic
surveillance coincides with a parallel initiative launched by two allies of the United States. Germany and Brazil are
working together to create a UN resolution aimed at curtailing electronic spying. Both nations have been openly
angry with Washington in the wake of revelations that the NSA has for years spied on the personal communications
of both Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and German Chancellor Merkel. Brazilian and German diplomats expect to finish the
draft within a week, and then send the resolution to the UN Human Rights Committee. According to political scientist Gunther Maihold, "Brazil's main interest is that
this should result in international regulation by the UN." [2] Such international regulation of electronic espionage would be anathema to large portions of the
American political class, who believe unlimited NSA spying is justified by the perpetual threat of "terrorism", and are distrustful of the United Nations. Beijing
may be supporting anti-cyber espionage efforts at the United Nations precisely because China's leaders expect such
efforts will fail in the face of American political intransigence. The fallout from Washington blocking antisurveillance initiatives at the United Nations could disrupt American diplomacy for decades to come. Chinese
backing of UN efforts to curb the NSA's activities may undermine American hegemony by disrupting America's
alliances. These alliances have cemented Washington's global dominance for the greater part of a century. Nevertheless,
Beijing's opposition to American cyber espionage is to a large degree a defensive tactic. According to Der Spiegel, the NSA runs listening posts in Beijing, Shanghai,
Chengdu, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Furthermore, this week Japanese media reported that in 2011 the NSA sought Tokyo's help to wiretap fiber-optic cables running
through Japan. [3] This move was almost certainly aimed primary at gathering important political and economic data from China - terrorists of East Asian ancestry are
not generally regarded as a major threat to the American homeland. The Japanese government declined the proposal because intercepting communications on such a
large scale would be illegal under Japanese law. This story encapsulates some of the absurdities of the current situation. China, long accused by Washington of
cooperation with lawless "rogue states", has been protected from American surveillance by the laws of Japan. Morality matters The
second front in
which Beijing can make advances against Washington is in the sphere of international public opinion.
American leaders have long espoused an image of America as a uniquely ethical nation, a "city upon a hill",
an ideal moral power which lesser, more barbaric and grossly self-interested countries should emulate. The
practice of secretly monitoring tens of millions of phone calls of one's allies - including the communications of some
of America's closest friends - has severely tarnished this image. China's official media is now capitalizing on this
development. On Wednesday, the top story on the China Daily website was entitled "Spy scandal 'will weaken' US global credibility". Chinese-language media
was even more vociferous. State-run CCTV Four featured Zhang Zhaozhong, a well-known military commentator, as saying: "Now the United States, if they wish to
return to democratic freedom and human rights, should apologize to the entire world, saying: I am sorry, we designed some software like this, we have this type of
back door, in the future we will manage it seriously..." [4] How times have changed. Only a few months ago, the US government was increasingly vocal in criticizing
Chinese cyber espionage. Before President Barack Obama went to his first summit with President Xi Jinping, a White House official called on China to abide by
international "rules of the road", and told reporters that "Governments are responsible for cyber attacks that take place from within their borders". [5] China
is
eager to remind domestic and international audiences of official American hypocrisy, now that such hypocrisy has
been exposed on a global scale. Morality - or rather, the perception of morality - plays a significant role in
America's foreign policy objectives. The United States, for all its flaws, has garnered admirers and supporters
all around the world for the open, democratic ideals it disseminates. In contrast, Chinese foreign policy has had little relation to
ideology for the past several decades. Beijing cements its relationships with foreign countries around mutual self-interest, usually of the economic kind. Beijing
stands to benefit from emphasizing America's self-induced loss of moral standing. In the wake of Guantanamo Bay
and the Iraq war, Washington cannot afford a further loss of integrity. If the United States is increasingly
perceived to an amoral and hypocritical power, then Chinese policies of practical economic benefits and
political non-interference may be increasingly attractive. It is worth pointing out that China is Brazil's largest trading partner, and
bilateral trade between China and Germany is more valuable than trade between Germany and the US. As revelations of NSA electronic
surveillance continue to mount, expect Beijing to continue highlighting Washington's moral duplicity. China will
also support initiatives at the UN to curtail cyber espionage, potentially deepening divides between America and its
allies. However, the damage is largely self-wrought. The rocks that were once thrown at China have come back to
shatter the glass-house of American integrity.
Third is legitimacy—NSA overreach compromises it in a wide array of foreign policy areas.
Kehl, Open Technology Institute senior policy analyst, 2014
(Danielle, “Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity”, July,
http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf)
Beyond Internet Freedom, the NSA disclosures “have badly undermined U.S. credibility with many of its allies,” Ian
Bremmer argued in Foreign Policy in November 2013.214 Similarly, as Georg Mascolo and Ben Scott point out about the post-Snowden world, “the shift from an open secret to a published
secret is a game changer… it exposes the gap between what governments will tolerate from one another under cover of darkness and what publics will tolerate from other governments in the light
From stifled negotiations with close allies like France and Germany to more tense relations with emerging
powers including Brazil and China, the leaks have undoubtedly weakened the American position in international
relations, opening up the United States to new criticism and political maneuvering that would have been far less
likely a year ago.216 U.S. allies like France, Israel, and Germany are upset by the NSA’s actions, as their reactions to the disclosures make clear.217 Early reports about close
of day.”215
allies threatening to walk out of negotiations with the United States—such as calls by the French government to delay EU-U.S. trade talks in July 2013 until the U.S. government answered
European questions about the spying allegations218—appear to be exaggerated, but there has certainly been fallout from the disclosures. For months after the first Snowden leaks, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel would not visit the United States until the two countries signed a “no-spy” agreement—a document essentially requiring the NSA to respect German law and rights of
German citizens in its activities. When Merkel finally agreed come to Washington, D.C. in May 2014, tensions rose quickly because the two countries were unable to reach an agreement on
Even as Obama and Merkel attempted to
present a unified front while they threatened additional sanctions against Russia over the crisis in the Ukraine, it was
evident that relations are still strained between the two countries. While President Obama tried to keep up the appearance of cordial relations at a joint
intelligence sharing, despite the outrage provoked by news that the NSA had monitored Merkel’s own communications.219
press conference, Merkel suggested that it was too soon to return to “business as usual” when tensions still remain over U.S. spying allegations.220 The Guardian called the visit “frosty” and
“awkward.”221 The German Parliament has also begun hearings to investigate the revelations and suggested that it is weighing further action against the United States.222 Moreover, the
Brazilian
President Dilma Rousseff has seized on the NSA disclosures as an opportunity to broaden Brazil’s influence not
only in the Internet governance field, but also on a broader range of geopolitical issues. Her decision not to attend an
October 2013 meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House was a direct response to NSA spying—and
a serious, high-profile snub. In addition to cancelling what would have been the first state visit by a Brazilian
president to the White House in nearly 20 years, Rousseff’s decision marked the first time a world leader had turned
down a state dinner with the President of the United States.223 In his statement on the postponement, President Obama was forced to address the issue of
disclosures have weakened the United States’ relationship with emerging powers like Brazil, where the fallout from NSA surveillance threatens to do more lasting damage.
NSA surveillance directly, acknowledging “that he understands and regrets the concerns disclosures of alleged U.S. intelligence activities have generated in Brazil and made clear that he is
committed to working together with President Rousseff and her government in diplomatic channels to move beyond this issue as a source of tension in our bilateral relationship.”224 Many
observers have noted that the Internet Freedom agenda could be one of the first casualties of the NSA disclosures. The U.S. government is fighting an uphill battle at the moment to regain
credibility in international Internet governance debates and to defend its moral high ground as a critic of authoritarian regimes that limit freedom of expression and violate human rights online.
Moreover, the fallout from the NSA’s surveillance activities has spilled over into other areas of U.S. foreign
policy and currently threatens bilateral relations with a number of key allies. Going forward, it is critical that
decisions about U.S. spying are made in consideration of a broader set of interests so that they do not
impede—or, in some cases, completely undermine—U.S. foreign policy goals.
Legitimacy of U.S. hegemony’s key to global stability-prevents great power war
Fujimoto, US Army Lt. Colonel, 2012
(Kevin, “Preserving U.S. National Security Interests Through a Liberal World Construct”, 1-11,
http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/index.cfm/articles/Preserving-US-National-Security-Interests-LiberalWorld-Construct/2012/1/11)
The emergence of peer competitors, not terrorism, presents the greatest long-term threat to our national security. Over the
past decade, while the United States concentrated its geopolitical focus on fighting two land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, China has quietly begun
implementing a strategy to emerge as the dominant imperial power within Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.
Within the next 2 decades, China will likely replace the United States as the Asia-Pacific regional hegemonic power, if not replace us as the global superpower.1
Although China presents its rise as peaceful and non-hegemonic, its construction of naval bases in neighboring countries and military expansion in the region
contradict that argument. With
a credible threat to its leading position in a unipolar global order , the United States should adopt
a grand strategy of “investment,” building legitimacy and capacity in the very institutions that will protect our
interests in a liberal global construct of the future when we are no longer the dominant imperial power . Similar to the
Clinton era's grand strategy of “enlargement,”2 investment supports a world order predicated upon a system of basic rules and
principles, however, it differs in that the United States should concentrate on the institutions (i.e., United Nations, World Trade Organization, ASEAN, alliances,
etc.) that support a world order, as opposed to expanding democracy as a system of governance for other sovereign nations. Despite its claims of a benevolent
expansion, China is already executing a strategy of expansion similar to that of Imperial Japan's Manchukuo policy during the 1930s.3 This
three-part strategy involves: “(i) (providing) significant investments in economic infrastructure for extracting natural resources; (ii) (conducting) military interventions
(to) protect economic interests; and, (iii) . . . (annexing) via installation of puppet governments.”4 China has already solidified its control over neighboring North
Korea and Burma, and has similarly begun more ambitious engagements in Africa and Central Asia where it seeks to expand its frontier.5 Noted political scientist
Samuel P. Huntington provides further analysis of the motives behind China's imperial aspirations. He contends that “China (has) historically conceived itself as
encompassing a “‘Sinic Zone'. . . (with) two goals: to become the champion of Chinese culture . . . and to resume its historical position, which it lost in the nineteenth
century, as the hegemonic power in East Asia.”6 Furthermore, China holds one quarter of the world's population, and rapid economic growth will increase its demand
for natural resources from outside its borders as its people seek a standard of living comparable to that of Western civilization. The
rise of peer
competitors has historically resulted in regional instability and one should compare “the emergence of China to the rise of. . . Germany as the
dominant power in Europe in the late nineteenth century.”7 Furthermore, the rise of another peer competitor on the level of the Soviet Union of the
Cold War ultimately threatens U.S. global influence, challenging its concepts of human rights, liberalism, and democracy; as well as its ability to co-opt
other nations to accept them.8 This decline in influence, while initially limited to the Asia-Pacific region, threatens to result in significant
conflict if it ultimately leads to a paradigm shift in the ideas and principles that govern the existing world order . A
grand strategy of investment to address the threat of China requires investing in institutions, addressing ungoverned states, and building
legitimacy through multilateralism. The United States must build capacity in the existing institutions and alliances accepted globally
as legitimate representative bodies of the world's governments. For true legitimacy, the United States must support these institutions, not only when convenient, in
order to avoid the appearance of unilateralism, which would ultimately undermine the very organizations upon whom it will rely when it is no longer the global
hegemon. The United States must also address ungoverned states, not only as breeding grounds for terrorism, but as conflicts that threaten to spread into regional
instability, thereby drawing in superpowers with competing interests. Huntington proposes that the greatest source of conflict will come from what he defines as one
“core” nation's involvement in a conflict between another core nation and a minor state within its immediate sphere of influence.9 For example, regional instability in
South Asia10 threatens to involve combatants from the United States, India, China, and the surrounding nations. Appropriately, the
United States, as a global
power, must apply all elements of its national power now to address the problem of weak and failing states, which threaten to
serve as the principal catalysts of future global conflicts.11 Admittedly, the application of American power in the internal affairs of a
sovereign nation raises issues. Experts have posed the question of whether the United States should act as the world's enforcer of stability, imposing its concepts of
human rights on other states. In response to this concern, The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty authored a study titled, The
Responsibility to Protect,12 calling for revisions to the understanding of sovereignty within the United Nations (UN) charter. This commission places the
responsibility to protect peoples of sovereign nations on both the state itself and, more importantly, on the international community.13 If approved, this revision will
establish a precedent whereby the United States has not only the authority and responsibility to act within the internal affairs of a repressive government, but does so
Any effort to legitimize and support a liberal world construct
requires the United States to adopt a multilateral doctrine which avoids the precepts of the previous
administration: “preemptive war, democratization, and U.S. primacy of unilateralism,”14 which have resulted in the alienation of
former allies worldwide. Predominantly Muslim nations, whose citizens had previously looked to the United States as an example of representative
with global legitimacy if done under the auspices of a UN mandate.
governance, viewed the Iraq invasion as the seminal dividing action between the Western and the Islamic world. Appropriately, any future American interventions
into the internal affairs of another sovereign nation must first seek to establish consensus by gaining the approval of a body representing global opinion, and must
reject military unilateralism as a threat to that governing body's legitimacy. Despite the long-standing U.S. tradition of a liberal foreign policy since the start of the
Cold War, the famous liberal leviathan, John Ikenberry, argues that “the post-9/11 doctrine of national security strategy . . . has been based on . . . American global
dominance, the preventative use of force, coalitions of the willing, and the struggle between liberty and evil.”15 American foreign policy has misguidedly focused on
spreading democracy, as opposed to building a liberal international order based on universally accepted principles that actually set the conditions for individual nation
states to select their own system of governance. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, argues
that true Wilsonian idealists “support liberal democracy, but reject the possibility of democratizing peoples . . .”16 and reject military primacy in favor of supporting a
rules-based system of order. Investment
in a liberal world order would also set the conditions for the United States to garner
support from noncommitted regional powers (i.e., Russia, India, Japan, etc.), or “swing civilizations,” in countering
China's increasing hegemonic influence.17 These states reside within close proximity to the Indian Ocean, which will likely emerge as the
geopolitical focus of the American foreign policy during the 21st century, and appropriately have the ability to offset China's imperial
dominance in the region.18 Critics of a liberal world construct argue that idealism is not necessary, based on the assumption that nations that trade together will
not go to war with each other.19 In response, foreign affairs columnist Thomas L. Friedman rebukes their arguments, acknowledging the predicate of commercial
while globalization is creating a new international order,
differences between civilizations still create friction that may overcome all other factors and lead to conflict.20
interdependence as a factor only in the decision to go to war, and argues that
Detractors also warn that as China grows in power, it will no longer observe “the basic rules and principles of a liberal international order,” which largely result from
Western concepts of foreign relations. Ikenberry addresses this risk, citing that China's leaders already recognize that they will gain more authority within the existing
liberal order, as opposed to contesting it. China's leaders “want the protection and rights that come from the international order's . . . defense of sovereignty,”21 from
Even if China executes a peaceful rise and the
the emergence of a new imperial power will challenge American
which they have benefitted during their recent history of economic growth and international expansion.
United States overestimates a Sinic threat to its national security interest,
leadership in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific region. That being said, it is more likely that China, as evidenced by its military and economic expansion,
will displace the United States as the regional hegemonic power. Recognizing this threat now, the United States must prepare for the eventual
transition and immediately begin building the legitimacy and support of a system of rules that will protect its
interests later when we are no longer the world's only superpower.
The alternative is regional blocs and great power war
Zhang et al., Carnegie Endowment researcher, 2011
(Yuhan, “America’s decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry”, 1-22,
http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-a-harbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/)
This does not necessarily mean that the US is in systemic decline, but it encompasses a trend that appears to be negative and perhaps alarming. Although the US still
possesses incomparable military prowess and its economy remains the world’s largest, the once seemingly indomitable chasm that separated America from anyone
else is narrowing. Thus, the
global distribution of power is shifting, and the inevitable result will be a world that is less
peaceful, liberal and prosperous, burdened by a dearth of effective conflict regulation. Over the past two decades, no
other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under these circumstances, motivated by both
opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role . Canada, most
of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great
power conflicts. However,
as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers, so will the pulling power behind the
US alliance. The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse , American interests and influence can be more
readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid. As history attests, power decline and redistribution result
in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest
towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the
notion that Britain ‘rules the waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemisphere’s security to become
the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international system with democracy and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics:
enforcement of property rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society.
As a result of such political stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared.
And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and cooperative
relations. However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence declines? Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited
people across much of Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question
could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public
imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic
world would return to the problems of the 1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry. Furthermore,
multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to regional organisations. For
example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their
own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and, well, less free — and
major powers would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum
element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also
becoming less attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods System in 1973). A world without
American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by
an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one
possibility we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.
Heg without legitimacy causes violent transitions—voluntary limits on power maintain
relative stability
Griffiths, Griffith IR professor, 2004
(Martin, “Beyond The Bush Doctrine: American Hegemony And World Order”, Australian Journal of American
Studies, www.anzasa.arts.usyd.edu.au/a.j.a.s/Articles/1_04/Griffiths.pdf )
In international relations, an established hegemony helps the cause of international peace in a number of ways. First,
a hegemon deters renewed military competition and provides general security through its preponderant power.
Second, a hegemon can, if it chooses, strengthen international norms of conduct. Third, a hegemon’s economic
power serves as the basis of a global lending system and free trade regime, providing economic incentives for states
to cooperate and forego wars for resources and markets. Such was the nature of British hegemony in the nineteenth century, hence the term
Pax Britannica. After the Second World War, the United States has performed the roles that Britain once played, though with an even greater preponderance of power.
Thus, much
of the peace between democracies after World War Two can be explained by the fact that the politicalmilitary hegemony of the United States has helped to create a security structure in Europe and the Pacific conducive
to peaceful interaction. Today, American hegemony is tolerated by many states in Europe and Asia, not because the
United States is particularly liked, but because of the perception that its absence might result in aggression by
aspiring regional hegemons. However, Chalmers Johnson has argued that this is a false perception promoted from Washington to silence demands for its
military withdrawal from Japan and South Korea.8 It is true that hegemonic stability theory can be classified as belonging in the realist tradition because of its focus
on the importance of power structures in international politics. The problem is that power alone cannot explain why some states choose to follow or acquiesce to one
hegemon while vigorously opposing and forming counter-alliances against another hegemon. Thus
when international relations theorists employ
the concept of hegemonic stability, they supplement it with the concept of legitimacy.9 Legitimacy in international
society refers simply to the perceived justice of the international system. As in domestic politics, legitimacy is a notoriously
difficult factor to pin down and measure. Still, one cannot do away with the concept, since it is clear that all
political orders rely to some extent on consent in addition to coercion. Hegemony without legitimacy is
insufficient to deter violent challenges to the international order, and may provoke attempts to build counteralliances against the hegemon. Hegemonic authority which accepts the principle of the independence of states and
treats states with a relative degree of benevolence is more easily accepted. The legitimacy of American hegemony during the cold war
was facilitated by two important characteristics of the era. First, the communist threat (whether real or imaginary) disguised the tension between the United States’
American hegemony managed to combine
economic liberalism between industrialised states with an institutional architecture (the Bretton Woods system) that
moderated the volatility of transaction flows across borders. It enabled governments to provide social investments,
safety nets and adjustment assistance at the domestic level.11 In the industrialised world, this grand bargain formed
the basis of the longest and most equitable economic expansion in human history, from the 1950s to the 1980s. And
it provided the institutional foundation for the newest wave of globalisation, which began not long thereafter and is
far broader in scope and deeper in reach than its nineteenth century antecedent. The system that the United States led the way in
promotion of its own interests and its claim to make the world safe for capitalism.10 Second,
creating after 1945 has fared well because the connecting and restraining aspects of democracy and institutions reduce the incentives for Western nations to engage in
strategic rivalry or balance against American hegemony. The strength of this order is attested to by the longevity of its institutions, alliances and arrangements, based
on their legitimacy in the eyes of the participants. Reacting against the closed autarchic regions that had contributed to the world depression and split the globe into
competing blocs before the war, the United States led the way in constructing a post-war order that was based on economic openness, joint management of the
rules and institutions that were organised to support domestic economic stability and
social security.12 This order in turn was built around a basic bargain: the hegemonic state obtains
commitments from secondary states to participate in the international order, and the hegemon in return
places limits on the exercise of its power. The advantage for the weak state is that it does not fear domination or abandonment, reducing the
incentive to balance against the hegemon, and the leading state does not need to use its power to actively enforce order and compliance. It is these restraints
on both sides and the willingness to participate in this mutual accord that explains the longevity of the system,
even after the end of the cold war. But as the founder and defender of this international order, the United States, far
from being a domineering hegemon, was a reluctant superpower.
Western political-economic order, and
Plan
The United States federal government should establish FISA Amendments Act section 702
as the sole authority for domestic surveillance of information in the custody of an American
company as it pertains to national security.
Solvency – 1AC
Making section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act the sole authority for domestic
surveillance restores both international and private sector trust which is necessary for
technological competitiveness and legitimacy.
Bishai, Treasury presidential management fellow, 2015
(Chrissy, “Restoring Trust between U.S. Companies and Their Government on Surveillance Issues”, 3-19,
http://www.thirdway.org/report/restoring-trust-between-us-companies-and-their-government-on-surveillance-issues)
Allegations of intrusive U.S. government electronic surveillance activities have raised international outcry and created
antagonism between U.S. technology companies and the government. Without a bold and enduring reform,
American companies will continue to suffer a competitive disadvantage from perceptions of U.S. government
intrusion into their data. We propose bringing electronic surveillance collection from U.S. companies into an existing
statutory framework in order to reassure international customers and to respect the rights of U.S. companies
operating abroad. The Problem In the wake of the Snowden revelations, people around the world have become uneasy about the security of their
communications that flow through the servers of American companies.1 They now fear—not without reason—that the NSA has broad access to a wide range of their
data that may not have any direct relevance to the core foreign policy or security concerns of the United States.2 Snowden has also alleged that the NSA accessed
American companies’ data without their knowledge.3 American technology companies reacted with outrage to media reports that, unbeknownst to them, the U.S.
government had intruded onto their networks overseas and spoofed their web pages or products.4 These stories suggested that the government created and snuck
through back doors to take the data rather than come through well-established front doors.5 Beyond
the broad implications for civil liberties and
diplomacy, these fears led to two immediate consequences for the industry: First, many U.S. companies shifted to an
adversarial relationship with their own government. They moved to secure and encrypt their data to protect the privacy rights of their
customers.6 They are pushing for reform.7 They are building state-of-the-art data centers in Europe and staffing their high-paying jobs with Europeans, not
Americans.8 They are challenging the government in court.9 Second,
international customers of U.S. technology and communications
companies began taking their business elsewhere. Brazil decided against a $4.5 billion Boeing deal and cancelled Microsoft contracts.10
Germany dropped Verizon in favor of Deutsche Telekom.11 Both of these examples suggest that if even friendly governments can go to the expense and trouble of
dropping American companies, foreign individual and corporate customers could certainly decide to switch their data providers for greater privacy protection. Simply
put, the reputational harm had a direct impact on American companies’ competitiveness—some estimate that it has cost U.S. tech firms $180 billion thus far.12
Defenders of the programs may argue that the Snowden allegations are overblown or that foreign companies are just using the revelations for their own protectionist
purposes. But it doesn’t matter if the allegations are actually true because the global public believes them to be true, and they are therefore real in their consequences.
In many ways, the Snowden revelations have created a sense of betrayal among American companies. Some had been providing information to the NSA through
existing legislative means – either under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act,13 or under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (FAA).14 It was unsettling to read
stories that, outside of this statutorily compelled cooperation, the government had been getting access to huge amounts of their data in other unauthorized ways. As
one tech employee said, “the back door makes a mockery of the front door.” Fixing the Problem Means Changing the Existing Legal Framework Currently,
the
U.S. collects electronic communications under four main authorities. For collection occurring under both 215 and 702, the companies
would have been served with an order compelling production of their data. But outside the U.S., Executive Order 12333,15 the long-standing guidance for foreign
intelligence activities, would govern the kind of collection that has caused international outrage. E.O. 12333, signed by President Reagan, set the ground rules and
authorization for foreign intelligence collection when the nation’s primary security threat was the Soviet Union. At that time, traditional intelligence activities would
have been focused on other nation-states—identifying their spies, trying to recruit spies for the U.S., and trying to steal other countries’ secrets while protecting our
own. But the growth of terrorist groups’ capabilities, and particularly the 9/11 attacks, helped dissolve the separation between traditional overseas espionage and
counter-terrorism. As
the nation was grappling with new threats posed by terrorism, people around the world were sharing
more and more of their information online and using mostly American companies to do so. Yet the legal framework
that had once recognized privacy rights was ill-suited to the Internet Age. The Intelligence Community’s traditional position that
constitutional rights like the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections didn’t apply to non-Americans outside the U.S. might have been clear when travelling and
communicating internationally were more difficult. But today’s free-flowing movement of people and data means that the “nationality” of an individual’s
communications is far less obvious.16 While
extending constitutional or privacy protections to foreigners abroad is a tricky
legal proposition, for many their data is being held by entities that are entitled to the due process and privacy
protections of the U.S. Constitution: American companies. Our tech firms often act as custodians of other people’s data, and as such don’t
have the same heightened privacy interests as the targets of that data. But accessing the companies’ data without even giving notice to the owner of the servers raises
serious constitutional questions. As a politician once famously noted, “corporations are people too.”17 As a legal (if not political) matter, he was right—these
American tech companies are “U.S. Persons,” and they therefore should know when the government seeks to access the data they possess. The companies should be
entitled to notice, especially since they can be compelled to cooperate with law enforcement requests to hand over user data. Those protections should hold true
regardless of whether the user data sought by the U.S. government is that of Americans or non-Americans. In addition to those privacy protections that all U.S.
persons enjoy under the Constitution, both at home and abroad, surveillance reform should meet the following principles when dealing with information about or from
Americans: The U.S. government should have a process, consistent with the Constitution, to acquire from companies the information that it needs to secure the
country. The U.S. government should have a national security reason to collect the information that it requests. U.S. companies should not have to fear unauthorized
access to their data or products from their own government. Any process to acquire information from U.S. companies should have safeguards to prevent misuse or
In order to meet the
principles above, we propose that FAA’s 702 framework be the exclusive means for conducting electronic
surveillance when the information is in the custody of an American company (“FAA Exclusivity”). Section 702 of
FAA provides procedures to authorize data collection of foreign targets reasonably believed to be outside the U.S . It
intentional over-collection. The Solution Include Overseas Collection from American Companies in Existing Statutory Frameworks
empowers the Attorney General (AG) and Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to jointly certify a high volume of targeting and does not require the requesters to
identify specific non-U.S. persons who will be targeted. Under this 702 framework, information on foreigners that’s in the custody of a U.S. company should be
subject to the following rules: The data must relate to targets “reasonably believed” to be outside the U.S. (can include foreign persons, governments or their factions
and similar entities). The AG and DNI must jointly submit annual “certifications” to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Certifications must identify
categories of foreign intelligence targets that the Government wants to surveil electronically; they do not need to identify specific persons to be targeted. Certifications
may include information or representations from other federal agencies authorized to cooperate with the AG, DNI, or Director of the NSA. Certifications must be
reviewed by the FISC, which can authorize the targeting if they deem that the statutory requirements have been met. After the certifications are approved, the AG and
DNI issue (written) “directives” to the providers, ordering them to assist the government. Collection should be executed with the appropriate “minimization
procedures” in place to limit the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of any non–publicly available U.S. person information acquired through the Section 702
program. The AG, in consultation with the DNI, must adopt FISC-approved targeting and minimization procedures that are “reasonably designed” to ensure that the
Government does not collect wholly domestic communications, and that only persons outside the U.S. are surveilled. The AG and DNI must also create acquisition
guidelines (which are not subject to FISC approval). Advantages of an FAA Framework Shifting
the legal authority for collection of data in the
custody of an American company from E.O. 12333 to an FAA framework would have a number of advantages . Most
importantly, it would create a way for the government to get the data it needs from American companies while
giving those firms assurances that their data would not be accessed in other unauthorized ways. In particular, the
FAA framework would create specific purposes for which the information could be sought, rather than allow the indiscriminate
scooping up of every aspect of a person’s communications. FAA’s stated purpose is to acquire foreign intelligence information, which
it defines as "information that relates to the ability of the U.S. to protect against an actual or potential attack by a
foreign power; sabotage, international terrorism, or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by a foreign
power; or clandestine intelligence activities by a foreign power." The FAA framework would also create a
requirement that the Executive Branch explain how the information sought meets the statutory purposes. And there
would be the additional check of an independent judge who would review the certifications and issue directives .
Though this process is ex parte, and therefore a potential rubber stamp for the government, there have been no documented instances of intentional abuses of the
system in seeking information beyond the statutory purposes. Finally,
the FAA framework would subject information sought from U.S.
companies to the statutory oversight requirements of the law. These are extensive and explicit.18 In addition to
FAA’s inherent protections, FAA Exclusivity would send a powerful message to the rest of the world: when
the U.S. conducts electronic surveillance overseas from American companies, it is doing so for a particular
national security purpose. The FAA structure with FISC review provides an independent check that the statutory purposes are met. Through transparency
agreements with the government, the American companies would be able to provide their customers with some sense of how many requests are made. FAA
Exclusivity would not change the E.O. 12333 authorities with respect to non-U.S. companies. It would not change E.O. 12333 authorities when the Executive Branch
seeks to obtain the information in some way other than through a U.S. company that holds the data (i.e. traditional espionage, like breaking into a target’s laptop,
parking a surveillance van outside their house, or sending a spy, would still be permissible). Of course, FAA Exclusivity wouldn’t solve every problem. It would not
prevent foreign governments from collecting information themselves and then providing it to U.S. intelligence agencies, as U.S. law cannot bind a foreign
government. And some may argue that FAA provides inadequate civil liberties protections for Americans. This proposal says nothing about the adequacy of that
statute in this respect. What it says is that for data held by an American company about a target that is not a U.S. person, the checks within FAA are stronger than
those solely under E.O. 12333. Others
have argued that the FAA shifts the burden of cooperation solely onto the company,
which will suffer greater reputational harm as a more witting participant in affirmatively granting the government’s
requests. However, companies have suffered reputational harm as a result of allegations of unwitting cooperation.
Making the cooperation known, even if it’s secret, gives the companies the opportunity to account for it in their own
planning. The move by certain U.S. companies to place subsidiaries in foreign ownership to resist requests by the U.S.
government presents an interesting twist on this idea. In shifting the balance back to increased protections for U.S. companies , this legislation
would change the incentives so that claiming U.S. law would have operational advantages in giving companies
uniformity of law for all their data. This would also encourage the use of a single choice of law for all data governed
by a company—that of the nationality of incorporation—rather than encouraging a choice of law patchwork to
govern the data as it flows around the world. Finally, some foreign multinational companies operating in the U.S. and abroad may argue that this is
inconsistent with principles that we treat all companies operating in the U.S. the same way for purposes of law. While that would remain true under this proposal, it
would create a difference in how the U.S. treats U.S. companies operating abroad compared to how it treats foreign companies abroad. But stretching the U.S.
Constitution to foreign companies abroad is to stretch the document too far. If, on the other hand, those companies see advantage in changing their nationality to U.S.
in order to claim protections of those laws, then that is the corporate version of the kind of immigration patterns that America has seen since its founding. Conclusion
Using FAA’s framework as the exclusive means to access data that U.S. companies are holding will give the
Intelligence Community a statutory framework to be able to get the intelligence information that it needs to protect
the nation while restoring the trust relationship between the companies and our government . In addition, it
will help restore the faith of foreign governments and customers that when American companies are acting
overseas, they bring with them American values, including those of privacy protections.
The plan sends a sufficient signal of reform that resolves NSA related scandals.
Kehl, Open Technology Institute senior policy analyst, 2014
(Danielle, “Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s Impact on the Economy, Internet Freedom & Cybersecurity”, July,
http://www.newamerica.org/downloads/Surveilance_Costs_Final.pdf)
The NSA mass surveillance programs described in the introduction, conducted domestically pursuant to USA
PATRIOT Act Section 215 and FISA Amendments Act Section 702 and conducted outside the U.S. under Executive
Order 12333, have arguably had the greatest and most immediate impact on America’s tech industry and global
standing. Strictly limiting the scope and purpose of surveillance under these authorities—not just in regard to
surveillance of Americans but of non-Americans as well—will be critical to regaining the trust of individuals,
companies and countries around the world, as well as stemming the economic and political costs of the NSA
programs. The President’s NSA Review Group acknowledged the need for such reform in its report on surveillance programs, affirming that “the right of privacy
has been recognized as a basic human right that all nations should respect,” and cautioned that “ unrestrained American surveillance of nonUnited States persons might alienate other nations, fracture the unity of the Internet, and undermine the free flow of
information across national boundaries.”324 In addition to recommending a variety new protections for U.S. persons, the Review Group
urged in its Recommendation 13 that surveillance of non-U.S. persons under Section 702 or “any other authority”—
a reference intended to include Executive Order 12333325 — should be strictly limited to the purpose of protecting
national security, should not be used for economic espionage, should not be targeted based solely on a person’s political or religious views, and should be
subject to careful oversight and the highest degree of transparency possible.326 Fully implementing this recommendation—and particularly
restricting Section 702 and Executive Order 12333 surveillance to specific national security purposes rather than
foreign intelligence collection generally—would indicate significant progress toward addressing the concerns
raised in the recent Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on
“The Right to Privacy in the Digital Age.” The UN report highlights how, despite the universality of human rights, the common distinction
between “‘foreigners’ and ‘citizens’…within national security surveillance oversight regimes” has resulted in “significantly weaker – or even non-existent – privacy
protection for foreigners and non-citizens, as compared with those of citizens.” 327
The leading legislative reform proposal in the U.S.
Congress, the USA FREEDOM Act, would go a long way to protecting both U.S. and non-U.S. persons against the
bulk collection under Section 215 of records held by American telephone and Internet companies.3 28 On that basis, passage
of the law would very much help address the trust gap that the NSA programs have created. However, with regard to Section 702, the bill as
originally introduced only added new protections for U.S. persons or for wholly domestic communications,329 and
even those protections were stripped out or weakened in the version of the bill that was passed by the House of
Representatives in May 2014.330 Meanwhile, neither the bill as introduced nor as passed by the House addresses surveillance conducted extraterritorially
under Executive or 12333. Therefore, even if USA FREEDOM is eventually approved by both the House and the
Senate and signed into law by the President, much more will ultimately need to be done to reassure foreign
users of U.S.-based communications networks, services, and products that their rights are being respected.
2AC Case Extensions
Data Localization Bad – Global Econ
Halting data localization boosts growth across the globe.
Bauer, ECIPE senior economist, 2014
(Matthias, “The Costs of Data Localisation: A Friendly Fire on Economic Recovery”, May,
http://www.ecipe.org/publications/dataloc/)
This paper aims to quantify the losses that result from data localisation requirements and related data privacy and
security laws that discriminate against foreign suppliers of data, and downstream goods and services providers,
using GTAP8. The study looks at the effects of recently proposed or enacted legislation in seven jurisdictions, namely Brazil, China, the European Union (EU),
India, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam. • Access to foreign markets and globalised supply chains are the major sources of
growth, jobs and new investments – in particular for developing economies. Manufacturing and exports are also
dependent on having access to a broad range of services at competitive prices , which depend on secure and
efficient access to data. Data localisation potentially affects any business that uses the internet to produce, deliver, and receive payments for their work, or
to pay their salaries and taxes. • The impact of recently proposed or enacted legislation on GDP is substantial in all seven
countries: Brazil (-0.2%), China (-1.1%), EU (-0.4%), India (-0.1%), Indonesia (-0.5%), Korea (-0.4%) and Vietnam
(-1.7%). These changes significantly affect post-crisis economic recovery and can undo the productivity
increases from major trade agreements, while economic growth is often instrumental to social stability. • If
these countries would also introduce economy-wide data localisation requirements that apply across all sectors of
the economy, GDP losses would be even higher: Brazil (-0.8%), the EU (-1.1%), India (-0.8%), Indonesia (-0.7%),
Korea (-1.1%). • The impact on overall domestic investments is also considerable: Brazil (-4.2%), China (-1.8%),
the EU (-3.9%), India (-1.4%), Indonesia (-2.3%), Korea (-0.5%) and Vietnam (-3.1). Exports of China and Indonesia also
decrease by -1.7% as a consequence of direct loss of competitiveness. • Welfare losses (expressed as actual economic losses by the citizens) amount to up to $63 bn
for China and $193 bn for the EU. For India, the loss per worker is equivalent to 11% of the average month salary, and almost 13 percent in China and around 20% in
Korea and Brazil. • The
findings show that the negative impact of disrupting cross-border data flows should not be
ignored. The globalised economy has made unilateral trade restrictions a counterproductive strategy that puts the
country at a relative loss to others, with no possibilities to mitigate the negative impact in the long run . Forced localisation
is often the product of poor or one-sided economic analysis, with the surreptitious objective of keeping foreign competitors out. Any gains stemming
from data localisation are too small to outweigh losses in terms of welfare and output in the general economy.
Ensuring access to a global Internet would boost industries in every sector of the economy
around the globe.
Hill, Global Governance Futures fellow, 2014
(Jonah, “The Growth of Data Localization Post-Snowden: Analysis and Recommendations for U.S. Policymakers
and Business Leaders”, 5-1, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2430275)
Data localization (most especially, as a ban on foreign firms operating local servers) appeals to those political and business leaders who hope to give domestic
technology firms a competitive advantage. It also appeals to those leaders who believe that that competitive advantage will, over time, lead to the development of a
strong technology sector, following what might be thought of as a “China developmental model,” in which early domestic protectionism is tapered off as local firms
find their competitive edge.
But again, the benefits of this kind of policy (which generally only advantage certain favored
local companies) are outweighed by its drawbacks. By prohibiting foreign firms from operating in country, or by
making operations prohibitively expensive for foreign firms, governments are dramatically limiting the options
available to local consumers. This includes small businesses that often require the cheaper and more advanced
services that only international firms can provide. Indeed, even non tech-related industries that nevertheless rely
on IT services, such as advanced manufacturi ng, are likely to see that their costs rise and their efficiencies deteriorate
as a consequence of Internet protectionism in the guise of localization. These costs may not be trivial. The European Centre
for International Political Economy has estimated that if and when cross-border data flows between the U.S. and EU
are seriously disrupted (assuming existing models for cross-border transfer and processing of data, such as the Safe
Harbor and BCRs108 are disrupted), the negative impact on EU GDP could reach -0.8% to -1.3%, and EU services
exports to the United States could drop by as much as -6.7% due to loss of competitiveness.109 Developing countries, too, would likely
suffer. There, Internet access and data services are significant drivers of economic growth. According to several important studies on the
issue, access to the Internet can dramatically reduce the effect on developing countries of geographical
isolation from major exports markets.110And, according to a Deloitte study, expanding access to the 4 billion people who
live in developing countries to levels developed economies currently enjoy would increase productivity in those
areas by as much as 25 percent, add $2.2 trillion in additional GDP, increase the GDP growth rate by 72 percent, add
more than 140 million new jobs, and lift 160 million people out of extreme poverty. 1 11 Certainly, the cost inherent in
localization alone will not forestall all of these positive developments, but it would retard them. To leaders in developing nations such as India and Brazil, where data
localization measures are under serious consideration, these potential adverse economic impacts ought to give serious pause. Less
directly, but perhaps
even more critically as a long-term matter, data localization adversely affects the Internet’s capacity for productivity
by reducing the Internet’s “network effect” and “generativity.112” By placing limitations on which firms can
participate in the network, data localization reduces the overall size of the network, which, according to network
theory as well as Metcalfe’s Law (which states that the value of a communications network is proportional to the number of users of the system),
would bring up both costs and the overall innovative potential of the aggregated network. Consider big data analytics,
for example, which often involves the transfer of data from numerous sources without regard to geography and can have major benefits for society.113 By severing
the ties between nations and the data that can be collected an analyzed, data localization vastly diminishes the capacity for new discoveries and for new solutions
to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
NSA Hurts Tech Companies
NSA hurts tech companies
Whittaker, ZDNet editor, 2015
(Zack, “It's official: NSA spying is hurting the US tech economy”, 2-25, http://www.zdnet.com/article/anotherreason-to-hate-the-nsa-china-is-backing-away-from-us-tech-brands/)
China is no longer using high-profile US technology brands for state purchases, amid ongoing revelations about
mass surveillance and hacking by the US government.
A new report confirmed key brands, including Cisco, Apple, Intel, and McAfee -- among others -- have been
dropped from the Chinese government's list of authorized brands, a Reuters report said Wednesday.The number of
approved foreign technology brands fell by a third, based on an analysis of the procurement list. Less than half of
those companies with security products remain on the list.
Although a number of reasons were cited, domestic companies were said to offer "more product guarantees" than
overseas rivals in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. Some reports have attempted to pin a multi-billion dollar
figure on the impact of the leaks.
In reality, the figure could be incalculable.
The report confirms what many US technology companies have been saying for the past year: the activities by the
NSA are harming their businesses in crucial growth markets, including China.
Bad for tech
Patel, HighQ chief financial officer, 2014
(Amit, “The Patriot Act Is Cannibalizing America’s Economic Edge”, 12-31, http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/31/thepatriot-act-is-cannibalizing-americas-economic-edge/)
You would think that when tech companies, the ACLU and the NRA unite for the same cause, the federal
government would listen. That was not the case in this year’s USA FREEDOM Act vote where the Senate voted
against reforms that would stop the NSA from collecting phone metadata.
The majority opinion prioritized protectionism—the idea that phone-record collection could stop threats like ISIS
from endangering U.S. citizens—over economic growth. Such myopic attachment to the tools of defense, without
consideration of their big-picture relevance, puts the $5.7 trillion U.S. IT industry in danger of losing its competitive
advantage.
Risking the second-largest industry in the country will pose serious long-term consequences—not only to the
economy, but, by association—to national security itself.
It’s time for legislators to ask themselves which laws matter most.
Running From The U.S. Cloud
With more than one exabyte of data now in the cloud worldwide, U.S. tech companies have a vested interest in
being seen as safe places to store data. The SaaS model depends on it: companies charge by user or by amount of
data stored. While players from Microsoft to Box built a strong initial user base with their cloud innovations, their
potential for international growth is being curbed by international distrust. Why would you host your sensitive data
under the auspices of a country with intact spying practices? Countries including the United Arab Emirates,
Australia, Brazil and soon Germany have, to various extents, legislation preventing the hosting of data in countries
where it could be breached—i.e. the United States.
The widespread perception of U.S. companies elbowing out local competition, practicing what one German
politician called “brutal information capitalism,” doesn’t help the American cause. If aversive legislation isn’t laid to
rest within the next couple of years, U.S. tech companies will lose significant ground.
Where Do You Host?
When we talk to prospects here in the U.K., the discussion of where data is hosted is the first thing that comes up.
Companies who can ensure jittery enterprise and government prospects that their data won’t be hosted in the U.S.
are winning business. Hungover from the initial wave of cloud hype, enterprises are now most interested in whether
providers can offer on-premise storage and keep data out of the States. In 2008, their hesitations had to do with
hackers and security. Today, they’re most concerned about the NSA.
The NSA concern is relevant to more than cloud storage or collaboration. The cloud enables parallel computing that
is essential for the big data processing, machine learning and smart algorithms that enable ‘data-driven’ business.
Indeed, the next wave of cloud innovation has to do with data-driven workflows and personal productivity. Consider
Microsoft Delve, a brilliant new Office 365 tool that mines your Microsoft data, such as emails, social networks and
corporate documents, to recommend content to you and make your workday more efficient. It can only process data
in the cloud—the U.S. cloud that is again subject to the Patriot Act.
Even if you’re not explicitly storing data in the cloud, you still need it for advanced processing. Therein lies the
problem. How can U.S. companies proliferate their exciting new innovations globally if the clouds they’re on can’t
be trusted?
The Sales Pipeline Is Drying Up
U.S. tech companies understandably want to prevent NSA practices from continuing to whittle away their global
competitive advantage. It’s not too late yet.
Prospects are shying away from American companies, but the country still rules the cloud for now. That won’t
always be the case. When you consider that data is an asset, and the more data a company hosts, the more money it
makes, there are tens of billions of dollars in losses looming over providers in the States. IDC predicts that “the
digital universe will double every two years” until 2020. Cloud-based Internet service, apps and enterprise IT
productivity are the “key applications” fomenting this economic impact.
What if only a fraction of those services existed in the United States in 10 years? What if U.S. companies continue
to be prevented by legislation from capturing and innovating on rapidly growing data? To say that the country’s
innovation- and information-driven economy will be dented is putting it mildly.
NSA costs tech companies hundreds of billions
Eoyang, Third Way National Security Program director, 2013
(Mieke, “NSA Snooping's Negative Impact On Business Would Have The Founding Fathers 'Aghast'”, 12-20,
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/12/20/nsa-snoopings-negative-impact-on-business-would-have-thefounding-fathers-aghast/)
The revelations about the scope and scale of NSA’s surveillance both at home and abroad have made many uneasy
about the security of their data. This loss of trust could have ongoing consequences for the U.S. economy and for the
future development of the Internet. Policymakers must understand these implications as they make decisions on how to reform our surveillance efforts.
First, what will this mean for American competitiveness? For years, the Internet has been largely “Made in America”, but the
technical architecture and data transcend national borders. European, Chinese, Russian, and other global competitors are vying for the billions
of consumers who currently use U.S. Internet services every day—from Google to Facebook to Ebay. One major competitive global advantage for
U.S. companies is that America’s openness and freedoms have brought an implied level of trust in the security and
privacy of the data flowing through their servers. But when the U.S. government asserts that it can exploit electronic data abroad for intelligence
purposes, it creates an international reaction with profound economic consequences. For example, Europe’s Commissioner for digital affairs, Neelie Kroes,
predicts the fallout from Snowden’s leaks will have “multi-billion Euro consequences” for US businesses. The EU
Commission’s Vice President, Viviane Reding, is pushing for Europe to adopt more expansive privacy laws that will help build market share for regional
companies—thereby shutting American companies out. The
economic consequences could be staggering. Studies by leading
Internet researchers at ITIF, Gartner, and Forrester examining the NSA surveillance revelations’ impact project
potential lost revenue for U.S. cloud computing companies ranging from $35 billion to $180 billion over the next
three years. More than half of the overseas members of a cloud industry group, the Cloud Security Alliance, said
they were less likely to use U.S. cloud providers in the future. Ten percent of such members said they had cancelled
a U.S. cloud services project as a result of the “Snowden Incident”. While the true costs of the loss of trust are hard to
quantify, and will be reported in future quarters, the potential losses are enormous.
Econ Decline Causes War
Econ controls every other facet of deterrence – solves multiple hot spots for war
Gelb, CFR president emeritus, 2010
(Leslie, “GDP Now Matters More Than Force”, Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec, ebsco)
Today, the
United States continues to be the world's power balancer of choice. It is the only regional balancer against
Russia in eastern Europe, and Iran in the Middle East. Although Americans rarely think about this role and foreign leaders
often deny it for internal political reasons, the fact is that Americans and non-Americans alike require these services. Even Russian
leaders today look to Washington to check China. And Chinese leaders surely realize that they need the U.S. Navy and Air
Force to guard the world's sea and trading lanes. Washington should not be embarrassed to remind others of the costs and risks of the United
China in Asia,
States' security role when it comes to economic transactions. That applies, for example, to Afghan and Iraqi decisions about contracts for their natural resources, and
to Beijing on many counts. U.S. forces maintain a stable world order that decidedly benefits China's economic growth, and to date, Beijing has
been getting a free ride. A NEW APPROACH In this environment, the first-tier foreign policy goals of the United States should be a strong economy and the ability to
deploy effective counters to threats at the lowest possible cost. Second-tier goals, which are always more controversial, include retaining the military power to remain
the world's power balancer, promoting
freer trade, maintaining technological advantages (including cyberwarfare capabilities), reducing risks from various
environmental and health challenges, developing alternative energy supplies, and advancing U.S. values such as democracy and human rights.
Wherever possible, second-tier goals should reinforce first-tier ones: for example, it makes sense to err on the side of freer trade to help boost the economy and to
invest in greater energy independence to reduce dependence on the tumultuous Middle East. But no overall approach should dictate how to pursue these goals in each
and every situation. Specific applications depend on, among other things, the culture and politics of the target countries. An overarching vision helps leaders consider
how to use their power to achieve their goals. This is what gives policy direction, purpose, and thrust--and this is what is often missing from U.S. policy. The
organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy should be to use power to solve common problems. The good old days of being able to command others by making
military or economic threats are largely gone. Even the weakest nations can resist the strongest ones or drive up the costs for submission. Now, U.S. power derives
mainly from others' knowing that they cannot solve their problems without the United States and that they will have to heed U.S. interests to achieve common goals.
Power by services rendered has largely replaced power by command. No matter the decline in U.S. power, most nations do not doubt that the United States is the
indispensable leader in solving major international problems. This problem-solving
capacity creates opportunities for U.S. leadership
in everything from trade talks to military-conflict resolution to international agreements on global warming. Only Washington
can help the nations bordering the South China Sea forge a formula for sharing the region's resources. Only Washington has a chance of
pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians toward peace. Only Washington can bargain to increase the low value of a Chinese currency exchange . rate that
disadvantages almost every nation's trade with China. But it is clear to Americans and non-Americans alike that Washington lacks the power to solve or manage
difficult problems alone; the indispensable leader must work with indispensable partners. To attract the necessary partners, Washington must do the very thing that
habitually afflicts U.S. leaders with political hives: compromise. This does not mean multilateralism for its own sake, nor does it mean abandoning vital national
interests. The Obama administration has been criticized for softening UN economic sanctions against Iran in order to please China and Russia. Had the United States
not compromised, however, it would have faced vetoes and enacted no new sanctions at all. U.S. presidents are often in a strong position to bargain while preserving
essential U.S. interests, but they have to do a better job of selling such unavoidable compromises to the U.S. public. U.S. policymakers must also be patient. The
weakest of nations today can resist and delay. Pressing prematurely for decisions--an unfortunate hallmark of U.S. style--results in failure, the prime enemy of power.
Success breeds power, and failure breeds weakness. Even when various domestic constituencies shout for quick action, Washington's leaders must learn to buy time in
order to allow for U.S. power--and the power of U.S.-led coalitions--to take effect abroad. Patience is especially valuable in the economic arena, where there are far
more players than in the military and diplomatic realms. To corral all these players takes time. Military power can work quickly, like a storm; economic power grabs
slowly, like the tide. It needs time to erode the shoreline, but it surely does nibble away. To be sure, U.S. presidents need to preserve the United States' core role as the
world's military and diplomatic balancer--for its own sake; and because it strengthens U.S. interests in economic transactions. But economics
has to be the
main driver for current policy, as nations calculate power more in terms of GDP than military might. U.S. GDP will
be the lure and the whip in the international affairs of the twenty-first century. U.S. interests abroad cannot be
adequately protected or advanced without an economic reawakening at home.
Economic growth outweighs – collapse makes it impossible to confront any global challenge
and makes nuclear war more likely
O’Hanlon, Brookings Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence co-director, 2012
(Michael, “The real national security threat: America's debt”, 7-3, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/03/opinion/laoe-ohanlon-fiscal-reform-20120703)
Alas, globalization and automation trends of the last generation have increasingly called the American dream into question for the working classes. Another decade of underinvestment in what is
required to remedy this situation will make an isolationist or populist president far more likely because much of the country will question whether an internationalist role makes sense for America
American economic weakness
undercuts U.S. leadership abroad. Other countries sense our weakness and wonder about our purport 7ed decline. If this perception becomes
more widespread, and the case that we are in decline becomes more persuasive, countries will begin to take actions that reflect their skepticism about
America's future. Allies and friends will doubt our commitment and may pursue nuclear weapons for their own
security, for example; adversaries will sense opportunity and be less restrained in throwing around their
weight in their own neighborhoods. The crucial Persian Gulf and Western Pacific regions will likely become less
stable. Major war will become more likely. When running for president last time, Obama eloquently articulated big foreign policy
visions: healing America's breach with the Muslim world, controlling global climate change, dramatically curbing
global poverty through development aid, moving toward a world free of nuclear weapons. These were, and remain,
— especially if it costs us well over half a trillion dollars in defense spending annually yet seems correlated with more job losses. Lastly,
worthy if elusive goals. However, for Obama or his successor, there is now a much more urgent big-picture issue:
restoring U.S. economic strength. Nothing else is really possible if that fundamental prerequisite to effective
foreign policy is not reestablished.
A2: No Heg Impact
Effective US leadership is key to avert multiple scenarios for war and ensure planetary
survival
Brzezinski, John Hopkins American Foreign Policy professor, 2012
(Zbigniew, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, google books)
An American decline would impact the nuclear domain most profoundly by inciting a crisis of confidence in the credibility of the
American nuclear umbrella. Countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Turkey, and even Israel, among others, rely on the United States’ extended nuclear deterrence
for security.
If they were to see the United States slowly retreat from certain regions, forced by circumstances to pull back its
guarantees, or even if they were to lose confidence in standing US guarantees , because of the financial, political, military, and
diplomatic consequences of an American decline, then they will have to seek security elsewhere. That “elsewhere” security could originate from only two
sources: from nuclear weapons of one’s own or from the extended deterrence of another power—most likely Russia, China, or India. It is possible that
countries that feel threatened by the ambition of existing nuclear weapon states, the addition of new nuclear weapon states, or the decline in the reliability of American
power would develop their own nuclear capabilities. For crypto-nuclear powers like Germany and Japan, the path to nuclear weapons would be easy and fairly quick,
given their extensive civilian nuclear industry, their financial success, and their technological acumen. Furthermore, the continued existence of nuclear weapons in
North Korea and the potentiality of a nuclear-capable Iran could prompt American allies in the Persian Gulf or East Asia to build their own nuclear deterrents. Given
North Korea’s increasingly aggressive and erratic behavior, the failure of the six-party talks, and the widely held distrust of Iran’s megalomaniacal leadership, the
guarantees offered by a declining America’s nuclear umbrella might not stave off a regional nuclear arms race among smaller powers. Last but not least, even though
China and India today maintain a responsible nuclear posture of minimal deterrence and “no first use,” the uncertainty of an increasingly nuclear world
could force both states to reevaluate and escalate their nuclear posture. Indeed, they as well as Russia might even become inclined to extend nuclear
assurances to their respective client states. Not only could this signal a renewed regional nuclear arms race between these three aspiring powers but it could also
create new and antagonistic spheres of influence in Eurasia driven by competitive nuclear deterrence. The decline of the United States would
thus precipitate drastic changes to the nuclear domain. An increase in proliferation among insecure American allies and/or an arms race between the
emerging Asian powers are among the more likely outcomes. This ripple effect of proliferation would undermine the transparent
management of the nuclear domain and increase the likelihood of interstate rivalry, miscalculation, and eventually even perhaps of
international nuclear terror. In addition to the foregoing, in the course of this century the world will face a series of novel geopolitical challenges brought
about by significant changes in the physical environment. The management of those changing environmental commons—the growing scarcity of fresh water, the
opening of the Arctic, and global warming—will require global consensus and mutual sacrifice. American leadership alone is not enough to secure cooperation on all
these issues, but a
decline in American influence would reduce the likelihood of achieving cooperative agreements on
environmental and resource management. America’s retirement from its role of global policeman could create
greater opportunities for emerging powers to further exploit the environmental commons for their own economic
gain, increasing the chances of resource-driven conflict, particularly in Asia. The latter is likely to be the case especially in regard to the
increasingly scarce water resources in many countries. According to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), by 2025 more than 2.8 billion
people will be living in either water-scarce or water-stressed regions, as global demand for water will double every twenty years.9 While much of the Southern
Hemisphere is threatened by potential water scarcity, interstate conflicts—the geopolitical consequences of cross-border water scarcity—are most likely to occur in
Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and northeastern Africa, regions where limited water resources are shared across borders and political stability is transient.
The combination of political insecurity and resource scarcity is a menacing geopolitical combination. The threat of water conflicts is likely to intensify as the
economic growth and increasing demand for water in emerging powers like Turkey and India collides with instability and resource scarcity in rival countries like Iraq
and Pakistan. Water scarcity will also test China’s internal stability as its burgeoning population and growing industrial complex combine to increase demand for and
decrease supply of usable water. In South Asia, the never-ending political tension between India and Pakistan combined with
overcrowding and Pakistan’s heightening internal crises may put the Indus Water Treaty at risk, especially because the river basin originates in the long-disputed
territory of Jammu and Kashmir, an area of ever-increasing political and military volatility. The lingering dispute
between India and China over the
remains a serious concern. As American hegemony
disappears and regional competition intensifies, disputes over natural resources like water have the potential to develop into
full-scale conflicts. The slow thawing of the Arctic will also change the face of the international competition for important resources. With the Arctic
status of Northeast India, an area through which the vital Brahmaputra River flows, also
becoming increasingly accessible to human endeavor, the five Arctic littoral states—the United States, Canada, Russia, Denmark, and Norway—may rush to lay claim
to its bounty of oil, gas, and metals. This run on the Arctic has the potential to cause severe shifts in the geopolitical landscape, particularly to Russia’s advantage. As
Vladimir Radyuhin points out in his article entitled “The Arctic’s Strategic Value for Russia,” Russia has the most to gain from access to the Arctic while
simultaneously being the target of far north containment by the other four Arctic states, all of which are members of NATO. In many respects this new great game will
be determined by who moves first with the most legitimacy, since very few agreements on the Arctic exist. The first Russian supertanker sailed from Europe to Asia
via the North Sea in the summer of 2010.10 Russia has an immense amount of land and resource potential in the Arctic. Its territory within the Arctic Circle is 3.1
million square kilometers—around the size of India—and the Arctic accounts for 91% of Russia’s natural gas production, 80% of its explored natural gas reserves,
90% of its offshore hydrocarbon reserves, and a large store of metals.11 Russia is also attempting to increase its claim on the territory by asserting that its continental
shelf continues deeper into the Arctic, which could qualify Russia for a 150-mile extension of its Exclusive Economic Zone and add another 1.2 million square
kilometers of resource-rich territory. Its first attempt at this extension was denied by the UN Commission on the Continental Shelf, but it is planning to reapply in
2013. Russia considers the Arctic a true extension of its northern border and in a 2008 strategy paper President Medvedev stated that the Arctic would become
Russia’s “main strategic resource base” by 2020.12 Despite recent conciliatory summits between Europe and Russia over European security architecture, a large
amount of uncertainty and distrust stains the West’s relationship with Russia. The United States itself has always maintained a strong claim on the Arctic and has
continued patrolling the area since the end of the Cold War. This was reinforced during the last month of President Bush’s second term when he released a national
security directive stipulating that America should “preserve the global mobility of the United States military and civilian vessels and aircraft throughout the Arctic
region.” The potentiality of an American decline could embolden Russia to more forcefully assert its control of the Arctic and over Europe via energy politics; though
much depends on Russia’s political orientation after the 2012 presidential elections. All five Arctic littoral states will benefit from a peaceful and cooperative
agreement on the Arctic—similar to Norway’s and Russia’s 2010 agreement over the Barents Strait—and the geopolitical stability it would provide. Nevertheless,
political circumstances could rapidly change in an environment where control over energy remains Russia’s single greatest priority. Global
climate change is
Scientists and policy makers alike have
projected catastrophic consequences for mankind and the planet if the world average temperature rises by more than two degrees over the next
century. Plant and animal species could grow extinct at a rapid pace, large-scale ecosystems could collapse, human migration could
increase to untenable levels, and global economic development could be categorically reversed. Changes in geography, forced migration,
and global economic contraction layered on top of the perennial regional security challenges could create a geopolitical reality of unmanageable
complexity and conflict, especially in the densely populated and politically unstable areas of Asia such as the Northeast and South. Furthermore, any legitimate
the final component of the environmental commons and the one with the greatest potential geopolitical impact.
action inhibiting global climate change will require unprecedented levels of self-sacrifice and international cooperation. The United States does consider climate
change a serious concern, but its lack of both long-term strategy and political commitment, evidenced in its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the
repeated defeat of climate-change legislation in Congress, deters other countries from participating in a global agreement. The United States is the second-largest
global emitter of carbon dioxide, after China, with 20% of the world’s share. The United States is the number one per capita emitter of carbon dioxide and the global
leader in per capita energy demand. Therefore, US leadership is essential in not only getting other countries to cooperate, but also in
actually inhibiting climate change. Others around the world, including the European Union and Brazil, have attempted their own domestic reforms on carbon
emissions and energy use, and committed themselves to pursuing renewable energy. Even China has made reducing emissions a goal, a fact it refuses to let the United
States ignore. But none of those nations currently has the ability to lead a global initiative. President Obama committed the United States to energy and carbon reform
at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009, but the increasingly polarized domestic political environment and the truculent American economic recovery are unlikely to
inspire progress on costly energy issues. China is also critically important to any discussion of the management of climate change as it produces 21% of the world’s
total carbon emissions, a percentage that will only increase as China develops the western regions of its territory and as its citizens experience a growth in their
standard of living. China, however, has refused to take on a leadership role in climate change, as it has also done in the maritime, space, and cyberspace domains.
China uses its designation as a developing country to shield itself from the demands of global stewardship. China’s tough stance at the 2009 Copenhagen Summit
underscores the potential dangers of an American decline: no other country has the capacity and the desire to accept global stewardship over the environmental
commons. Only a vigorous Unites States could lead on climate change, given Russia’s dependence on carbon-based energies for economic growth, India’s relatively
The protection and good faith management of the global
commons—sea, space, cyberspace, nuclear proliferation, water security, the Arctic, and the environment
itself—are imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical
stability. But in almost every case, the potential absence of constructive and influential US leadership would fatally
undermine the essential communality of the global commons . The argument that America’s decline would generate global insecurity,
low emissions rate, and China’s current reluctance to assume global responsibility.
endanger some vulnerable states, produce a more troubled North American neighborhood, and make cooperative management of the global commons more difficult is
not an argument for US global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the twenty-first century—resulting from the rise of a politically selfassertive global population and from the dispersal of global power—make such supremacy unattainable. But in this increasingly complicated geopolitical
environment, an America in pursuit of a new, timely strategic vision is crucial to helping the world avoid a dangerous slide into international turmoil.
Decline causes US lashout
Beckley, Tufts political science professor, 2012
(Michael, “China’s Century? Why America’s Edge Will Endure”, International Security, 36.3, project muse)
One danger is that declinism could prompt trade conflicts and immigration restrictions . The results of this study suggest that the United
States benefits immensely from the free flow of goods, services, and people around the globe; this is what allows American corporations to specialize in high-value
activities, exploit innovations created elsewhere, and lure the brightest minds to the United States, all while reducing the price of goods for U.S. consumers.
Characterizing China’s export expansion as a loss for the United States is not just bad economics; it blazes a trail for jingoistic and protectionist policies. It would be
tragically ironic if Americans reacted to false prophecies of decline by cutting themselves off from a potentially vital source of American power. Another danger is
that declinism may impair foreign policy decision-making. If
top government officials come to believe that China is overtaking the
United States, they are likely to react in one of two ways, both of which are potentially disastrous. The first is that
policymakers may imagine the United States faces a closing “window of opportunity” and should take action
“while it still enjoys preponderance and not wait until the diffusion of power has already made international politics more competitive and unpredictable.”158 This
belief may spur [End Page 77] positive action, but it also invites parochial thinking, reckless behavior, and preventive war.159 As
Robert Gilpin and others have shown, “[H]egemonic struggles have most frequently been triggered by fears of ultimate decline and the perceived erosion of
power.”160 By
fanning such fears, declinists may inadvertently promote the type of violent overreaction that they seek
to prevent. The other potential reaction is retrenchment—the divestment of all foreign policy obligations save those linked to vital interests,
defined in a narrow and national manner. Advocates of retrenchment assume, or hope, that the world will sort itself out on its own; that whatever replaces American
hegemony, whether it be a return to balance of power politics or a transition to a post-power paradise, will naturally maintain international order and prosperity.
Order and prosperity, however, are unnatural. They can never be presumed . When achieved, they are the result of determined action
by powerful actors and, in particular, by the most powerful actor, which is, and will be for some time, the United States. Arms buildups, insecure sealanes, and closed markets are only the most obvious risks of U.S. retrenchment. Less obvious are transnational
problems, such as global warming, water scarcity, and disease, which may fester without a leader to rally collective
action.
A2: Soft Power Alt Causes
NSA is the most important soft power issue because it speaks to fundamental values that
help weather unpopular policies like drones.
Lord, IREX CEO and president, 2014
(Kristin, “Soft Power Outage”, 12-23, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/23/soft-power-outage/)
Moral authority facilitates soft power, but so do relationships, shared values, and interlinking interests. Given the ideological component
of so many of the national security threats that face the United States going forward — and the inability of any one
country to meet them alone — soft power can be an important part of the strategy to address these threats. But
Americans will need to cultivate it. The United States is a natural soft power leader, founded on principles that are
now embraced widely across cultures and geographies. For decades, it has built a network of partners and allies
around the world that endure through shared values as well as shared interests. While the United States may not always be
popular, American values of political pluralism, economic competition, and human rights are enduring. Over the long haul, these
values often win the day, even when opponents are more ruthless, more committed, and more willing to expend resources. (It is worth remembering this as
diplomats privately bemoan the billions spent on Russian propaganda or the social media sophistication of the Islamic State.) Despite its comparative advantage in soft
power, the United States is still far more adept at the strategy and tactics of military, economic, and diplomatic coercion than the strategy and tactics of attraction. It
takes its soft power for granted, like oxygen in the air, assuming it will always be there. This approach not only carries risk, it underutilizes a strategic resource.
How might the United States take soft power more seriously? First, it has to “walk the walk,” aligning actions
and values, rhetoric and deeds. This is understandably difficult in a country with complex and wide-ranging foreign policy interests, but the
United States could do better in one key respect: weighing potential damage to America’s moral authority when
considering policy options. Such considerations are often trumped, and not without cause. Policymakers are regularly forced to choose from a series of
bad options, and when they do, clear and short-term consequences weigh more heavily than diffuse costs to notions like reputation. If the United States is
serious about countering challenges to its national security interests and democratic ideals, however, this must
change. Perceptions that the United States does not live up to its own values fundamentally undermine
American power and inhibit the country’s ability to defend not just its own interests, but also universal
standards of what is right and just. They undermine America’s ability to defend the time-proven value of the
moral high ground, and they empower cynical actors eager to seize the propaganda advantage.
NSA uniquely damages soft power because it concerns personal freedom.
Peterson, Washington Post technology policy writer, 2014
(Andrea, “America’s ‘freedom’ reputation is on the decline a year after NSA revelations”, 7-14,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/07/14/americas-freedom-reputation-is-on-the-decline-ayear-after-nsa-revelations/)
A main selling point of the U.S. brand on the international stage has long been summed up with the screech of eagles and one word:
"Freedom." But in the wake of the revelations about U.S. surveillance programs from former National Security Agency
contractor Edward Snowden last year, the world is less convinced of the U.S.'s respect for personal freedoms according to
new survey results from Pew Research. The Snowden revelations appear to have damaged one major element of
America’s global image: its reputation for protecting individual liberties. In 22 of 36 countries surveyed in both 2013 and 2014, people
are significantly less likely to believe the U.S. government respects the personal freedoms of its citizens. In six nations, the decline was 20 percentage points or more.
Pew calls this decline "the Snowden Effect." And some of the drops are significant -- especially in countries where NSA
surveillance received major domestic news coverage like Germany and Brazil. Still, Pew says, the U.S.'s reputation for respecting personal freedoms is relatively
strong compared to other nations. Among the 44 countries surveyed, a median of 58 percent said the U.S. government respects individual liberties versus the 56
But the Pew survey does reveal broad global opposition to
NSA actions, with large majorities saying U.S. monitoring of leaders and citizens in their countries as well as
its snooping on its own citizens is unacceptable.
percent who said the same about France and the only 28 percent for Russia.
A2: Drones Hurt Soft Power
Drone impact declining
Express Tribune 5-4-15
(“Is anti-American sentiment on the decline in Pakistan?”, http://tribune.com.pk/story/880558/is-anti-americansentiment-on-the-decline-in-pakistan/)
ISLAMABAD: After years of tensions with the United States, anti-American sentiment appears to be witnessing a
steady decline in Pakistan, observers suggest. The decline in the number of Pakistanis who hold negative views of
the United States comes as they look closer to home for the causes of — and answers to — the country’s woes,
according to interviews with residents, analysts, and current and former diplomats. Doug Chabot, who runs a charity for girls
education in Pakistan, said there was no anti-American sentiment walking into stores or the markets and, if anything, people were concerned that I thought they hated
Americans. One
of the reason behind the change, cited by observers is the middle class in the country is now more
supportive of American drone strikes, which have shrunk considerably since the Peshawar attack that killed over
140 students and teachers. Moreover, as conflict spreads in the Middle East, Pakistanis are recognising that sectarian
violence in Muslim countries is not driven completely by the United States. Analysts suggest that the Obama administration’s efforts
to quietly rebuild relationships is having an effect. Former Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz Member of the National Assembly (MNA) Ayaz Amir says that the usual
“There is a sense we have to deal with our own
problems, and it is up to us how we handle those problems, and I think anti-Americanism, really, no longer seems
that relevant,” Amir added. Furthermore, a Pew Research Center poll released in August last year showed a decline in the percentage of Pakistanis who
firebrands coming up with standard anti-American declarations are not seen anymore.
held negative views of the United States — still a majority at 59%, but down from 80% two years before. Pakistan Ulema Council chairperson Allama Tahir Ashrafi
said it is no more just hate heaped upon the United States. “Because
of the serious internal issues that Pakistani society is facing, and
also the Muslim world is facing, the focus is not that much on the United States,” he said. Human Rights activist Farzana Bari
said the progressive Pakistanis are also choosing to stay quiet now. “I personally have been very anti-drone strikes . . . but now I feel
like, Okay, if they are dealing with the extremist groups, that is good,” she added.
T Answers
2AC
1. We meet-section 702 deals with foreign intelligence gathering within the United States
Harper, Chicago JD candidate, 2014
(Nick, “FISA's Fuzzy Line between Domestic and International Terrorism”, University of Chicago Law Review,
Summer, JSTOR)
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 19781 (FISA) regulates, among other things, the government's
acquisition of electronic surveillance within the United States for foreign intelligence purposes. FISA allows a federal
officer to seek an order from a judge at a specially designated court "approving electronic surveillance of a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power for the
purpose of obtaining foreign intelligence information."2 As long as the requisite foreign nexus can be shown, FISA warrants are preferable to their possible substitutes
Consistent with FISA's foreign focus, the
government may use the statute to investigate members of international terrorist groups within the United States.4
However, the activities of purely domestic terrorist groups do not fall under FISA and must therefore be investigated
using standard criminal investigative tools.5 Often, terrorists will easily be identified as international; members of designated "foreign terrorist
because they are easier to obtain and allow for more secretive and penetrating investigations.3
organizations" operating within the United States are clearly international terrorists. But the proliferation of modern communication technologies has caused
increasing slippage between the definitions of domestic and international terrorism. For example, many homegrown terrorists are inspired by international groups to
commit attacks in the United States.6 In many cases, the government seems to classify these actors as international terrorists based on Internet activity that ranges
from viewing and posting jihadist YouTube videos to planning attacks with suspected foreign terrorists in chat rooms, thus using FISA's formidable investigatory
weapons against them.7 The government is aided in this task by FISA's definition of international terror ism, which has an extremely vague and potentially loose inter
nationality requirement.8 An expansive interpretation of this requirement could be used to subject what might properly be considered domestic terrorist groups to
FISA surveillance.
2. Counter interpretation—
Domestic means occurring inside a country
Google Definitions No date---https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF8#q=%22domestic%22+define
existing or occurring inside a particular country; not foreign or international.
"the current state of US domestic affairs"
synonyms:
national, home, internal
"the domestic car industry"
Surveillance means acquiring communications
US Legal Definitions 2001
(2-1, http://definitions.uslegal.com/e/electronic-surveillance/)
According to 50 USCS § 1801 [Title 50. War and National Defense; Chapter 36. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Electronic Surveillance], electronic
surveillance means (1) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio
communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular , known United States person who is in the
United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable
expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes;
Prefer our interpretation
1. AFF Flexibility—our definitions are not exclusively in the intelligence context which
provides more areas of debate like health and the IRS while maintaining the distinction
between foreign and domestic.
We Meet – 1AR
Section 702 governess surveillance that happens on US soil
Arnbak, Amsterdam INstiutte for Information Law faculty researcher, 2014
(Axel, “Loopholes for Circumventing the Constitution: Unrestrained Bulk Surveillance on Americans by Collecting
Network Traffic Abroad”, 8-27, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2460462&download=yes)
The second regulatory regime covers a class of surveillance operations on international communications conducted
on U.S. soil, regulated by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ('FISA'). In this section, we overview of this second regime and describe which
surveillance operations are covered under FISA. International surveillance operations that do not fall within the FISA regime, including those enabled by the network
protocol manipulations we present in Section III, are regulated by the more permissive third legal regime for surveillance under EO 12333 discussed in Section II.C.
Finally, we discuss the legal protections afforded to Americans under FISA, as well as the prospect of FISA reform. 1. Overview. FISA and the FISA Court were
introduced in 1978 by U.S. Congress,
in response to domestic surveillance overreach and the reform proposals by the Church
Committee.21 In 2008, FISA was amended and broadened by U.S. Congress with the FISA Amendments Act
('FAA').22 The FAA broadened the definition of 'foreign intelligence information' to include information 'relating to
the foreign affairs of the U.S.'23 With the new definition, economic and political surveillance of foreign governments, corporations, media organizations
and citizens was explicitly allowed under its provisions.24 The FAA also introduced Section 702, enabling warrantless surveillance of
foreign communications conducted on U.S. soil, as long as these operations do not 'intentionally target U.S.
persons'<e Ever since, authorities do not require warrants to be issued for a specific case based on a particularized probable cause; instead, the FISA Court issues
generalized certifications for surveillance operations aimed at gathering foreign intelligence information. In addition, the FISA Court approves of generalized
'targeting' and 'minimization' procedures to govern the processing of data after it has been collected. These procedures are intended to mediate U.S. person privacy
concerns, and have remained classified until recently.
702 doesn’t just pertain to communications between two foreign entities.
Granick, Stanford Center for Internet and Society civil liberties director, 2014
(Jennifer, “Reforming The Section 702 Dragnet (Part 1)”, 1-30, http://justsecurity.org/6574/reforming-section-702dragnet-1/)\
Section 702 authorizes warrantless acquisition of communications—including Americans’ communications—if at
least one party to the message is overseas, and the target—that is the person or entity about which the government
wants information—is a non-U.S. person. When intelligence officials accurately describe the law, they do not say this. Rather, they say that
the law allows them to target non-US persons reasonably believed to be abroad in order to collect foreign
intelligence information. That’s true, but it encourages the false belief that only non-citizens are affected by
section 702 collection. Before the Snowden disclosures, government surveillance lawyers like myself were in an ongoing “yes you do—no we don’t”
argument with the intelligence agencies about what section 702 authorized. People who knew better used careful language to imply the
legal tool had nothing to do with Americans and that if Americans were affected, it was only rarely. Thanks to
Snowden, we are no longer pretending the Emperor has on clothes. So let’s be clear: While section 702 requires a non-US entity be the
target of surveillance, anyone who communicates with agents of the target, or has foreign intelligence information about the target, may be monitored. In sum,
under this law, the government: MAY warrantlessly acquire Americans’ foreign to foreign or one-end US
communications to, from or about the target; and MAY warrantlessly acquire Americans’ domestic
communications, so long as the acquisition was unintentional.
702 is about foreign intelligence but the surveillance happens within the US.
Butler, Electronic Privacy Information Center, 2013
(Alan, “Standing Up to Clapper: How to Increase Transparency and Oversight of FISA Surveillance”,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2397949)
Recent debate about foreign intelligence surveillance relates to two key FISA provisions that were added and
amended in the decade following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The first is the business records provision5
which was established by Congress in the USA PATRIOT Act, Section 215.6 The second provision governs the
targeting of non-U.S. persons reasonably believed to be outside the United States, which was added by Section 702
of the FAA.7 Both of these provisions expanded the scope of foreign intelligence surveillance that can be
conducted within the United States.
Terrorism DA Answers
Intelligence Failure Turn – 2AC
Mass surveillance leads to intelligence failures
Eddington, Cato policy analyst, 2015
(Patrick, “No, Mass Surveillance Won't Stop Terrorist Attacks”, 1-27, http://reason.com/archives/2015/01/27/masssurveillance-and-terrorism#.44yf0g:jsDE)
But would more mass surveillance have prevented the assault on the Charlie Hebdo office? Events from 9/11 to the
present help provide the answer: 2009: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—i.e., the "underwear bomber"—nearly succeeded in downing the airline he was on
over Detroit because, according to then-National Counterterrorism Center (NCC) director Michael Leiter, the federal Intelligence Community (IC) failed "to connect,
integrate, and fully understand the intelligence" it had collected. 2009: Army Major Nidal Hasan was able to conduct his deadly, Anwar al-Awlaki-inspired rampage at
Ft. Hood, Texas, because the FBI bungled its Hasan investigation. 2013: The Boston Marathon bombing happened, at least in part, because the CIA, Department of
Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, NCC, and National Security Agency (NSA) failed to properly coordinate and share information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his
family, associations, and travel to and from Russia in 2012. Those failures were detailed in a 2014 report prepared by the Inspectors General of the IC, Department of
Justice, CIA, and DHS. 2014: The Charlie Hebdo and French grocery store attackers were not only known to French and U.S. authorities but one had a prior terrorism
conviction and another was monitored for years by French authorities until less than a year before the attack on the magazine. No, mass surveillance does not prevent
terrorist attacks. It’s
worth remembering that the mass surveillance programs initiated by the U.S. government after the
9/11 attacks—the legal ones and the constitutionally-dubious ones—were premised on the belief that bin Laden’s
hijacker-terrorists were able to pull off the attacks because of a failure to collect enough data. Yet in their
subsequent reports on the attacks, the Congressional Joint Inquiry (2002) and the 9/11 Commission found
exactly the opposite. The data to detect (and thus foil) the plots was in the U.S. government’s hands prior to
the attacks; the failures were ones of sharing, analysis, and dissemination . That malady perfectly describes every intelligence
failure from Pearl Harbor to the present day. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (created by Congress in 2004)
was supposed to be the answer to the "failure-to-connect-the-dots" problem. Ten years on, the problem remains, the
IC bureaucracy is bigger than ever, and our government is continuing to rely on mass surveillance programs that
have failed time and again to stop terrorists while simultaneously undermining the civil liberties and personal privacy of every American. The
quest to "collect it all," to borrow a phrase from NSA Director Keith Alexander, only leads to the accumulation of masses of
useless information, making it harder to find real threats and costing billions to store. A recent Guardian editorial noted
that such mass-surveillance myopia is spreading among European political leaders as well, despite the fact that "terrorists, from 9/11 to the Woolwich jihadists and the
neo-Nazi Anders Breivik, have almost always come to the authorities’ attention before murdering." Mass
surveillance is not only destructive of
our liberties, its continued use is a virtual guarantee of more lethal intelligence failures. And our continued will to
disbelieve those facts is a mental dodge we engage in at our peril.
Intelligence Failure Turn – 1AR
Dragnet surveillance is useless against rare events like terrorism-only a risk of a turn.
Tufekci, North Carolina assistant professor, 2015
(Zeynep, “Terror and the limits of mass surveillance”, 2-3, Financial Times, http://blogs.ft.com/theexchange/2015/02/03/zeynep-tufekci-terror-and-the-limits-of-mass-surveillance/)
But the assertion that big data is “what it’s all about” when it comes to predicting rare events is not supported by
what we know about how these methods work, and more importantly, don’t work. Analytics on massive datasets can
be powerful in analysing and identifying broad patterns, or events that occur regularly and frequently , but are
singularly unsuited to finding unpredictable, erratic, and rare needles in huge haystacks. In fact, the bigger the
haystack — the more massive the scale and the wider the scope of the surveillance — the less suited these methods are to finding such
exceptional events, and the more they may serve to direct resources and attention away from appropriate tools and methods. After Rigby was killed, GCHQ,
Britain’s intelligence service, was criticised by many for failing to stop his killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. A lengthy parliamentary inquiry was
conducted, resulting in a 192-page report that lists all the ways in which Adebolajo and Adebowale had brushes with data surveillance, but were not flagged as two
men who were about to kill a soldier on a London street. GCHQ defended itself by saying that some of the crucial online exchanges had taken place on a platform,
believed to be Facebook, which had not alerted the agency about these men, or the nature of their postings. The men apparently had numerous exchanges that were
extremist in nature, and their accounts were suspended repeatedly by the platform for violating its terms of service. “If only Facebook had turned over more data,” the
Seeking larger volumes of data, such as asking
Facebook to alert intelligence agencies every time that it detects a post containing violence, would deluge the
agencies with multiple false leads that would lead to a data quagmire, rather than clues to impending crimes. For big
data analytics to work, there needs to be a reliable connection between the signal (posting of violent content) and the event
(killing someone). Otherwise, the signal is worse than useless. Millions of Facebook’s billion-plus users post violent content every day, ranging
from routinised movie violence to atrocious violent rhetoric. Turning over the data from all such occurrences would merely flood the
agencies with “false positives” — erroneous indications for events that actually will not happen. Such data overload is
not without cost, as it takes time and effort to sift through these millions of strands of hay to confirm that they are,
indeed, not needles — especially when we don’t even know what needles look like. All that the investigators would have would be a lot
of open leads with no resolution, taking away resources from any real investigation. Besides, account suspensions carried out by
thinking goes. But that is misleading, and makes sense only with the benefit of hindsight.
platforms like Facebook’s are haphazard, semi-automated and unreliable indicators. The flagging system misses a lot more violent content than it flags, and it often
flags content as inappropriate even when it is not, and suffers from many biases. Relying on such a haphazard system is not a reasonable path at all. So is all the hype
around big data analytics unjustified? Yes and no. There are appropriate use cases for which massive datasets are intensely useful, and perform much better than any
alternative we can imagine using conventional methods. Successful examples include using Google searches to figure out drug interactions that would be too complex
and too numerous to analyse one clinical trial at a time, or using social media to detect national-level swings in our mood (we are indeed happier on Fridays than on
Mondays). In contrast, consider the “lone wolf” attacker who took hostages at, of all things, a “Lindt Chocolat Café” in Sydney. Chocolate shops are not regular
targets of political violence, and random, crazed men attacking them is not a pattern on which we can base further identification. Yes, the Sydney attacker claimed
jihadi ideology and brought a black flag with Islamic writing on it, but given the rarity of such events, it’s not always possible to separate the jihadi rhetoric from
issues of mental health — every era’s mentally ill are affected by the cultural patterns around them. This isn’t a job for big data analytics. (The fact that the gunman
was on bail facing various charges and was known for sending hate letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed overseas suggests it was a job for traditional
policing). When
confronted with their failures in predicting those rare acts of domestic terrorism, here’s what GCHQ,
and indeed the NSA, should have said instead of asking for increased surveillance capabilities: stop asking us to
collect more and more data to perform an impossible task. This glut of data is making our job harder, not easier, and
the expectation that there will never be such incidents, ever, is not realistic. Attention should instead be focused on the causal chain
that led the Kouachi brothers on their path. It seems that the French-born duo had an alienated, turbulent youth, and then spent years in French prisons, where they
were transformed from confused and incompetent wannabe jihadis to hardliners who were both committed and a lot more capable of carrying out complex violence
acts than when they entered the prison. Understanding such paths will almost certainly be more productive for preventing such events, and will also spare all of us
from another real danger: governments that know too much about their citizens, and a misguided belief in what big data can do to find needles in too-large haystacks.
Causes waste of resources and trades off with more traditional policing.
Cooper, the Week national correspondent, 2015
(Ryan, “The simple math problem that blows apart the NSA's surveillance justifications”, 4-3,
http://theweek.com/articles/547119/simple-math-problem-that-blows-apart-nsas-surveillance-justifications)
Suppose one out of every million people is a terrorist (if anything,
you've got a machine that can determine whether someone is a terrorist with 99.9 percent accuracy.
You've used the machine on your buddy Jeff Smith, and it gives a positive result. What are the odds Jeff is a
terrorist? Try to figure it out, or at least guess, before you read on. Here's the answer: a 0.1 percent chance — which is to say, the 99.9
percent accurate test will give you the wrong answer 99.9 percent of the time. Seems low, doesn't it?* This is the
false positive paradox, and it completely blows up any possible security justification for the NSA's dragnet
surveillance of our phone calls and emails. The issue is stated simply and elegantly by Doctorow: "When you try to find something
really rare, your test's accuracy has to match the rarity of the thing you're looking for ." If it does not, then the number
Here's a question about death and probability, done first by Cory Doctorow.
an overestimate), and
of false positives will completely bury the signal in irrelevant garbage. And the numbers I used beforehand were not
some crazy extrapolation. If anything, they were far too generous to the likes of the NSA . Their procedure for identifying terror
suspects is not anything like a pushbutton machine, and is almost certainly less than 99.9 percent accurate. Instead, it's a colossal hodgepodge that has yet to produce
any tangible successes. Worse,
there are no simple follow-up tests that might confirm the result. Instead, agents have to be
dispatched to undertake a lengthy investigation, taking weeks or even months. As Bruce Schneier points out in his new book, this
exact problem has bedeviled terrorism investigators: In the years after 9/11, the NSA passed to the FBI thousands of tips per
month; every one of them turned out to be a false alarm. The cost was enormous, and ended up frustrating the
FBI agents who were obligated to investigate all the tips. We also saw this with the Suspicious Activity Reports —or SAR — database: tens
of thousands of reports, and no actual results. And all the telephone metadata the NSA collected led to just one success: the
conviction of a taxi driver who sent $8,500 to a Somali group that posed no direct threat to the U.S. — and that was
probably trumped up so the NSA would have better talking points in front of Congress. [Data and Goliath] Indeed, it's arguable that an obsessive
focus on dragnet surveillance is actually a distraction from more effective investigative techniques , because
even moderately competent terrorists will avoid electronic communication altogether. Bin Laden was suspicious of even
encrypted email years before the Snowden leaks, but especially today, one would have to be grossly misinformed to express sympathy for terrorism online. This might
explain why the FBI has spent so much time of late baiting utterly hapless chumps or the mentally ill into taking fake weapons and explosives they never would have
been able to get on their own. At any rate, as I've argued before, simple bureaucratic competence and bog-standard detective work are vastly underrated compared to
piling up gigantic quantities of irrelevant data. But
the false positive problem ought to be the final nail in the dragnet coffin.
Unless terrorism becomes thousands of times more common than it is today, such broad techniques will be utterly
useless against real terrorism.
It compromises other agencies who have access to NSA data---bogs them down.
Whittaker, ZDNet editor, 2015
(Zack, “NSA is so overwhelmed with data, it's no longer effective, says whistleblower”, 4-30,
http://www.zdnet.com/article/nsa-whistleblower-overwhelmed-with-data-ineffective/)
A former National Security Agency official turned whistleblower has spent almost a decade and a half in civilian life. And he says he's still "pissed" by what he's seen
leak in the past two years. In a lunch meeting hosted by Contrast Security founder Jeff Williams on Wednesday, William Binney,
a former NSA official
who spent more than three decades at the agency, said the US government's mass surveillance programs have
become so engorged with data that they are no longer effective, losing vital intelligence in the fray. That, he said,
can -- and has -- led to terrorist attacks succeeding. Binney said that an analyst today can run one simple query
across the NSA's various databases, only to become immediately overloaded with information. With about four billion people
-- around two-thirds of the world's population -- under the NSA and partner agencies' watchful eyes, according to his estimates, there is too much data being collected.
"That's why they couldn't stop the Boston bombing, or the Paris shootings, because the data was all there," said Binney. Because the agency isn't carefully and
methodically setting its tools up for smart data collection, that leaves analysts to search for a needle in a haystack. "The data was all there... the NSA is great at going
Binney called this a "bulk data failure"
-- in that the NSA programs, leaked by Edward Snowden, are collecting too much for the agency to process. He said
the problem runs deeper across law enforcement and other federal agencies, like the FBI, the CIA, and the Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA), which all have access to NSA intelligence.
back over it forensically for years to see what they were doing before that," he said. "But that doesn't stop it."
Soft Power Turn – 2AC
Cooperation garnered by soft power is more important than intelligence capabilities.
Donahoe, Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies visiting
scholar, 2014
(Eileen, “Why the NSA undermines national security”, 3-6, http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/03/06/whynsa-surveillance-undermines-national-security/)
But this zero-sum framework ignores the significant damage that the NSA’s practices have done to U.S. national
security. In a global digital world, national security depends on many factors beyond surveillance capacities, and
over-reliance on global data collection can create unintended security vulnerabilities. There’s a better framework than securityversus-privacy for evaluating the national security implications of mass-surveillance practices. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it “smart power.”
Her idea acknowledges that as global political power has become more diffuse, U.S. interests and security
increasingly depend on our ability to persuade partners to join us on important global security actions. But how do
we motivate disparate groups of people and nations to join us? We exercise smart power by inspiring trust and
building credibility in the global community. Developing these abilities is as important to U.S. national security
as superior military power or intelligence capabilities. I adopted the smart-power approach when serving as U.S. ambassador to the United
Nations Human Rights Council. Our task at the council was to work with allies, emerging democracies and human rights-friendly governments to build coalitions to
protect international human rights. We also built alliances with civil society actors, who serve as powerful countervailing forces in authoritarian systems. These
The NSA’s arbitrary global surveillance methods fly in the
face of smart power. In the pursuit of information, the spy agency has invaded the privacy of foreign citizens and
political leaders, undermining their sense of freedom and security. NSA methods also undercut U.S. credibility as a
champion of universal human rights. The U.S. model of mass surveillance will be followed by others and could
unintentionally invert the democratic relationship between citizens and their governments. Under the cover of preventing
partnerships can reinforce stable relationships, which enhances U.S. security.
terrorism, authoritarian governments may now increase surveillance of political opponents. Governments that collect and monitor digital information to intimidate or
squelch political opposition and dissent can more justifiably claim they are acting with legitimacy. For human rights defenders and democracy activists worldwide, the
Superior information is powerful,
but sometimes it comes at greater cost than previously recognized. When trust and credibility are eroded, the
opportunity for collaboration and partnership with other nations on difficult global issues collapses. The
ramifications of this loss of trust have not been adequately factored into our national security calculus. What is
potential consequences of the widespread use by governments of mass surveillance techniques are dark and clear.
most disconcerting is that the NSA’s mass surveillance techniques have compromised the security of telecommunication networks, social media platforms, privatesector data storage and public infrastructure security systems. Authoritarian governments and hackers now have a roadmap to surreptitiously tap into private networks
for their own nefarious purposes. By weakening encryption programs and planting backdoor entries to encryption software, the NSA has demonstrated how it is
possible to infiltrate and violate information-security systems. In effect, the spy agency has modeled anarchic behavior that makes everyone less safe. Some have
argued, though, that there is a big difference between the U.S. government engaging in mass-surveillance activities and authoritarian governments doing so. That “big
difference” is supposed to be democratic checks and balances, transparency and adherence to the rule of law. Current NSA programs, however, do not operate within
these constraints. With global standards for digital surveillance now being set, our political leaders must remember that U.S. security depends upon much more than
unimpeded surveillance capabilities. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel, one of President Barack Obama’s most trusted international partners, has wisely
reminded us, just because we can do something does not mean that we should do it. National
security policies that fail to calculate the real
costs of arbitrary mass surveillance threaten to make us less secure. Without trusted and trusting partners, U.S.
priority initiatives in complex global negotiations will be non-starters. The president, his advisers and our political leaders should
reassess the costs of the NSA’s spy programs on our national security, our freedom and our democrac y. By evaluating these programs through a
smart-power lens, we will be in a stronger position to regain the global trust and credibility so central to our national
security.
Soft Power Turn – 1AR
Soft power is key to durable victories in the war on terrorism.
Hammond, Centre for International Diplomacy, Affairs and Strategy associate, 2-17-15
(Andrew, “Why the flawed 'War on Terror' needs a reboot”, http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/17/opinion/war-on-terrorreboot/)
One of the most glaring gaps that now badly needs to be addressed is need for a turbo-charged soft-power effort to
win hearts and minds around the world. As Obama has said, this must include an "alternative narrative" for a disaffected
generation, especially in Muslim-majority countries. Obama summit aims to battle extremists, Islamic and otherwise In numerous key countries such
as Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan, polls show that positive opinions toward the United States have fallen off a cliff in the last
decade and a half. Just 10%, 12%, and 14% of the populations in these three countries, respectively, have a positive image of America, according to the latest
Pew Global Research. This is key because the anti-terrorism contest is, in essence, one whose outcome is related to a battle
between moderates and extremists within Islamic civilizations. And unless this fundamental is better recognized
and addressed, with soft power dialled up significantly, the U.S.-led international strategy will continue to
face serious setbacks, if not outright failure. In the context of the campaign against terrorism, soft power
represents the capacity of Washington and its allies to persuade others (both states and individuals) without brute
force -- in other words, the ability to attract others by legitimacy of policies and the values that underpin them.
Soft power creates the coalitions necessary to solve terrorism.
Lord, IREX CEO and president, 2014
(Kristin, “Soft Power Outage”, 12-23, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/23/soft-power-outage/)
A focus on soft power is well matched to the national security challenges of our time, which will require the United
States and its allies to counter rapidly evolving ideological challenges and build coalitions of like-minded partners.
Whether the threat is countering violent extremism or reversing the trend of rising authoritarianism, such
efforts require moral purpose, a strong sense of shared values, and broad networks of relationships that span
sectors and issue areas — all of which should be the United States’ strong suits. But they will require the United
States to strengthen its soft power arsenal with the same diligence applied to hard power. It will require the United
States to protect its moral authority.
Trust Turn – 2AC
Surveillance undermines trust which hurts law enforcement efforts at disrupting terrorist
plots.
Schulhofer, NYU law professor, 2013
(Stephen, “Making Sense of the NSA Metadata Collection Program (Part II)”, http://justsecurity.org/2985/makingsense-nsa-metadata-collection-program-part-ii/)
Efforts like the NSA sweeps actually undermine the counterterrorism effort itself . The reason is that these types of programs
generate profound mistrust of government in general and of law enforcement in particular. We have already seen dramatic examples in the way
that the Snowden revelations of our spying on allies has angered European leaders and endangered our working
relationships with them. Although this breach eventually will be healed, alienation and mistrust among ordinary citizens is equally
important, and it will not be so easily remedied . That mistrust, in turn, has a strong chilling effect on the
willingness of law-abiding, loyal citizens to cooperate in the counterterrorism effort – for example by working with
officials in local counterterrorism programs or by alerting law enforcement to various kinds of suspicious behavior. This dynamic has been
demonstrated in several decades of extensive law enforcement research, including research focused specifically on
counterterrorism policies and their impact on Muslim communities in the West. In one study, for example, Muslim-Americans in
New York City were 61% less likely to report potentially suspicious precursors of terrorism when they felt that counterterrorism policies were being unfairly set and
implemented. (See Schulhofer, Tyler & Huq, American Policing at a Crossroads: Unsustainable Policies and the Procedural Justice Alternative, 101 J. Crim. L. &
Criminology 335, 364-74 (2011).) This last point underscores the most important, but least appreciated, “given” of the counterterrorism enterprise. Because the
consequences of a terrorist attack could be so catastrophic, citizens and public officials alike tend to support strong law enforcement more readily than they do in
ordinary times. The perception is that strong measures are acceptable because the top priority must be to reduce the risk of attack. And strong measures, whatever their
drawbacks, at least seem to offer ways to reduce that risk. The central lesson of smart law enforcement, however, is that there are no risk-free choices.
Strengthening the powers of the executive enhances some of our defenses against terrorism, but it weakens
others – many of which, including community trust and cooperation, are absolutely essential to reducing the
dangers of terrorism. Against this background, we must – for the sake of our democracy and even for the sake of
our physical security – find ways to dissipate the cloud of mistrust that now hangs over NSA surveillance.
No Nuke Terror – 2AC
No means or motive for nuclear terror
Weiss, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation visiting scholar, 2015
(Leonard, “On fear and nuclear terrorism”, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 72.2, ebsco)
There is clearly some risk of nuclear terrorism via theft of weapons, but the risk is low, and a successful theft of a nuclear
weapon would likely require a team of insiders working within an otherwise highly secure environment. There is also some
risk that a nuclear-armed country might use a terrorist group to launch a nuclear attack on an adversary. This possibility is also of low probability, because the sponsor country
would almost inevitably risk nuclear annihilation itself. Finally, a terrorist group might try to design and build its
own weapon, possibly with the help of disaffected persons from a weapon state who might provide them with
nuclear know-how and/or materials. Given all the steps needed to achieve a weapon that is workable with high
probability without being discovered and without suffering an accident this scenario is also fraught with risk for
the terrorists. As a result, terrorists are much more likely to try to achieve their aims using conventional weapons,
which are cheaper, safer, and technically more reliable. Thus, while no one can discount completely the acquisition
by a terrorist group of a nuclear explosive weapon, such an event appears to be of very low probability over the next decade at
least, and can be made still lower using techniques or policies that do not require constitutionally problematic steps by the federal government or an optional war whose death rate could match or
There is a tendency on the part of security policy advocates to hype security threats to
obtain support for their desired policy outcomes. They are free to do so in a democratic society, and most come by their advocacy through genuine
conviction that a real security threat is receiving insufficient attention. But there is now enough evidence of how such advocacy has been distorted
for the purpose of overcoming political opposition to policies stemming from ideology that careful public exposure
and examination of data on claimed threats should be part of any such debate . Until this happens, the most appropriate
attitude toward claimed threats of nuclear terrorism, especially when accompanied by advocacy of policies intruding on individual freedom, should be
one of skepticism. Interestingly, while all this attention to nuclear terrorism goes on, the United States and other nuclear nations have no problem promoting the use of nuclear power
exceed what the terrorists are capable of.
and national nuclear programs (only for friends, of course) that end up creating more nuclear materials that can be used for weapons. The use of civilian nuclear programs to disguise national
weapon ambitions has been a hallmark of proliferation history ever since the Atoms for Peace program (Sokolski, 2001), suggesting that the real nuclear threat resides where it always has resided
in national nuclear programs; but placing the threat where it properly belongs does not carry the public-relations frisson currently attached to the word Òterrorism.Ó
No Nuke Terror – 1AR
Empirics prove no real capability
Mueller et al., OSU political science professor, 2012
(John, “The Terrorism Delusion”, International Security, 37.1,
politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller//absisfin.pdf)
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a lengthy report on protecting the homeland. Key to achieving such an objective should be a careful assessment of the
character, capacities, and desires of potential terrorists targeting that homeland. Although the report contains a section dealing with what its authors call “the nature of the terrorist adversary,” the
section devotes only two sentences to assessing that nature: “The number and high profile of international and domestic terrorist attacks and disrupted plots during the last two decades underscore
Terrorists have proven to be relentless, patient, opportunistic, and flexible,
learning from experience and modifying tactics and targets to exploit perceived vulnerabilities and avoid observed
strengths.”8 This description may apply to some terrorists somewhere, including at least a few of those involved in the September 11 attacks. Yet, it scarcely
describes the vast majority of those individuals picked up on terrorism charges in the United States since those attacks. The inability
of the DHS to consider this fact even parenthetically in its fleeting discussion is not only amazing but perhaps
delusional in its single-minded preoccupation with the extreme. In sharp contrast, the authors of the case studies, with remarkably few exceptions,
the determination and persistence of terrorist organizations.
describe their subjects with such words as incompetent, ineffective, unintelligent, idiotic, ignorant, inadequate, unorganized, misguided, muddled, amateurish, dopey, unrealistic, moronic,
irrational, and foolish.9 And in nearly all of the cases where an operative from the police or from the Federal Bureau of Investigation was at work (almost half of the total), the most appropriate
would-be terrorists need to be “radicalized enough to die for their cause;
Westernized enough to move around without raising red flags; ingenious enough to exploit loopholes in the security
apparatus; meticulous enough to attend to the myriad logistical details that could torpedo the operation; selfsufficient enough to make all the preparations without enlisting outsiders who might give them away; disciplined
enough to maintain complete secrecy; and—above all—psychologically tough enough to keep functioning at a high
level without cracking in the face of their own impending death.”10 The case studies examined in this article certainly do not
abound with people with such characteristics. In the eleven years since the September 11 attacks, no terrorist has been able
to detonate even a primitive bomb in the United States, and except for the four explosions in the London transportation system in 2005, neither has any in the
descriptor would be “gullible.” In all, as Shikha Dalmia has put it,
United Kingdom. Indeed, the only method by which Islamist terrorists have managed to kill anyone in the United States since September 11 has been with gunfire—inflicting a total of perhaps
sixteen deaths over the period (cases 4, 26, 32).11 This limited capacity is impressive because, at one time, small-scale terrorists in the United States were quite successful in setting off bombs.
Noting that the scale of the September 11 attacks has “tended to obliterate America’s memory of pre-9/11 terrorism,” Brian Jenkins reminds us (and we clearly do need reminding) that the 1970s
witnessed sixty to seventy terrorist incidents, mostly bombings, on U.S. soil every year.12 The situation seems scarcely different in Europe and other Western locales. Michael Kenney, who has
interviewed dozens of government officials and intelligence agents and analyzed court documents, has found that, in sharp contrast with the boilerplate characterizations favored by the DHS and
Islamist militants in those locations are operationally unsophisticated, short on know-how, prone
to making mistakes, poor at planning, and limited in their capacity to learn .13 Another study documents the
difficulties of network coordination that continually threaten the terrorists’ operational unity, trust, cohesion, and
ability to act collectively.14 In addition, although some of the plotters in the cases targeting the United States harbored visions of toppling large
buildings, destroying airports, setting off dirty bombs, or bringing down the Brooklyn Bridge (cases 2, 8, 12, 19, 23, 30, 42), all were nothing more than wild
fantasies, far beyond the plotters’ capacities however much they may have been encouraged in some instances by
FBI operatives. Indeed, in many of the cases, target selection is effectively a random process, lacking guile and careful planning .
with the imperatives listed by Dalmia,
Often, it seems, targets have been chosen almost capriciously and simply for their convenience. For example, a would-be bomber targeted a mall in Rockford, Illinois, because it was nearby (case
21). Terrorist plotters in Los Angeles in 2005 drew up a list of targets that were all within a 20-mile radius of their shared apartment, some of which did not even exist (case 15). In Norway, a
neo-Nazi terrorist on his way to bomb a synagogue took a tram going the wrong way and dynamited a mosque instead.15
Zero motive to pursue nuclear weapons
Weiss, Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation visiting scholar, 2015
(Leonard, “On fear and nuclear terrorism”, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 72.2, ebsco)
Are terrorists even interested in making their own nuclear weapons? A recent paper (Friedman and Lewis, 2014) postulates a
scenario by which terrorists might seize nuclear materials in Pakistan for fashioning a weapon. While jihadist sympathizers are known to have
worked within the Pakistani nuclear establishment, there is little to no evidence that terrorist groups in or outside the region are
seriously trying to obtain a nuclear capability. And Pakistan has been operating a uranium enrichment plant for its weapons program
for nearly 30 years with no credible reports of diversion of HEU from the plant. There is one stark example of a terrorist
organization that actually started a nuclear effort: the Aum Shinrikyo group. At its peak, this religious cult had a
membership estimated in the tens of thousands spread over a variety of countries, including Japan; its members had
scientific expertise in many areas; and the group was well funded. Aum Shinrikyo obtained access to natural
uranium supplies, but the nuclear weapon effort stalled and was abandoned . The group was also interested in chemical
weapons and did produce sarin nerve gas with which they attacked the Tokyo subway system, killing 13 persons. Aum Shinrikyo is now a small
organization under continuing close surveillance. What about highly organized groups, designated appropriately as terrorist, that have
acquired enough territory to enable them to operate in a quasigovernmental fashion, like the Islamic State (IS)? Such organizations are
certainly dangerous, but how would nuclear terrorism fit in with a program for building and sustaining a new
caliphate that would restore past glories of Islamic society, especially since, like any organized government, the
Islamic State would itself be vulnerable to nuclear attack? Building a new Islamic state out of radioactive ashes is an
unlikely ambition for such groups. However, now that it has become notorious, apocalyptic pronouncements in Western media may
begin at any time, warning of the possible acquisition and use of nuclear weapons by IS. Even if a terror group were to achieve
technical nuclear proficiency, the time, money, and infrastructure needed to build nuclear weapons creates
significant risks of discovery that would put the group at risk of attack. Given the ease of obtaining conventional
explosives and the ability to deploy them, a terrorist group is unlikely to exchange a big part of its operational
program to engage in a risky nuclear development effort with such doubtful prospects. And, of course, 9/11 has
heightened sensitivity to the need for protection, lowering further the probability of a successful effort.
No Retaliation – 2AC
People would be more cautious, not freak out and retaliate.
Mueller, OSU political science professor, 2010
(John, “Think Again: Nuclear Weapons”, January/February,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/think_again_nuclear_weapons?page=0,4)
"A Nuclear Explosion Would Cripple the U.S. Economy." Only if Americans let it.Although former CIA chief George Tenet insists in his memoirs that one
"mushroom cloud" would "destroy our economy," he
never bothers to explain how the instant and tragic destruction of three square
miles somewhere in the United States would lead inexorably to national economic annihilation. A nuclear explosion in, say,
New York City -- as Obama so darkly invoked -- would obviously be a tremendous calamity that would roil markets and cause great economic hardship, but would it
extinguish the rest of the country? Would farmers cease plowing? Would manufacturers close their assembly lines? Would all businesses, governmental structures,
and community groups evaporate? Americans are highly unlikely to react to an atomic explosion, however disastrous, by immolating themselves and their economy.
In 1945, Japan weathered not only two nuclear attacks but intense nationwide conventional bombing; the horrific
experience did not destroy Japan as a society or even as an economy. Nor has persistent, albeit nonnuclear, terrorism
in Israel caused that state to disappear -- or to abandon democracy. Even the notion that an act of nuclear
terrorism would cause the American people to lose confidence in the government is belied by the traumatic
experience of Sept. 11, 2001, when expressed confidence in America's leaders paradoxically soared. And it
contradicts decades of disaster research that documents how socially responsible behavior increases under
such conditions -- seen yet again in the response of those evacuating the World Trade Center on 9/11.
No Retaliation – 1AR
No demand retaliation.
Smith et al., Oklahoma political science professor, 2005
(Hank, “United States Public Response to Terrorism: Fault Lines or Bedrock?, January,
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=hjsmith)
Our final contrasting set of expectations relates to the degree to which the public will support or demand retribution against terrorists and supporting states. Here
our data show that support for using conventional United States military force to retaliate against terrorists initially
averaged above midscale, but did not reach a high level of demand for military action. Initial support declined
significantly across all demographic and belief categories by the time of our survey in 20 02. Furthermore, panelists
both in 2001 and 2002 preferred that high levels of certainty about culpabilit y (above 8.5 on a scale from zero to ten) be
established before taking military action. Again, we find the weight of evidence supporting revisionist expectations of public opinion.
Overall, these results are inconsistent with the contention that highly charged events will result in volatile and
unstructured responses among mass publics that prove problematic for policy processe s. The initial response to the terrorist
strikes demonstrated a broad and consistent shift in public assessments toward a greater perceived threat from terrorism, and greater willingness to support policies to
reduce that threat. But even
in the highly charged context of such a serious attack on the American homeland , the overall
public response was quite measured. On average, the public showed very little propensity to undermine speech protections, and initial willingness
to engage in military retaliation moderated significantly over the following year. Perhaps most interesting is that the greatest propensity to change beliefs between
2001 and 2002 was evident among the best-educated and wealthiest of our respondents—hardly the expected source of volatility, but in this case they may have
represented the leading edge of belief constraints reasserting their influence in the first year following 9/11. This post-9/11 change also reflected an increasing
delineation of policy preferences by ideological and partisan positions. Put differently,
those whose beliefs changed the most in the year
between surveys also were those with the greatest access to and facility with information (the richest, best educated), and the
nature of the changes was entirely consistent with a structured and coherent pattern of public beliefs. Overall, we
find these patterns to be quite reassuring, and consistent with the general findings of the revisionist theorists of
public opinion. Our data suggest that while United States public opinion may exhibit some fault lines in times of
crises, it remains securely anchored in bedrock beliefs
Transparency CP Answers
Curtailing Key – 2AC
Limiting section 702 to national security restores trust without harming the intelligence
community---reducing the scope of surveillance is what matters.
Center for Democracy & Technology 2014
(“Comments To The Privacy And Civil Liberties Oversight Board Regarding Reforms To Surveillance Conducted
Pursuant To Section 702 Of Fisa”, 4-11, https://d1ovv0c9tw0h0c.cloudfront.net/files/2014/04/CDT_PCLOB-702Comments_4.11.13.pdf)
Section 702 permits overbroad surveillance because the purposes for which the surveillance may be conducted are
overly broad. To understand why this is so, it is necessary to understand FISA itself, and how procedures under Section 702, which was added to FISA in 2008,
differ from those originally authorized by Congress in FISA for intelligence surveillance of targets in the U.S. thirty years before. The FISA provisions that
govern intelligence surveillance of targets in the U.S. permit the government to engage in electronic surveillance to
collect “foreign intelligence information.” For purposes of surveillance that targets a non-U.S. person, it is defined broadly as: (1) information that
relates to the ability of the U.S. to protect against a hostile attack, espionage, sabotage or international terrorism or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; or (2)
information with respect to a foreign territory or foreign power (a foreign government, political party, or entity controlled by a foreign government, or a foreign
When the government applies to the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for permission to conduct surveillance of targets in the U.S., it must certify
that a significant purpose of the surveillance it will conduct is to collect foreign intelligence information.5 Because
“foreign intelligence information” is defined so broadly, and because the FISC never actually rules on whether the
significant purpose test is met, the purpose limitation that governs FISA surveillance of targets in the U.S. is
easily met. FISA surveillance in the U.S. is instead effectively constrained by an additional requirement: the requirement that the government prove to the FISC
terrorist organization) that relates to the security of the U.S. or to the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs.4
that there is probable cause to believe the target of surveillance is a terrorist, spy, or other agent of a foreign power. Thus, Congress effectively constrained FISA
For surveillance of people
reasonably believed to be outside the U.S., Section 702 adopts the broad purpose requirement, but couples it with a
broad class of surveillance targets. Section 702 is not constrained by the requirement that the target be an agent of a
foreign power. Instead, the target need only be a non-U.S. person reasonably believed to be abroad. Effectively, Congress
surveillance of targets in the U.S. by permitting that surveillance to target only a narrow class of persons and entities.
borrowed the broad purpose for FISA intelligence surveillance (collect “foreign intelligence information”) and applied it to surveillance abroad without limiting the
class of potential targets to “agents of a foreign power.” This
has prompted concern globally that surveillance under Section 702
is broadly directed at individuals not suspected of wrongdoing , and could include targeting based at least in part on political activities.
A peaceful protest at a U.S. base in Germany or a demonstration against rising food prices in India “relate to” U.S. foreign policy; non-U.S. persons involved in those
protests could be monitored under Section 702.
A 2012 cloud computing report to the European Parliament included a finding that
under Section 702, it is lawful in the U.S. to conduct purely political surveillance on non-U.S. persons’ data stored
by U.S. cloud companies.6 Such actions raise serious human rights concerns . Further, fear of the mere possibly that
this overbroad surveillance is occurring has significantly damaged the U.S. tech industry abroad. The Presidential
Policy Directive that President Obama issued on January 17, 2014 (PPD-28), 7 while remarkable in many ways, does not sufficiently address this problem. It prohibits
the government from collecting signals intelligence for the purpose of suppressing or burdening criticism or dissent, but that prohibition permits the continued
collection of information about such expressive activities merely because they are relevant to U.S. foreign affairs. On the other hand, PPD-28 does include very
important restrictions on the use of information collected in bulk for foreign intelligence purposes. They seem carefully thought out, and each permitted use of
information collected in bulk would directly advance U.S. national security interests. These are among the most significant provisions of PPD-28, but they do not
apply to Section 702 because it is not considered a bulk collection program.8 To
address the problem of over breadth in Section 702
collection, PCLOB should recommend that Section 702 surveillance be conducted only for carefully defined
national security purposes. While there are different ways to do this, the best way would be to turn the “use restrictions” in PPD-28 that govern bulk
collection into the permissible purposes for Section 702 surveillance. This would require that collection pursuant to Section 702 only occur for purposes of detecting
and countering: (1) espionage and other threats and activities directed by foreign powers or their intelligence services against the United States and its interests, (2)
threats to the United States and its interests from terrorism, (3) threats to the United States and its interests from the development, possession, proliferation, or use of
weapons of mass destruction, (4) cybersecurity threats, (5) threats to U.S. or allied Armed Forces or other U.S or allied personnel, and (6) transnational criminal
This change would provide significant
comfort to non-U.S. persons abroad who are concerned about the impact on their human rights that Section
702 surveillance would otherwise have. Indeed, it would increase the likelihood that Section 702 surveillance
would meet human rights standards. It would also focus Section 702 surveillance on true national security threats
and still provide significant leeway to intelligence officials. We note that each time intelligence officials at the
March 19 PCLOB hearings on Section 702 described the DNI certifications that identify the categories of foreign
intelligence information that may be collected pursuant to Section 702, they mentioned one of these six categories of
information. Another way to limit to national security the purposes for collection pursuant to Section 702 would be to remove “the conduct of foreign affairs” as
threats, including illicit finance and sanctions evasion related to the other purposes named above.
a basis for collection. If adopted, this reform would permit collection under Section 702 for the purpose of obtaining (1) information that relates to the ability of the
U.S. to protect against a hostile attack, espionage, sabotage or international terrorism or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or (2) information with respect
to a foreign territory or foreign power (a foreign government, political party, or entity controlled by a foreign government, or a foreign terrorist organization) that
relates to the security of the U.S. Such a change would be consistent with the stated counterterrorism purpose of Section 702. Refining
the purpose for
which surveillance under Section 702 may be conducted would not prevent the Intelligence Community from
gathering information related to the conduct of foreign affairs, but rather would merely remove the highly invasive
practice of compelled company disclosure of communications content absent judicial review as a means of doing so.
Curtailing Key – 1AR
People want less data collected—spinning existing collection is not enough.
Granick, Center for Internet and Society civil liberties director, 2013
(Jennifer, “Reforming Fisa: A Critical Look At The Wyden/Udall Proposal And Foreign Surveillance”, 9-30,
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/publications/reforming-fisa-critical-look-wydenudall-proposal-and-foreignsurveillance)
More fundamentally, though, the Wyden/Udall bill does not fully address a fundamental problem with the FAA,
which is that it authorizes surveillance of average citizens of other countries for reasons that are not necessarily
related to the security of the United States. Senator Udall acknowledged in the press conference announcing the bill (at 30:17) that the NSA’s
unfettered spying has had and will continue to have an adverse economic effect on U.S.-based businesses, and that this is one of the motivations behind the bill.
Prohibiting “about the target” collection is one giant step forward. That would mean that non-targets outside the U.S. could not be subject to surveillance under this
law just because they talk about a target, unless their conversation is related to terrorism. Depending on the details of the targeting and minimization procedures, if my
British friend in London and I email about our dismay over the Kenya attacks, that would be fair game, but our conversation about the policies of Brazilian President
Dilma Roussef would be off limits. However, targets still need not be agents of foreign powers so long as a significant purpose of the collection is foreign intelligence.
Foreign intelligence is broad, and includes any information that “relates to” the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs . For
example, DNI James Clapper affirmed that the U.S. collects information about economic and financial matters to “provide the United States and our allies early
warning of international financial crises which could negatively impact the global economy … or to provide insight into other countries’ economic policy or behavior
which could affect global markets.” Monitoring economic and financial matters is in the United States’ national interest. However, routine
eavesdropping
upon common foreigners to discover information about these matters is a bad idea. First, foreigners have privacy
rights, too. Freedom from arbitrary interference with one’s privacy is part of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. Next, this monitoring is detrimental to U.S. companies and to the United States’ long-term interests in
promoting democratic ideals. As Sprigman and I argue, although it may be legal, unfettered U.S. spying on foreigners will cause
serious collateral damage to America’s technology companies, to our Internet-fueled economy, and to human rights
and democracy the world over . Since our Atlantic article on June 28th, and the disclosure that the NSA targeted both Petrobras and President Dilma
Roussef, Brazil has announced that it will look into requiring Internet companies to store its citizens’ data locally, and take other steps that threaten to balkanize the
global Internet. When Brazil takes these steps, it gives comfort and cover to authoritarian countries who will do the same, so that they can better censor, spy on, and
control Internet access within their own borders. As an economic matter, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerburg recently said the government “blew it” when it sought to
reassure a public nervous about the NSA revelations by saying, “‘Oh don’t worry, basically we’re not spying on any Americans.’ Oh, wonderful, that’s really helpful
to companies who are trying to serve people around the world and really going to inspire confidence in American Internet companies.” Based
on the
description we have, the only change the new bill would make is that it would prohibit the NSA from listening in on
foreigners who talk about matters of foreign intelligence interest, like Petrobras, but still authorize collection to and
from those who work at the company. This does not go far enough to reassure other nations that their average
citizen – someone disconnected from official government policy, terrorism or other dangers to the U.S.’s
national security interests — will not be lawfully targeted by the NSA. Senators Wyden and Udall have said that section 702 has
produced valuable actionable intelligence. What those successes have been is not public. But lawmakers need to study those gains with an eye to preserving the
possibility of such success in the future, while ensuring that regular people who work at banks, global companies, cybersecurity firms or other businesses are not
subject to NSA targeting. Thus,
the Wyden/Udall bill could also limit section 702 surveillance to exclude foreign
intelligence information merely about the conduct of U.S. foreign affairs, while allowing such surveillance for all
the other enumerated foreign intelligence purposes. This would be an easy idea to implement in the statute . Where the
law currently authorizes targeting “to acquire foreign intelligence information”, it could be amended to read, “to acquire foreign intelligence information as defined in
50 U.S.C. §§ 1801(e)(1) and (e)(2)(A).” This reform would mean “the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States” could not be the basis for targeting under the
FAA, leaving regular people outside of the warrantless surveillance regime. This
could send a powerful message to people around the
world, Americans and otherwise, that the United States can respect individual privacy while still protecting
itself against external threats. This reassurance could go a long way towards mollifying the concerns of current and
future customers of global communications platforms based in the U.S. with regard to whether they can and should
continue to do business with the Facebooks of the world, while denying authoritarian regimes the argument that the
NSA can surveil innocent people, and so their government officials must be able to do the same.
Foreign Protection Key – 2AC
Protections for foreign information is necessary to solve
Sprigman, NYU law professor, 2013
(Christopher, “U.S Government Surveillance: Bad for Silicon Valley, Bad for Democracy Around the World”, 6-28,
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/us-government-surveillance-bad-for-silicon-valley-bad-fordemocracy-around-the-world/277335/)
Americans have obsessed over our right to protect our emails, phone calls, and
. But an issue that is just as important has been almost completely igno red: should the
U.S. government be collecting the communications of foreigners without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing? Unlike spying on U.S.
citizens, where the government may well be breaking the law, spying on foreigners is almost certainly legal. But is it wise? We don't think
so. Unfettered U.S. spying on foreigners will cause serious collateral damage to America's technology
companies, to our Internet-fueled economy, and to human rights and democracy the world over. Rampant surveillance
In the public debate thus far over the NSA's mass surveillance programs,
other communications from warrantless spying
harms both privacy and our long-term national security. Foreigners don't vote in American elections, so perhaps it's not surprising that U.S. law throws them under the privacy bus. "If you are a
U.S. person," President Obama (inaccurately) assures us, "the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls." But the government doesn't disguise its broad snooping on foreigners. Director of
National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed recently that the NSA "targets foreigners located overseas for a valid foreign intelligence purpose." The legal basis for wide-scale Internet spying
on foreigners is set out in black and white in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). FISA allows collection of "foreign intelligence information," a grant of authority which goes well
beyond counterterrorism or national security to include "information with respect to a foreign power or foreign territory that relates to ... the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States." In
FISA as it
now stands authorizes warrantless surveillance of any non-U.S. individual reasonably believed to be located abroad,
allowing for the interception of the most private kind of information so long as it "relates to" U.S. foreign affairs. That
the original version of FISA, individuals could only be targeted if they were "agents of foreign powers," but 2008 amendments to the statute did away with that limitation. Thus,
language is broad enough to allow the U.S. to seize almost any sort of foreign communication, on the grounds that a communication might relate in some way to a foreign-affairs interest of the
For foreigners who don't regularly read American surveillance statutes, this all came as an unpleasant
surprise. And the details of how the NSA administers the mass surveillance programs do not make the surprise any
more palatable. Individuals subject to NSA surveillance are almost never notified. The proceedings authorizing the surveillance are secret. The orders and directives are classified. The
Internet companies that respond to the U.S. government's information demands are under gag order, or otherwise obligated not to disclose. And from a foreigner's
perspective, all this happens at the request of a government they can't hold to account and is approved by a secret
foreign court they can't petition. In addition to its broad legal authority to spy on foreigners, the U.S. now has a distinct technological advantage in doing so. In the past, the
United States.
nature of the telecommunications infrastructure meant that NSA commonly had to operate abroad to intercept in real-time phone calls between non-Americans. But today, most communications
flow over the Internet and a very large percentage of key Internet infrastructure is in the United States. Thus, foreigners' communications are much more likely to pass through U.S. facilities even
when no U.S. person is a party to a particular message. Think about a foreigner using Gmail, or Facebook, or Twitter -- billions of these communications originate elsewhere in the world but pass
through, and are stored on, servers located in the U.S. With so few legal or technical checks on the U.S. government's power to snoop, Internet users look to U.S. Internet companies to serve as
gatekeepers. Fortunately, some U.S.-based Internet companies also have a pro-privacy streak, and view themselves as critical checkpoints in the surveillance infrastructure. Here are just two
examples: In 2007, Yahoo unsuccessfully challenged the Protect America Act, a precursor law to the updated FISA. More recently, an unknown company brought a case before the FISA court
which resulted in a secret 2011 holding that the NSA had violated the Fourth Amendment. Yet, Internet companies are in a terrible position to rein in government overreach. The court processes
and the reasons for surveillance are kept secret from the companies. The cases that interpret the government's powers under the law are secret. And for whatever protections FISA might afford to
Americans, it serves no such role for foreigners, who comprise a growing majority of any global company's customers. When the government comes to an Internet company with a lawful but
secret court order signed by a judge and demanding certain data, they can review the order skeptically. They can judiciously select the responsive information. They can bring a secret lawsuit in
the FISA court to challenge the secret law on behalf of their international clients who have speculative Fourth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. But beyond these usually quixotic
As a result, from the perspective of many foreign individuals and governments,
global Internet companies headquartered in the U.S. are a security and privacy risk. And that means foreign
governments offended by U.S. snooping are already looking for ways to make sure their citizens' data never reaches
the U.S. without privacy concessions. We can see the beginnings of this effort in the statement by the vice president of the European Commission, Viviane Reding, who
efforts, the companies' powers are limited.
called in her June 20 op-ed in the New York Times for new EU data protection rules to "ensure that E.U. citizens' data are transferred to non-European law enforcement authorities only in
situations that are well defined, exceptional and subject to judicial review." While we cheer these limits on government access, the spying scandal also puts the U.S. government and American
companies at a disadvantage in ongoing discussions with the EU about upcoming changes to its law enforcement and consumer-privacy-focused data directives, negotiations critical to the
Internet industry's ongoing operations in Europe. Even more troubling, some European activists are calling for data-storage rules to thwart the U.S. government's surveillance advantage. The best
way to keep the American government from snooping is to have foreigners' data stored locally so that local governments - and not U.S. spy agencies -- get to say when and how that data may be
used. And that means nations will force U.S.-based Internet giants like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to store their user data in-country, or will redirect users to domestic businesses that are not
so easily bent to the American government's wishes. So the first unintended consequence of mass NSA surveillance may be to diminish the power and profitability of the U.S. Internet economy.
America invented the Internet, and our Internet companies are dominant around the world. The U.S. government, in its rush to spy on everybody, may end up killing our most productive golden
goose. Even worse, a shift away from U.S.-based Internet services is a blow to free expression around the world. We expect U.S.-based Internet companies to resist authoritarian governments
that ask for help squelching political dissent. That resistance is good for global democracy, and good for the United States. Of course, U.S. technology companies' response to such demands have
not always been exemplary. Rebecca Mackinnon's 2012 book details corporate complicity with repressive regimes' censorship and surveillance. Yet, without question, the role of Internet firms,
especially those based in America, is a net plus for democracy abroad. Having Twitter in the U.S. helped when the U.S. State Department asked it in 2009 to delay its regularly scheduled
maintenance to ensure activists can communicate during the Iranian elections. It is much harder to say no to a foreign government when a business has employees and data in that country. In this
way, the EU push for local data storage plays right into what some have called the "cyber sovereignty movement," an effort by many nations for more national control over the Internet within
their own borders. But unlike current discussions in Europe, those demands are not motivated by a desire to protect civil liberties. To the contrary, authoritarian countries want to censor, spy on,
and control Internet access within their own borders. These nations -- Russia, China, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and others -- unsuccessfully pushed for changes to the
Internet's infrastructure at the International Telecommunications Union meeting last December in Dubai. The growth of cyber-sovereignty would be a serious blow to the spread of liberal
democracy worldwide. The U.S. government's fervor for Internet surveillance has now provided advocates for such cyber-sovereignty with new privacy-motivated allies and a great set of talking
points. President Obama recently chided Americans concerned with NSA surveillance for our naïveté, saying "you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy." But
this administration's rhetoric is short-sighted and depressing when, in fact, rampant surveillance harms our long-term security. Given the Internet's role in empowering democracy activists the
We think this is unquestionably correct.
But, we can't have secret warrantless mass surveillance -- of Americans or of foreigners -- and also enjoy Internetfueled economic, democratic, and political empowerment. It is time to demand both security and privacy, for
everyone -- Americans and foreigners alike -- before it's too late.
world over, the State Department now ranks support for an open and uncensored Internet as one of it fundamental missions.
Foreign Protection Key – 1AR
Have to protect foreigners
Patel, NYU Brennan Center for Justice Liberty and National Security Program codirector, 2014
(Faiza, “Extending Privacy Protections to Foreigners Will Benefit Americans”, 11-6,
http://justsecurity.org/17170/extending-privacy-protections-foreigners-benefit-americans/)
An additional argument for enhancing privacy protections for foreigners overseas is that the privacy of Americans is
intimately bound with that of foreigners. Increased connectivity mean that we are communicating across borders at such a rate that government
programs to collect overseas information inevitably pull in a great deal of information about Americans. Under EO 12333, such “incidentally” collected information
about Americans can be retained by the NSA for a variety of reasons. As former State Department official John Napier Tye explained in the Washington Post earlier
this year: “Incidental” collection may sound insignificant, but it is a legal loophole that can be stretched very wide. … A
legal regime in which US citizens’ data receives different levels of privacy and oversight, depending on whether it is collected inside or outside US borders, may have
But today, US communications increasingly travel
across US borders — or are stored beyond them. For example, the Google and Yahoo e-mail systems rely on networks of “mirror” servers
made sense when most communications by US persons stayed inside the United States.
located throughout the world. An e-mail from New York to New Jersey is likely to wind up on servers in Brazil, Japan and Britain. The same is true for most purely
domestic communications. Similar
concerns have been raised by about incidental collection inside the US under
Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. While improving “back-end” protections – constraints on the government’s retention or use of
incidentally collected information – may help protect Americans’ privacy, their effectiveness is limited. In many contexts, the NSA has admitted that it is unable to
identify and filter out Americans’ communications. In
other words, if the NSA has free rein on to gather foreigners’ information, the
pool of information it will simultaneously collect about Americans is enormous and, under current rules, barely
protected. I agree with Ryan’s conclusion that procedural rules on surveillance work best in the domestic context. Indeed, they can only work when there is public
trust in the government institutions that are implementing them, generally in secret. At this point, there is considerable skepticism about the NSA’s commitment to the
privacy values. Relying on procedural protections implemented by other countries, particularly non-democratic ones is even less palatable. Of course,
taking
the position that there are strong policy reasons for extending privacy protections to mass surveillance programs
overseas is not the same as requiring individualized warrants for each interception. There are ways of raising the bar
on the type of information governments can collect and about whom (just as President Obama has done with respect
to the use of certain types of information in Presidential Policy Directive 28) without reverting to a Fourth
Amendment warrant model. Snowden’s revelations jump-started a conversation about privacy rights, both at
home and overseas. Its time to recognize that these rights are intimately connected – stronger protections for
foreigners will not only enhance their privacy, but also that of Americans.
Transparency Only Bad – 2AC
Transparency links to the DA and doesn’t restore public trust.
Etzioni, George Washington international affairs professor, 2014
(Amitai, “Liberal Communitarian Approach to Privacy and Security”, 6-25,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2459037)
The second approach entails increasing the power of, and adding layers to, institutional accountability and oversight.
Although both might be called for, there are strong reasons to rely more on enhanced accountability and oversight than
on much enhanced transparency. The distinction reflects the well-known difference between direct democracy (which is the idea behind
transparency—the people will know all the details and judge the merit of the programs) and representative democracy (a good part of the judgment will be made by
elected representatives, and the public will judge them). Significantly higher levels of transparency present two kinds of serious problems. One
problem is
well-known and plagues all efforts for direct democracy. There are sharp limits in the capacity of the public who are
busy making a living and leading a social life, to learn the details of any government program and evaluate it—
especially given that, in the end, they cannot vote any program up or down, but have only one "holistic" vote for their representatives based on all that those
representatives favor and oppose. Second,
high transparency is, on its face, incompatible with keeping secret that which must
be kept secret. Moreover, when the government responds to calls for more scrutiny with the release of more
information—so as to demonstrate that the secret acts did, in fact, improve security and did not unduly violate
privacy—these releases encounter several difficulties. First, each piece of information released potentially helps the
adversaries. This is, in effect, the way intelligence work is often done: by piecing together details released by various sources. Thus, the publication
of information about which past terrorist operations were disrupted by the government could allow those
groups to find out which of their plots failed because of US government interventions versus those that failed
because of technical flaws, the weakness of their chosen agents, or some other reason . Second, it is next to
impossible to spell out how these cases unfolded without giving away details about sources and methods . (That is, unless
the government releases misleading details. But, sooner or later, some whistleblower would likely expose the ploy, undermining the whole enterprise, which was
meant to build trust in government.) Thus, one intelligence official reports that the leaks regarding the NSA snooping programs have already led to terrorist groups
“changing their communications behavior based on these disclosures,” meaning that we might “miss tidbits that could be useful in stopping the next plot.”72
Moreover, however much information about specific cases the government releases, skeptics are sure to find details
that need further clarification and documentation. (This is the reason public relations experts urge those whose
misdeeds are under public scrutiny to “tell all” right from the start, a strategy that may well serve politicians who cheat on their spouses,
but not those who deal with combating terrorism.) Thus, following the uproar over the PRISM program, technology companies
sought to “reassure users” by releasing reports on the frequency of government data requests. According to the New
York Times, the result was that “rather than provide clarity, the companies’ disclosures have left many questions
unanswered.”73 When NSA Director General Keith Alexander released details about how the agency’s surveillance programs had thwarted terrorist plots, the
media immediately asked for more.74 Moreover, there is no way for the media to determine whether the released cases are
typical or were chosen because they reflect well on the government. In contrast, a representative democracy approach suggests that one
ought to search for ways to enhance the accountability and oversight power of various institutions, including Congressional committees, the FISA appeal court, the
GAO, various Inspectors General, and privacy officers. The involved government agencies must greatly expand the use of audit trails.
Neolib K Answers
Individual Action Fails – 2AC
Extra-legal individual approaches fail-the progress of the conservative agenda via
institutional routes prove our argument
Lobel, UCSD law professor, 2007
(Orly, “The Paradox of Extralegal Activism: Critical Legal Consciousness and Transformative Politics”,
http://www.harvardlawreview.org/media/pdf/lobel.pdf)
Both the
practical failures and the fallacy of rigid boundaries generated by extralegal activism rhetoric permit us to
broaden our inquiry to the underlying assumptions of current proposals regarding transformative politics — that is, attempts to produce
meaningful changes in the political and socioeconomic landscapes. The suggested alternatives produce a new image of social and political action. This
vision rejects a shared theory of social reform, rejects formal programmatic agendas, and embraces a multiplicity of forms and practices .
Thus, it is described in such terms as a plan of no plan,211 “a project of projects,”212 “anti-theory theory,”213 politics rather than goals,214 presence rather
than power,215 “practice over theory,”216 and chaos and openness over order and formality. As a result, the contemporary message rarely includes a comprehensive
vision of common social claims, but rather engages in the description of fragmented efforts. As Professor Joel Handler argues, the commonality of struggle and social
vision that existed during the civil rights movement has disappeared.217 There is no unifying discourse or set of values, but rather an aversion to any metanarrative
and a resignation from theory. Professor Handler warns that this move away from grand narratives is self-defeating precisely because only certain parts of the political
spectrum have accepted this new stance: “[T]he
opposition is not playing that game . . . . [E]veryone else is operating as if there
were Grand Narratives . . . .”218 Intertwined with the resignation from law and policy, the new bromide of “neither left nor
right” has become axiomatic only for some.219 The contemporary critical legal consciousness informs the scholarship of those who are interested in
progressive social activism, but less so that of those who are interested, for example, in a more competitive securities market. Indeed, an interesting recent
development has been the rise of “conservative public interest lawyer[ing].”220 Although “public interest law” was originally associated exclusively with liberal
projects, in the past three decades conservative
advocacy groups have rapidly grown both in number and in their vigorous use of
traditional legal strategies to promote their causes.221 This growth in conservative advocacy is particularly salient in
juxtaposition to the decline of traditional progressive advocacy. Most recently, some thinkers have even suggested that there may be
“something inherent in the left’s conception of social change — focused as it is on participation and empowerment — that
produces a unique distrust of legal expertise.”222 Once again, this conclusion reveals flaws parallel to the original
disenchantment with legal reform. Although the new extralegal frames present themselves as apt alternatives to legal reform models and as capable of
producing significant changes to the social map, in practice they generate very limited improvement in existing social arrangements. Most
strikingly, the cooptation effect here can be explained in terms of the most profound risk of the typology — that of legitimation. The common pattern of
extralegal scholarship is to describe an inherent instability in dominant structures by pointing, for example, to grassroots
strategies,223 and then to assume that specific instances of counterhegemonic activities translate into a more complete
transformation. This celebration of multiple micro-resistances seems to rely on an aggregate approach — an idea that the
multiplication of practices will evolve into something substantial. In fact, the myth of engagement obscures the
actual lack of change being produced, while the broader pattern of equating extralegal activism with social reform
produces a false belief in the potential of change. There are few instances of meaningful reordering of social and economic arrangements and
macro-redistribution. Scholars write about decoding what is really happening, as though the scholarly narrative has the power to unpack more than the actual
conventional experience will admit.224 Unrelated efforts become related and part of a whole through mere reframing. At the same time, the elephant in the room —
the rising level of economic inequality — is left unaddressed and comes to be understood as natural and inevitable.225 This is precisely the problematic process that
critical theorists decry as losers’ self-mystification, through which marginalized groups come to see systemic losses as the product of their own actions and thereby
begin to focus on minor achievements as representing the boundaries of their willed reality. The explorations of micro-instances of activism are often fundamentally
performative, obscuring the distance between the descriptive and the prescriptive. The manifestations of extralegal activism — the law and organizing model; the
proliferation of informal, soft norms and norm-generating actors; and the celebrated, separate nongovernmental sphere of action — all produce a fantasy that change
can be brought about through small-scale, decentralized transformation. The emphasis is local, but the locality is described as a microcosm of the whole and the
audience is national and global. In the context of the humanities, Professor Carol Greenhouse poses a comparable challenge to ethnographic studies from the 1990s,
which utilized the genres of narrative and community studies, the latter including works on American cities and neighborhoods in trouble.226 The aspiration of these
genres was that each individual story could translate into a “time of the nation” body of knowledge and motivation.227 In contemporary legal thought, a
corresponding gap opens between the local scale and the larger, translocal one. In reality, although there has been a recent proliferation of associations and grassroots
groups, few new local-statenational federations have emerged in the United States since the 1960s and 1970s, and many of the existing voluntary federations that
flourished in the mid-twentieth century are in decline.228 There is, therefore, an absence of links between the local and the national, an absent intermediate public
social movements have for the most part failed in
sustaining coalitions or producing significant institutional change through grassroots activism. Professor Handler concludes that
this failure is due in part to the ideas of contingency, pluralism, and localism that are so embedded in current
activism.230 Is the focus on small-scale dynamics simply an evasion of the need to engage in broader substantive debate? It is important for next-generation
sphere, which has been termed “the missing middle” by Professor Theda Skocpol.229 New
progressive legal scholars, while maintaining a critical legal consciousness, to recognize that not all extralegal associational life is transformative. We must
differentiate, for example, between inward-looking groups, which tend to be self-regarding and depoliticized, and social movements that participate in political
activities, engage the public debate, and aim to challenge and reform existing realities.231 We must differentiate between professional associations and more inclusive
forms of institutions that act as trustees for larger segments of the community.232 As described above, extralegal activism tends to operate on a more divided and
hence a smaller scale than earlier social movements, which had national reform agendas. Consequently, within critical discourse there is a need to recognize the
limited capacity of small-scale action. We should question the narrative that imagines consciousness-raising as directly translating into action and action as directly
translating into change. Certainly not every cultural description is political. Indeed, it is questionable whether forms of activism that are opposed to programmatic
reconstruction of a social agenda should even be understood as social movements. In fact, when groups
are situated in opposition to any form of
institutionalized power, they may be simply mirroring what they are fighting against and merely producing moot
activism that settles for what seems possible within the narrow space that is left in a rising convergence of
ideologies. The original vision is consequently coopted, and contemporary discontent is legitimated through a
process of self-mystification.
No mindset shift and no successful movements
Lockwood, former Institute for Public Policy Research Climate, Transport and Energy
Associate Director, 2011
(Matthew, “The Limits to Environmentalism”, 3-25, http://politicalclimate.net/2011/03/25/the-limits-toenvironmentalism-4/)
This brings us neatly finally to the third problem with PWG: politics. Jackson does have some discussion of the need for our old favourite “political will” towards the
end of the book, and there are some examples of concrete ideas (e.g. shorter working week, ban advertising aimed at children), but there
is basically no
political strategy. Indeed, the argument is framed in terms of the need for “social and economic change” and
“governance”, but not politics at all. The key question is how we are supposed to get from where we are to where he
wants us to be. Jackson acknowledges that at the moment, many people want growth (or more precisely, economic
stability) and so demand it of politicians, who then have a political incentive to deliver it . The quandary (not really
acknowledged) is which strategy to adopt in this situation. Do you first reshape the economy to deliver economic stability without growth (e.g. by a shorter working
week), which then demonstrates to people socially and politically that growth isn’t necessary for a good life, or do you first have to bring about major social change,
moving people away from consumerism, as a precondition for transforming the economy and making the end of growth politically feasible? The discussion in chapter
11 of the book sort of implies that Jackson is thinking in terms of the latter route, but it actually has no strategy. He lays out (some quite conventional, even dare I say
it, already proposed by economists) policies like carbon taxation and the aforementioned shorter working week but there is nothing on political narrative. The closest
we get to a strategy for social transformation is banning advertising aimed at children (also a theme of Tom Crompton’s) and policies to drive greater durability of
products. A counterview might be that all these changes are needed, and it doesn’t matter so much what happens first, that they all reinforce each other etc etc. But I
don’t think that’s enough. The
political party in the UK that comes closest to offering the Jackson vision is the Green Party. They got
1% of the popular vote in the 2010 general election, and one MP . What stronger evidence can there be that the
vision on its own is not enough? A final point takes us back to equity (see previous post), but this time within rich countries. Certainly within the US
and the UK, a large group of people in the low-to-middle part of the income distribution have seen their real incomes stagnate or fall over the last decade, as the rich
have got richer. Telling this “squeezed middle” that economic growth is to end is not going to go down well unless there is a credible strategy for redistribution. That’s
why a good initial step for a more sustainable economy might be a set of good old-fashioned social democratic policies on tax and spend. Prosperity without Growth
raises some very important questions, and Tim Jackson shows how tight a squeeze we are in. But the book leaves some even more crucial questions hanging. Of
course ending
economic growth in rich countries would make a solution to ecological limits a bit easier, but this
would play only a small role. In the absence of radical technological change, only serious “de-growth”, what Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows call
“planned economic recession” would be sufficient to bring about the cut in emissions needed. With rapid growth in poor countries this conclusion is even stronger. So
what we should be focusing on is achieving that technological change. Yes, it hasn’t materialised so far, but nor have the policies for low carbon innovation we
need to produce it – like Gandhi’s Western civilisation, the low carbon revolution would be a good idea. And yes, getting those policies in place will require political
effort. But
that effort will be as nothing compared with the political challenge of replacing capitalism with a
new steady state system either lacking innovation or with a disappearing working week. Perhaps the most fundamental, indeed philosophical issue here is
that, despite the fact that Jackson has made a good effort to make an argument about limits into an argument about quality of life, his underlying message is (pace
Obama): “No, we can’t”. But beyond the environmentalist camp, this message will not work. In the face of the biggest collective challenge that humanity has faced,
we need a narrative that has the human potential to solve problems, and overcome apparently unbeatable odds, at its heart.
Individual Action Fails – 1AR
Awareness and ethical individual orientations don’t do anything-overwhelming empirics
Pugh, Newcastle Postcolonial Geographer, 2010
(Jonathan, “The Stakes of Radical Politics have Changed: Post-crisis, Relevance and the State”, Globalizations,
March-June, ebsco)
In this polemical piece I have just been talking about how, following an ethos of radicalism as withdrawal from the state, some from the radical Left were incapable of being able to respond to the
new stakes of radical politics. In particular, they were not found at the state, where the passive public turned to resolve the crisis. I will now go on to examine how in recent years significant parts
of the radical Left have also tended to prioritise raising awareness of our ethical responsibilities, over capturing state power. I am going to say that it is important to create this awareness.
However, in an effort to draw attention to the stakes of politics as we find them now, post-2008, I will also point out that we should not place too much faith in this approach alone. Against the
backdrop of what I have just been saying, it is important to remember that while much attention is focused upon President Obama, in many other parts of the world the Right and fundamentalism
However, the European
Elections of 2009, the largest trans-national vote in history, heralded a continent-wide shift to the Right (and far
Right) in many places—in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
France, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portgual, Slovenia, Spain, Romania, as just some
examples (Wall Street Journal, 2009). Despite Obama’s election and a near depression, neo-liberalism continues to be implemented through a world spanning apparatus of governmental
are gaining strength through capturing state power. The perception that the USA has changed is accompanied by a sense of relief among many radicals.
and intergovernmental organisations, think tanks and trans-national corporations (Massey, 2009; Castree, 2009). The power of the Right in countries like Iran, while checked, remains
Albertazzi et al. (2009) draw attention to how a disconnected Left is leaving power in the hands of
the Right in many other countries nationally, like Italy for example . Reflecting upon contemporary radical politics, the British Labour politician Clare
unchallenged by the Left.
Short (2009, p. 67) concludes: In the fog of the future, I see a rise of fascistic movements . . . I am afraid it will all get nastier before we see a rise in generous, radical politics, but I suspect that
history is about to speed up in front of our eyes and all who oppose the radicalisation of fear, ethnic hatred, racialism and division have to be ready to create a new movement that contains the
solutions to the monumental historical problems we currently face. So, the stakes of politics are clear. The Right is on the rise. Neo-liberal ideology is still dominant. How is the Left responding
to these stakes? I have already discussed how some from the radical Left are placing too much faith in civil society organisations that seek to withdraw from the state. I will now turn to how
Post-crisis, the increasing popularity of David Chandler’s
(2004, 2007, 2009a, 2009b) work reflects the sense that radicals too often celebrate the ethical individual as a
radical force, at the expense of wider representational programmes for change . His central argument is that this
leaves radicals impotent. Chandler (2009a, p. 78–79) says that many radicals argue that there is nothing passive or conservative about radical political activist protests, such as
others have too much faith in the power of raising awareness of our ethical responsibilities.
the 2003 anti-war march, anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation protests, the huge march to Make Poverty History at the end of 2005, involvement in the World Social Forums or the radical jihad
these new forms of protest are highly individualised and personal ones — there is no attempt to build
a social or collective movement. It appears that theatrical suicide, demonstrating, badge and bracelet wearing are
ethical acts in themselves: personal statements of awareness, rather than attempts to engage politically with
society. In one way, Chandler’s reflective insight here is not particularly unique. Many others also seem to think that radicals today are too isolated and disengaged (Martin, 2009).5 Neither
of Al-Qaeda. I disagree;
is it particularly original to say that there is too much emphasis upon creativity and spontaneity (what Richard Sennett, 2004, calls ‘social jazz’), and not enough upon representational politics.
Indeed, go to many radical blogs and you find radicals themselves constantly complaining about how it has become too easy to sign up to ethical web petitions, email complaints, join a variety of
ethical causes, without actually developing the political programmes themselves that matter. So it is not Chandler’s point about radicals being disengaged from instrumental politics that concerns
me here. It is his related point—that there has been a flight into ethics, away from political accountability and responsibility that I find intriguing. Personal statements of ethical awareness have
become particularly important within radical politics today. It is therefore interesting to note, as I will now discuss, that we have been here before. In his earlier writings Karl Marx (1982)
criticised the German Idealists for retreating into ethics, instead of seizing the institutions of power that mattered for themselves. Unwilling to express their self-interests politically through
capturing power, the Idealists would rather make statements about their ethical awareness. Such idealism, along with an unwillingness to be held accountable for political power, often goes hand
in hand. For Marx, it is necessary to feel the weight, but also the responsibility of power. Chandler argues that, just as when the early Marx critiqued German Idealism, we should now be drawing
attention to the pitfalls of the flights to ethics today. He says: In the case of the German bourgeoisie, Marx concludes that it is their weakness and fragmentation, squeezed between the remnants
of the ancien re´gime and the developing industrial proletariat, which explains their ideological flight into values. Rather than take on political responsibility for overthrowing the old order, the
German bourgeoisie denied their specific interests and idealised progress in the otherworldly terms of abstract philosophy, recoiling from the consequences of their liberal aspirations in practice.
(Chandler, 2007, p. 717) Today we are witnessing a renewed interest in ethics (Laı¨di, 1998; Badiou, 2002). Fragmented, many radicals retreat into abstract ethical slogans like ‘another world is
possible’, ‘global human rights’, or ‘making poverty history’. As discussed above, we are also of course seeing the return of Kant’s cosmopolitanism. While I think we should not attack the
, it is equally important to say that the turn to ethics
seems to reflect a certain lack of willingness to seize power and be held accountable to it. For the flight to ethics, as it often plays out
in radical politics today, seems to be accompanied by scepticism toward representational politics. Continuing with this theme for a moment, Slavoj Zizek (2008) also sheds some more light
upon why ethics (when compared to representational politics) has become so important to the Left in recent years. He says that many of us (he is of course writing for the Left)
feel that we are unable to make a real difference through representational politics on a larger scale, when it comes to the big political problems of life. Zizek
ethical turn for its values, as many of these around environmental issues and human rights are admirable
(2008, p. 453) talks of this feeling that ‘we cannot ever predict the consequences of our acts’; that nothing we do will ‘guarantee that the overall outcome of our interactions will be satisfactory’.
And he is right to make this point. Today, our geographical imaginations are dominated by a broader sense of chaos and Global Complexity (Urry, 2003; Stengers, 2005). These ways of thinking,
deep in the psyche of many radicals on the Left may be one other reason why so many have retreated into ethics. When we do not really believe that we can change the world through developing
fine detailed instruments, capturing the state, or predictive models, we are naturally more hesitant. It is better to try and raise ethical awareness instead. Whereas in the past power was something
to be won and treasured, something radicals could use to implement a collective ideology, today, with the risk posed by representation in fragmented societies, top-down power often becomes a
hazard, even an embarrassment, for many on the Left (Laı¨di, 1998). This is, as I have already discussed, where the Right and neo-liberal ideologues are seizing the opportunity of the moment.
Putting what I have just said another way, there is a need to be clear, perhaps more so in these interdisciplinary
times—ethics and politics (particularly representational politics) are different . Of course they are related. You cannot do politics without an
ethical perspective. But my point here is that the Right and neo-liberal ideologues will not simply go away if the Left
adopt or raise awareness of alternative ethical lifestyles. The Right are willing to capture state power, particularly
at this time when the state is increasingly powerful. When we compare the concerted political programme of neo-liberalism, first developed by Reagan, Thatcher, the
IMF, the World Bank, NATO, multi-national banks, and the G20, as just some of many examples, ethical individuals across the world offer some counter-resistance. But the 2008 crisis, and the
response of protests like the Alternative G20, demonstrated how weak ethical resistance is in the face of the institutions of the neo-liberal economy. Another reason for this is because the ethical
individual contributes so much to neo-liberal societies themselves. To explain how, we must briefly step back. The new social movements of previous decades have, in general, been effectively
recuperated by the existing system of capital, by satisfying them in a way that neutralised their subversive potential. This is how capital has maintained its hegemonic position in post-Fordist
societies. Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello (2005) explain how capitalists have worked with, rather than against, the characteristics of new social movements. They say the new social mo vements
desire for autonomy, the ideal of self-management, the anti-hierarchical exigency, and the search for authenticity, were important in developing post-Fordism. These replaced the hierarchical
framework of the Fordist period with new forms of networked control. And so, in this way, we see that the relationship between new social movements and capital has been productive. In turn,
and this is the important point I want to make about the present moment, clearly the stakes of radical politics have now changed once more. As discussed earlier, it would now seem that post-
Fordist society is actually more hierarchical and controllable than many previously thought. Without the neoliberal state, and the public’s subordination to its actions, it would not now exist in
Our subordination to the state has stopped a post-crisis implosion of neo-liberalism. And this is of
course where one of the central characteristics of the ethical individual has been so productive. Endemic
individualism, so dominant in liberal societies, has been recuperated by the ethical individual who is unwilling to
seize the state. So the salient point here is that the ethical individual is reflective of the conservative forces in
society today.
anything like its present form.
Cedes the political and doesn’t present a real challenge
Chandler, Westminster IR senior lecturer, 2004
(David, “Building Global Civil Society `From Below'?”, Millennium - Journal of International Studies, March, 33.2,
SAGE)
The celebration of global civil society ‘from the bottom up’ would appear to be based less on any emergence of new political forces at the global level than the desire
of Western activists and commentators to justify their avoidance of accountability to any collective source of political community or elected authority. The
focus
on the shared interests with those ‘excluded’, or the ‘imagined’ global community of radical activists, is a way of
legitimising the avoidance of any accountability to those still ‘trapped inside’—the electorate.113 The struggle for
individual ethical and political autonomy, the claim for the recognition of separate ‘political spaces’ and for the
‘incommunicability’ of political causes, demonstrates the limits of the radical claims for the normative project of
global civil society ‘from below’. The rejection of the formal political sphere, as a way of mediating between
the individual and the social, leaves political struggles isolated from any shared framework of meaning or
from any formal processes of democratic accountability. This article should not be read as a defence of some nostalgic vision of the past,
neither does it assert that the key problem with radical global civil society approaches is their rejection of formal engagement in existing political institutions and
practices. The
point being made here is that the rejection of state-based processes, which force the individual to engage
with and account for the views of other members of society, is a reflection of a broader problem—an
unwillingness to engage in political contestation. Advocates of global civil society ‘from below’ would rather hide
behind the views of someone else, legitimising their views as the prior moral claims of others—the courtly advocates—or putting themselves
in harm’s way and leading by inarticulate example, rather than engaging in a public debate. The unwillingness of radical activists to engage
with their own society reflects the attenuation of political community rather than its expansion. Regardless of the effectiveness of radical
lobbying and calls for recognition, this rejection of social engagement can only further legitimise the
narrowing of the political sphere to a small circle of unaccountable elites. If the only alternative to the political
‘game’ is to threaten to ‘take our ball home’—the anti-politics of rejectionism—the powers that be can sleep
peacefully in their beds.
Neolib Sustainable
Profit motives don’t destroy the environment.
Desrochers, Toronto geography professor, 2010
(Pierre, “The environmental responsibility of business is to increase its profits (by creating value within the bounds
of private property rights)”, Industrial & Corporate Change. Feb2010, Vol. 19 Issue 1, ebsco)
Resources are limited, while human needs and desires are not. In a free market, the interaction of supply and demand results in prices that reflect the relative scarcity of physical and intellectual Resources are limited, while human
needs and desires are not. In a free market, the interaction of supply and demand results in prices that reflect the relative scarcity of physical and intellectual resources. Profits and losses are then generated by individuals’ relative
ability to combine scarce inputs in order to provide products and services that consumers value more than available alternatives. Over time, goods that are more valuable than the sums of the inputs taken separately get produced, while
Some theorists and many
environmental activists, however, argue that market incentives foster a short-term perspective in which production
costs can be reduced and/or profitability increased through overexploitation of natural resources and polluting
emissions that are not properly factored into the costs of production activities. The theologian John B. Cobb Jr (undated), for example, argues: “Keeping costs low often requires actions that are environmentally destructive,”
goods worth less than the sum of their inputs are not. In this context, the appropriate measure of a firm’s success in creating value is long-term profitability.
while failure “to take such actions when similar ones are taken by competitors can have severely detrimental effects on a corporation.” Physiologist and geographer Jared Diamond (2005: 483) suggests that, “depending on the
circumstances,” a firm “really may maximize its profits, at least in the short term, by damaging the environment and hurting people.” 7 This perspective is also shared by leading environmental economist Robert Stavins (2004: 12)
who argues that “[i]f the market is left to itself, too many pollution-generating products get produced,” a point summed up in the following way by economists Marie-Franc¸ois Calmette and Isabelle Pe´choux (2006: 184): “It is well
known that polluting agents need to be induced to internalize the social cost of pollution damage, otherwise they will engage in excessive levels of emission of pollutants.” Management professors Roland Geyer and Tim Jackson
(2004: 56) further argue that traditional supply chains are based “on a linear production paradigm which relies on constant input of virgin natural resources and unlimited environmental capacity for assimilation of wastes and
This
alleged market failure is nonetheless hard to reconcile with the fact that a firm’s survival is directly dependent upon
the capacity of its owners and employees to create as much value as possible from costly inputs. In the words of businessman Charles G. Koch (2007: 104):
“It is easy to fall into the trap of a single-minded emphasis on cost reduction. Cost is only one component (although a critically important one) of value
creation. If your goal is to lose weight, you could accomplish this by cutting off your leg, but that is hardly benefici al.
Cost-cutting for its own sake can be just as shortsighted and can seriously damage future profitability. It is more appropriate to focus on eliminating waste.” As scientist Jesse
Ausubel (1998: 39) puts it: “Pollution and waste usually indicate inefficiency. In an economy of competing companies,
inefficiency is for losers. So, over the long run, successful companies are going to be green and clean.” Building on this
emissions.” In their opinion, “there is general agreement that this is causing environmental costs on a large scale and of a systematic nature, which cannot be fully addressed by traditional supply chain management.”
commonsensical insight and on his comparative work on the diverging environmental performance of market economies and centrally planned economies (with the former becoming wealthier and cleaner over time, while the latter
Bernstam (1990: 348) suggests that the elimination of waste, rather than increased
production or consumption, ultimately determines the impact of economic growth on the environment . In this
stagnated or regressed while becoming increasingly polluted),
perspective, “waste” includes not only “economically useless production” such as slag, refuse, scrap, spills, discards, and other processing losses, but also “destroyed primary resources” and “losses of intermediary and final output in
transportation and storage.” 8 Thus when the growth in output exceeds the growth in resource input required, increased material wealth will be created while pollution levels decline. On the other hand, a poorer economy that uses a
smaller amount of resources less efficiently will experience greater environmental damage. In 1987, for example, industrial and domestic air pollutant concentrations were five times higher in the USSR than in the United States,
despite the fact that the former’s GDP was only half that of the latter. 9 Similarly, more tropical rainforests will be felled when livestock production, processing, and distribution is less efficient than it could be. Greater livestock
production can thus be perfectly compatible with more benign environmental repercussions when more efficient methods are used. In other words, the impact of human activity on the biosphere is not a function of the amount of
resources produced from it in the first place, but of the amount released from the economic sphere back into the biosphere. As will now be argued, the concomitant fear of resource exhaustion is similarly debatable. According to what
is sometimes referred to as the “resourceship” paradigm (McDonald, 1995; Bradley, 2007), “resources are not, they become” in that they are neither fixed nor finite, but are created by renewable human intellect in an economic context
where businesses transform and manipulate a variety of otherwise valueless inputs to generate saleable outputs (Zimmermann, 1951/1933; De Gregori, 1987; Simon, 1995, 1996; Bradley, 2007; Bra¨tland, 2008). 10 Historical
evidence suggests that the profit motive has long acted as a powerful incentive to progressively increase the efficiency of material use. This is accomplished in two ways: first, by changing the material resources used by developing
valuable inputs out of previously worthless raw materials, and, secondly, by transforming industrial wastes into sought-after intermediate products. Each of these processes resulted in significant environmental improvements, even
when no priority was given to the issue. In turn, the same practices incidentally promote sustainable development, which is here defined as wealth creation through innovative activities with net economic, social, and environmental
benefits. 11 I now turn to a more detailed examination of these fundamental processes. One of the most forceful statements on the social benefits of more efficient material use belongs to Jonathan Swift (1920 [1727]: 138–139) who,
through his fictional King of Brobdingnag in his classic Gulliver’s Travels, argued that whoever “could make two Ears of Corn, or two blades of Grass to grow upon a Spot of Ground where only one grew before, would deserve better
of Mankind, and do more essential Service to his Country than the whole Race of Politicians put together.” The French economist Nicolas Baudeau (1910 [1767]: 46, author’s translation) reported efforts in this direction a few decades
later by observing that the goal of large agricultural operations was “firstly to double, triple, quadruple, or increase tenfold if possible the harvest on a particular piece of land; secondly to reduce the amount of labor employed to one
half, one third, one fourth, or one tenth, whatever possible.” Despite his belief in decreasing returns to additional agricultural investments, the economist John Stuart Mill (1909: 183–184) also described advances that enabled “the land
to yield a greater absolute produce, without an equivalent increase of labour,” but also others that “have not the power of increasing the produce, but have that of diminishing the labour and expense by which it is obtained,” in the
process liberating them for other valuable uses. Examples of the first included the abandonment of fallows, their replacement by crop rotations, and the introduction of new elements into the rotation, such as turnips and fertilizers.
Examples of laborsaving technologies included better tools, instruments, and “a more skilful and economical application of muscular exertion,” such as the introduction of a new plowing technique requiring two horses and one man to
achieve results that had previously required three or four horses and two men. A few years earlier, the polymath Charles Babbage (1846 [1832]: 62–63) had observed how advances in mechanical precision and mass production
resulted in “a degree of economy in the consumption of the raw material which is, in some cases, of great importance.” For example, in the printing industry “large hemispherical balls stuffed and covered with leather” had been
replaced by “cylindrical rollers of an elastic substance” which, with the later addition of steam engines to printing presses, had reduced the volume of ink needed to complete a given task by almost 65% without any visible change in
the quality of the final product. Crory (1876) similarly describes numerous efficiency-improving technologies in his journalistic survey of a wide range of manufacturing activities in East London. For example, a building firm
manager had supervised the construction of a timber drying-house following the best Norwegian practices to which he had added new ideas of his own. Among other improvements, the heat used to dry the timber was delivered
through underground pipes in such a way as “to render safety, economy, and efficiency at once practicable and certain.” The driving machinery was similarly built underground, which again minimized the risk of accidents and
economized space that, “even in such a wide area as that occupied by these Works,” was valuable (p. 87). The sharpening of saws by the use of emery instead of files was also “a great improvement” that resulted, “in a place where so
much sawing is done,” into a considerable saving of money (p. 88). A contemporary of Crory similarly observed in an essay on progress that improvements depend on inventions that help humans “obtain greater effects with less
expenditure of space, of time, of materials and forces” (Gore, 1882: 151). While the evidence provided by past writers might have been mostly anecdotal, numerous studies on the increased efficiency of material use over time have
demonstrated the validity of their analysis (Sanbach, 1978; Bernstam, 1990; Rosenberg, 1994a; Simpson, 1999). As Ausubel (1998: 39) writes, “the wheels of history [have long been] rolling in the direction of prudent, clean use of
resources,” whether one looks at energy, land (for agricultural and timber production), water, and materials. For example: The US economy has averaged about 1% less energy to produce a good or service each year since about 1800;
In the last 300 years, the efficiency of generators has gone up from 1% of their apparent limit to about 50%; In the last two centuries, the ratio of weight to power in industrial boilers has decreased almost 100 times; In 1860, globally,
about 1.1 tons of carbon went into the primary energy produced by the energy equivalent of 1 ton of oil then in the fuel mix; this amount had decreased to about 0.7 tons in 1990; Since the late 1960s, per capita water use in the United
States has fallen at an annual rate of 1.4%, while absolute water withdrawals peaked around 1980 (Ausubel, 1998). Scarcity-induced price increases effectively dissuade any inefficient use of resources and encourage reductions in the
quantity of inputs needed to maintain the same amount of output. The concept of dematerialization is now often used to characterize the decline over time of the weight of materials used in industrial end products (Chadwick, 1997;
Wernick et al., 1996; Cleveland and Ruth, 1998; Scarlett, 1999; De Bruyn, 2002; Labys, 2002). While it has also long been observed that increased efficiency in the use of a resource often results in a greater aggregate use or
consumption of that resource (Jevons, 1865; Rosenberg, 1994a; Alcott, 2005), 12 a case will now be made that this “rebound effect,” even if coupled with a growing population, is rarely problematic because higher quality resources
In a market economy, a sustained price increase for any resource not only
encourages individuals to use it more efficiently, but also to look for more of it and to develop substitutes . As a result,
despite the physical finiteness of the Earth, most resources for which there is a sustained demand over time have become more
plentiful and affordable (Barnett and Morse, 1963; Simon, 1995; Lomborg, 2001; Goklany, 2007). The scarcity/price stimulus also provides the incentive for
human ingenuity to substitute smaller volumes of higher quality or technologically more sophisticated materials for the
larger volumes of lower quality materials utilized by mature industries, a process sometimes referred to as transmaterialization (Labys, 2002). In the former case, economic
incentives reward the development of innovative resource extraction processes that open up newly profitable deposits (e.g. offshore drilling, less concentrated ores). In the latter case, similar
economic incentives stimulate the development of new inputs with some combination of advantages over earlier
alternatives, such as being more powerful and/or abundant; stronger and/or lighter; and/or easier to produce, handle,
transport, and/or store. 13 For example, whale oil was supplanted by coal gas and kerosene, which were themselves eventually displaced by electricity and the incandescent light bulb. Most energy needs in
are continually being created from both natural substances and production residuals.
Western societies were originally supplied by wood and hay, which were eventually supplanted by coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power, oil, and natural gas (Ausubel, 1991; Smil, 1994). Nitrogen for agricultural production was
originally provided by the recycling of organic waste (such as straw and manure), the rotation of nitrogen-fixing leguminous grains (including peas, beans, lentils, and soybeans), and the plowing under of leguminous cover crops (such
as clover and vetches). In time, however, better (i.e., more cost-effective) substitutes were developed, including guano (desiccated sea bird excrement), superphosphates (prepared mostly by digesting powdered bones with dilute
One aspect of
transmaterialization that so far seems to have escaped the attention of most analysts, however, is that it often
involved the development of new by-products out of formerly wasted industrial residuals. 14 This process will now be examined in more detail.
sulfuric acid), Chilean sodium nitrate, ammonia recovery (mostly ammonium sulfate) from the coking of coal, and ammonia synthesis from the atmosphere (Smil, 2001).
Advancements from strong economic growth prove societal sustainability will overcome
obstacles—including agriculture, energy, medicine, and cognition
Kelly, Cambridge engineering professor, 2013
(Michael, “Why a collapse of global civilization will be avoided: a comment on Ehrlich & Ehrlich”, July,
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1767/20131193.short#corresp-1)
The population explosion (and its Malthusian societal disruptions) that Ehrlich FRS predicted for the 1990s has not come about [5,6], and the concerns in this present Ehrlich paper are not
tempered by the mounting evidence of the demographic transition that occurs when the majority of people live in cities and have access to education. In Japan, Europe and North America the
population, excluding immigration, is in decline. Some studies indicate that a peak of 9 billion people in 2050 will be followed by a decline to a population of approximately 6 billion in 2100—
If we look at the waste
in the contemporary food chain, at the point of growth, in transit to the market and into the homes of consumers, and compound that loss by the amount of food thrown out
rather than consumed, we generate the quantity of food to feed the 9 billion today with the systems in place if we were
less wasteful and could distribute it [9]. Animal protein is now being generated in the laboratory and not on the farm [10]. Where is
the discussion of the impact of mega-cities being self-sufficient in animal protein from factories within their city boundaries 40 years from now? This is the time scale on
which synthetic fibre comprehensively displaced wool from most of its markets . Indeed, rather than speak of peak oil, we can speak of peak
less than that in 2000 [7] and bringing new problems of unwanted infrastructure assets! The UN is revising its future population estimates downward [8].
farmland—we will need smaller areas in future to feed the world, and we will oversee the managed return of excess land to the wild [11]. The starkest example in the consideration of material
the smart phone [12]. This was developed within the paradigm of business as usual to improve the way in which we communicate. Two points are relevant.
First, the small piece of metal, plastic and semiconductor that fits in the palm of a hand contains the functions of a
camera, radio, telephone, answering machine, photo album, dictaphone, music centre, satellite navigation system,
video camera and player, compass, stop-watch, Filofax, diary and more, which were all separate and bulky items
only 20 years ago. This represents the great dematerialization of modern civilization, well ahead of any
imminent collapse of natural resources. The shape of high streets and retail centres are changing to reflect this evolution. Indeed, the recycling of
electronic systems will enhance further this capability of doing more with less material, and the market for extended
time between recharging has driven extraordinary improvements in energy efficiency. It is these new low-resource technologies with
overconsumption is
ever-increasing recycled materials that will drive the world in future. Second, the mobile phone is being used in rural Africa and India to inform farmers of optimal times for taking their products
to market, thus reducing greatly the loss of product and/or income, and reducing the stress on land from the need to overproduce to compensate for such losses [13]. Peak planet is now the new
research topic [14]. Any perceived threat to the security of the energy supply from finite resources over the last 200 years has been met by a deeper search for reserves. Hansen et al. [15], and
especially their fig. 6, show just how little (approx. 10%) of the known and accessible fossil fuel reserves (both conventional and unconventional) has been consumed, and we have had 40 years
In future, when we
leave the fossil fuel age, it will not be because of the exhaustion of fossil fuels, but because a cheaper, cleaner and
more convenient alternative technology emerges, and we have ample time, probably 100 years, to get there.
of future energy reserves to hand for some time [16]. We have not stopped looking for more, as with the recent discoveries of huge fields of methyl hydrates.
Modern climate scientists seem to be fixated on human-produced CO2, and have missed what the Sun [17] and the biosphere [18] have been doing for the last 30 years. If the history of solar
behaviour repeats itself and we were to enter another little ice age, every ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere would be a boon as we feed 9 billion people in 2050 compared with the less than 1 billion
last time in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. The transition out of the Medieval Warm Period into the Little Ice Age harmed but did not collapse global civilization, and we are much better
prepared this time. The growing amplitude of the Keeling cycles of CO2 in the atmosphere is evidence of the greening of the biosphere [18]. The present temperature stasis since 1998, if
extended by another 5 years, as now suggested [19] at a time of ever-increasing CO2 emissions, implies that both the coupling between CO2 and globally averaged surface temperatures has been
exaggerated in the climate models and natural variability has been underestimated. Indeed, Otto et al. [20] have just revised down their estimate of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 to a
value that is now half that cited in earlier IPCC reports. Akasofu's [21] projection of the future temperature, made originally in 2000, and based on extending previous climatic cycles without
explicit reference to CO2, has been borne out very precisely, and it is more accurate than all the climate model projections put together—furthermore, he makes a projection of lower
temperatures until 2030! An over-emphasis on the urgency of mitigation has had a direct societal consequence in the Gadarene rush to reduce fossil fuel consumption. We do have more time to
develop proper alternatives to fossil fuels. The current bankruptcies of alternative energy companies are inevitable: their present technology is both immature and uncompetitive. It is an exact
repeat of what happened in California in the 1980s in response to the 1970s oil crisis and for the same reasons: without massive subsidy the energy generated did not produce the profits needed to
keep up maintenance. (Graphic images of green industrial dereliction can be seen by googling the phrases ‘abandoned solar farms’ and/or ‘abandoned wind farms’.) Two hundred years ago,
windmills stopped turning with the advent of steam engines, which were more efficient, needed less maintenance, and provided energy when and where needed. Little has changed in relative
terms since! Trends in solar photovoltaics suggest that in 20 years the technology could become absolutely competitive with fossil fuels [22] unless the price of the latter collapses from current
high prices just as they did after the 1970s peak. Whatever happens, the total energy from practical and economic solar systems will play a small part in meeting the global energy demand for the
foreseeable future: renewable energy sources are intrinsically dilute at source [23]. Energy storage at the large scale is way into the future, except for water for hydroelectricity, as in New Zealand
Communications, new materials and health systems all present
humanity with clear opportunities to avoid future problems with tools not available to earlier generations. The
Internet, and its implication of all information available everywhere, instantaneously for everyone, will ensure that
technical, medical and societal advances will proceed and propagate very rapidly. An advance in one corner of the world will almost
and Norway. Pushing water uphill with alternative energies is woefully inefficient.
instantaneously be accessible and adaptable anywhere. Human travel will change from becoming a necessity to an option, freeing up time, reducing emissions and enhancing business between
continents [24]. New ‘designer’ materials and three-dimensional printing technology for manufacture are likely to massively reduce our reliance on depleting natural resources, providing for a far
more adaptive approach to materials in applications. The incredible waste we currently produce is likely to reduce very significantly, making for greater resilience against resource depletion [25].
Ehrlich & Ehrlich [1] are concerned about future pandemics in a closely interconnected world. However, advances
in medicine and diagnostics will result in significant economic gains in terms of treatment efficacy, in days lost from
the workplace and in the ability of mankind to respond to a future pandem ic. The recent response to the H5Nn series of bird flu viruses is very
encouraging, and the strategies have existed for some time [26]. We can be a much more resilient race in future than we could be in the past.
Similarly, with the advances in understanding the brain and President Obama's recent commitment to mapping the
brain, we will enhance our cognitive and processing capability so as to further our ingenuity and resilience in
response to future threats. The mainstream scientific and engineering community can see nothing that suggests
an imminent collapse of civilization, and it is well on track to deal with new problems as they emerge, in
continuity with the history of the last 200 years. Neo-Malthusians have proved comprehensively wrong so far, and this comment argues that this is set to
continue into the foreseeable future. This comment is not denying challenges, but is really questioning defeatism. Weigh the evidence. Finally, it is only civilizations
backed by strong economies that are in a position to do the research and make the necessary scientific,
engineering and technological advances to offset environmental threats. Scientific views that undermine
economic progress are a threat in themselves, and need a careful and robust justification before they are widely
propagated.
Growth is sustainable—innovation solves resource caps and environmental strain
Bisk, Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking director, 2012
(Tsvi, “No Limits to Growth”, https://www.wfs.org/Upload/PDFWFR/WFR_Spring2012_Bisk.pdf)
The Case for No Limits to Growth Notwithstanding all of the above, I want to reassert that by imagineering an alternative future—based on solid science and
technology— we can create a situation in which there are “ no
limits to growth.” It begins with a new paradigm for food production
now under development: the urban vertical farm. This is a concept popularized by Prof. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University.30 A 30-story urban
vertical farm located on five square acres could yield food for fifty thousand people. We are talking about high-tech installations that would multiply
productivity by a factor of 480: four growing seasons, times twice the density of crops, times two growing levels on each floor, times 30 floors = 480. This means that
five acres of land can produce the equivalent of 2,600 acres of conventionally planted and tended crops. Just 160 such buildings occupying only 800 acres could feed
the entire city of New York. Given this calculus, an area the size of Denmark could feed the entire human race . Vertical farms would
be self-sustaining. Located contiguous to or inside urban centers, they could also contribute to urban renewal. They would be urban lungs, improving the air quality of
cities. They would produce a varied food supply year-round. They would use
90% less water. Since agriculture consumes two-thirds of the water worldwide,
technology would solve humanity’s water problem. Food would no longer need to be transported to market; it would be
produced at the market and would not require use of petroleum intensive agricultural equipment. This, along with lessened use of pesticides,
herbicides and fertilizers, would not only be better for the environment but would eliminate agriculture’s
dependence on petroleum and significantly reduce petroleum demand. Despite increased efficiencies, direct (energy) and indirect
(fertilizers, etc.) energy use represented over 13% of farm expenses in 2005-2008 and have been increasing as the price of oil rises.31 Many of the world’s
damaged ecosystems would be repaired by the consequent abandonment of farmland . A “rewilding” of our planet would take
mass adoption of this
place. Forests, jungles and savannas would reconquer nature, increasing habitat and becoming giant CO2 “sinks,” sucking up the excess CO2 that the industrial
revolution has pumped into the atmosphere. Countries already investigating the adoption of such technology include Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and
China—countries that are water starved or highly populated. Material Science, Resources and Energy The embryonic revolution in material science now taking place
is the key to “no limits to growth.” I refer to “smart” and superlight materials. Smart materials “are materials that have one or more properties that can be
significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli.” 32 They can produce energy by exploiting differences in temperature (thermoelectric materials) or
by being stressed (piezoelectric materials). Other smart materials save energy in the manufacturing process by changing shape or repairing themselves as a
consequence of various external stimuli. These materials have all passed the “proof of concept” phase (i.e., are scientifically sound) and many are in the prototype
phase. Some are already commercialized and penetrating the market. For example, the Israeli company Innowattech has underlain a onekilometer stretch of local highway with piezoelectric material to “harvest” the wasted stress energy of vehicles passing over and convert it to electricity.33 They
reckon that Israel has stretches of road that can efficiently produce 250 megawatts. If this is verified, consider the tremendous electricity potential of the New Jersey
Turnpike or the thruways of Los Angeles and elsewhere. Consider the potential of railway and subway tracks. We are talking about tens of thousands of potential
megawatts produced without any fossil fuels. Additional energy is derivable from thermoelectric materials, which can transform wasted heat into electricity. As
Christopher Steiner notes, capturing waste heat from manufacturing alone in the United States would provide an additional 65,000 megawatts: “enough for 50 million
homes.”34 Smart glass is already commercialized and can save significant energy in heating, airconditioning and lighting—up to 50% saving in energy has been
achieved in retrofitted legacy buildings (such as the former Sears Tower in Chicago). New buildings, designed to take maximum advantage of this and other
technologies could save even more. Buildings consume 39% of America’s energy and 68% of its electricity. They emit 38% of the carbon dioxide, 49% of the sulfur
dioxide, and 25% of the nitrogen oxides found in the air.35 Even greater savings in electricity could be realized by replacing incandescent and fluorescent light bulbs
These three steps: transforming waste heat into
electricity, retrofitting buildings with smart glass, and LED lighting, could cut America’s electricity consumption
and its CO2 emissions by 50% within 10 years. They would also generate hundreds of thousands of jobs in construction and home improvements.
with LEDS which use 1/10th the electricity of incandescent and half the electricity of fluorescents.
Coal driven electricity generation would become a thing of the past. The coal released could be liquefied or gasified (by new environmentally friendly technologies)
into the energy equivalent of 3.5 million barrels of oil a day. This is equivalent to the amount of oil the United States imports from the Persian Gulf and Venezuela
together.36 Conservation of energy and parasitic energy harvesting, as well as urban agriculture would cut the planet’s energy consumption and air and water
pollution significantly. Waste-to-energy technologies could begin to replace fossil fuels . Garbage, sewage, organic trash, and agricultural
and food processing waste are essentially hydrocarbon resources that can be transformed into ethanol, methanol, and biobutanol or biodiesel. These can be used for
transportation, electricity generation or as feedstock for plastics and other materials. Waste-to-energy is essentially a recycling of CO2 from the environment instead
of introducing new CO2 into the environment. Waste-to-energy also prevents the production, and release from rotting organic waste, of methane—a greenhouse gas
25 times more powerful than CO2. Methane accounts for 18% of the manmade greenhouse effect. Not as much as CO2, which constitutes 72%, but still considerable
(landfills emit as much greenhouse gas effect, in the form of methane, as the CO2 from all the vehicles in the world). Numerous
prototypes of a variety
of waste-to-energy technologies are already in place. When their declining costs meet the rising costs of fossil fuels,
they will become commercialized and, if history is any judge, will replace fossil fuels very quickly—just as coal replaced
wood in a matter of decades and petroleum replaced whale oil in a matter of years. Superlight Materials But it is superlight materials that have the greatest potential to
transform civilization and, in conjunction with the above, to usher in the “no limits to growth” era. I refer, in particular, to car-bon nanotubes—alternatively referred to
as Buckyballs or Buckypaper (in honor of Buckminster Fuller). Carbon nanotubes are between 1/10,000th and 1/50,000th the width of a human hair, more flexible
than rubber and 100-500 times stronger than steel per unit of weight. Imagine the energy savings if planes, cars, trucks, trains, elevators—everything that needs energy
to move—were made of this material and weighed 1/100th what they weigh now. Imagine the types of alternative energy that would become practical. Imagine the
positive impact on the environment: replacing many industrial processes and mining, and thus lessening air and groundwater pollution. Present costs and production
methods make this impractical but that infinite resource—the human mind—has confronted and solved many problems like this before. Let us take the example of
aluminum. A hundred fifty years ago, aluminum was more expensive than gold or platinum.37 When Napoleon III held a banquet, he provided his most honored
guests with aluminum plates. Less-distinguished guests had to make do with gold! When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884, it was fitted with an
aluminum cap—the most expensive metal in the world at the time—as a sign of respect to George Washington. It weighed 2.85 kilograms, or 2,850 grams. Aluminum
at the time cost $1 a gram (or $1,000 a kilogram). A typical day laborer working on the monument was paid $1 a day for 10-12 hours a day. In other words, today’s
common soft-drink can, which weighs 14 grams, could have bought 14 ten-hour days of labor in 1884.38 Today’s U.S. minimum wage is $7.50 an hour. Using labor
as the measure of value, a soft drink can would cost $1,125 today (or $80,000 a kilogram), were it not for a new method of processing aluminum ore. The HallHéroult process turned aluminum into one of the cheapest commodities on earth only two years after the Washington Monument was capped with aluminum. Today
aluminum costs $3 a kilogram, or $3000 a metric ton. The soft drink can that would have cost $1,125 today without the process now costs $0.04. Today the average
cost of industrial grade carbon nanotubes is about $50-$60 a kilogram. This is already far cheaper in real cost than aluminum was in 1884. Yet revolutionary methods
At Cambridge University they are working on a new
electrochemical production method that could produce 600 kilograms of carbon nanotubes per day at a projected cost of
around $10 a kilogram, or $10,000 a metric ton.39 This will do for carbon nanotubes what the Hall-Héroult process did for aluminum. Nanotubes will
become the universal raw material of choice, displacing steel, aluminum, copper and other metals and materials. Steel presently costs about $750
of production are now being developed that will drive costs down even more radically.
per metric ton. Nanotubes of equivalent strength to a metric ton of steel would cost $100 if this Cambridge process (or others being pursued in research labs around
the world) proves successful. Ben Wang, director of Florida State’s High Performance Materials Institute claims that: “If you take just one gram of nanotubes, and you
unfold every tube into a graphite sheet, you can cover about two-thirds of a football field”.40 Since
other research has indicated that carbon
nanotubes would be more suitable than silicon for producing photovoltaic energy, consider the implications. Several
grams of this material could be the energy-producing skin for new generations of superlight dirigibles—making these airships energy autonomous. They could replace
airplanes as the primary means to transport air freight. Modern American history has shown that anything human beings decide they want done can be done in 20
is a reasonable
conjecture that by 2020 or earlier, an industrial process for the inexpensive production of carbon nanotubes will be
developed, and that this would be the key to solving our energy, raw materials, and environmental problems all at once. Mitigating Anthropic Greenhouse Gases
years if it does not violate the laws of nature. The atom bomb was developed in four years; putting a man on the moon took eight years. It
Another vital component of a “no limits to growth” world is to formulate a rational environmental policy that saves money; one that would gain wide grassroots
support because it would benefit taxpayers and businesses, and would not endanger livelihoods. For example, what do sewage treatment, garbage disposal, and fuel
costs amount to as a percentage of municipal budgets? What are the costs of waste disposal and fuel costs in stockyards, on poultry farms, throughout the food
processing industry, and in restaurants? How much aggregate energy could be saved from all of the above? Some experts claim that we could obtain enough liquid
fuel from recycling these hydrocarbon resources to satisfy all the transportation needs of the United States. Turning the above waste into energy by various means
would be a huge cost saver and value generator, in addition to being a blessing to the environment. The U.S. army has developed a portable field apparatus that turns a
combat unit’s human waste and garbage into bio-diesel to fuel their vehicles and generators.41 It is called TGER—the Tactical Garbage to Energy Refinery. It
eliminates the need to transport fuel to the field, thus saving lives, time, and equipment expenses. The cost per barrel must still be very high. However, the history of
military technology being civilianized and revolutionizing accepted norms is long. We might expect that within 5-10 years, economically competitive units using
similar technologies will appear in restaurants, on farms, and perhaps even in individual households, turning organic waste into usable and economical fuel. We might
conjecture that within several decades, centralized sewage disposal and garbage collection will be things of the past and that even the Edison Grid (unchanged for over
one hundred years) will be deconstructed. The
Promise of Algae Biofuels produced from algae could eventually provide a
substantial portion of our transportation fuel. Algae has a much higher productivity potential than crop-based
biofuels because it grows faster, uses less land and requires only sun and CO2 plus nutrients that can be provided
from gray sewage water. It is the primo CO2 sequesterer because it works for free (by way of photosynthesis), and in doing so produces biodiesel and
ethanol in much higher volumes per acre than corn or other crops. Production costs are the biggest remaining challenge. One Defense Department estimate pins them
at more than $20 a gallon.42 But once commercialized in industrial scale facilities, production cost could go as low as $2 a gallon (the equivalent of $88 per barrel of
oil) according to Jennifer Holmgren, director of renewable fuels at an energy subsidiary of Honeywell International.43 Since algae uses waste water and CO2 as its
primary feedstock, its use to produce transportation fuel or feedstock for product would actually improve the environment. The Promise of the Electric Car There are
250 million cars in the United States. Let’s assume that they were all fully electric vehicles (EVs) equipped with 25-kWh batteries. Each kWh takes a car two to three
miles, and if the average driver charges the car twice a week, this would come to about 100 charge cycles per year. All told, Americans would use 600 billion kWh per
year, which is only 15% of the current total U.S. production of 4 trillion kWh per year. If supplied during low demand times, this would not even require additional
power plants. If cars were made primarily out of Buckypaper, one kWh might take a car 40-50 miles. If the surface of the car was utilized as a photovoltaic, the car of
the future might conceivably become energy autonomous (or at least semi-autonomous). A kWh produced by a coal-fired power plant creates two pounds of CO2, so
our car-related CO2 footprint would be 1.2 trillion pounds if all electricity were produced by coal. However, burning one gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of CO2.44
In 2008, the U.S. used 3.3 billion barrels of gasoline, thereby creating about 3 trillion pounds of CO2. Therefore, a switch to electric vehicles would cut CO2
emissions by 60% (from 3 trillion to 1.2 trillion pounds), even if we burned coal exclusively to generate that power. Actually, replacing a gas car with an electric car
will cause zero increase in electric draw because refineries use seven kWh of power to refine crude oil into a gallon of gasoline. A Tesla Roadster can go 25 miles on
that 7 KWh of power. So the electric car can go 25 miles using the same electricity needed to refine the gallon of gas that a combustion engine car would use to go the
same distance. Additional Strategies The goal of mitigating global warming/climate change without changing our lifestyles is not naïve. Using
proven Israeli
expertise, planting forests on just 12% of the world’s semi-arid areas would offset the annual CO2 output of one
thousand 500-megawatt coal plants (a gigaton a year).45 A global program of foresting 60% of the world’s semi-arid areas would offset five thousand
500-megawatt coal plants (five gigatons a year). Since mitigation goals for global warming include reducing our CO2 emissions by eight gigatons by 2050, this
project alone would have a tremendous ameliorating effect. Given that large swaths of semi-arid land areas contain or border on some of the poorest populations on
the planet,
we could put millions of the world’s poorest citizens to work in forestation, thus accomplishing two positives (fighting poverty and
agriculture from its current fieldbased paradigm to vertical urban
agriculture would eliminate two gigatons of CO2. The subsequent re-wilding of vast areas of the earth’s surface
could help sequester up to 50 gigatons of CO2 a year, completely reversing the trend. The revolution underway in material science will help us
environmental degradation) with one project. Moving
to become “self-sufficient” in energy. It will also enable us to create superlight vehicles and structures that will produce their own energy. Over time, carbon
nanotubes will replace steel, copper and aluminum in a myriad of functions. Converting waste to energy will eliminate most of the methane gas humanity releases into
the atmosphere. Meanwhile, artificial photosynthesis will suck CO2 out of the air at 1,000 times the rate of natural photosynthesis.46 This trapped CO2 could then be
combined with hydrogen to create much of the petroleum we will continue to need. As hemp and other fast-growing plants replace wood for making paper, the
logging industry will largely cease to exist. Self-contained
fish farms will provide a major share of our protein needs with far less
environmental damage to the oceans. Population Explosion or Population Implosion One constant refrain of anti-growth advocates is that we are
heading towards 12 billion people by the end of the century, that this is unsustainable, and thus that we must proactively reduce the human population to 3 billion-4
billion in order to “save the planet” and human civilization from catastrophe. But recent data indicates that a demographic winter will engulf humanity by the middle
of this century. More
than 60 countries (containing over half the world’s population) already do not have replacement
birth rates of 2.1 children per woman. This includes the entire EU, China, Russia, and half a dozen Muslim countries, including Turkey, Algeria, and
Iran. If
present trends continue, India, Mexico and Indonesia will join this group before 2030. The human population will peak at 9-10 billion by 2060, after
the end of the century, the human population might be as low as
6 billion-7 billion. The real danger is not a population explosion; but the consequences of the impending population implosion.47 This demographic process is
which, for the first time since the Black Death, it will begin to shrink. By
not being driven by famine or disease as has been the case in all previous history. Instead, it is being driven by the greatest Cultural Revolution in the history of the
human race: the liberation and empowerment of women. The fact is that even with present technology, we would still be able to sustain a global population of 12
billion by the end of the century if needed. The evidence for this is cited above.
Perm – 2AC
It’s try or die—waiting for alternative orders to emerge is insufficient.
Cochran, GIT international affairs professor, 1999
(Molly, Normative Theory in International Relations, 272)
To conclude this chapter, while modernist and postmodernist
debates continue, while we are still unsure as to what we can
legitimately identify as a feminist ethical/political concern, while we still are unclear about the relationship between
discourse and experience, it is particularly important for feminists that we proceed with analysis of both the material
(institutional and structural) as well as the discursive. This holds not only for feminists, but for all theorists oriented towards the goal of
extending further moral inclusion in the present social sciences climate of epistemological uncertainty. Important
ethical/political concerns hang in the balance. We cannot afford to wait for the meta-theoretical questions to be
conclusively answered. Those answers may be unavailable. Nor can we wait for a credible vision of an alternative
institutional order to appear before an emancipatory agenda can be kicked into gear. Nor do we have before us a chicken and egg
question of which comes first: sorting out the metatheoretical issues or working out which practices contribute to a
credible institutional vision. The two questions can and should be pursued together, and can be via moral imagination.
Imagination can help us think beyond discursive and material conditions which limit us, by pushing the boundaries of those limitations in thought and examining what
yields. In this respect, I believe international ethics as pragmatic critique can be a useful ally to feminist and normative theorists generally.
Perm – 1AR
Revolutionary moments fail without dynamism added by reformists
Rowe, Victoria environmental studies professor, 2014
(James, “Reform or Radicalism: Left Social Movements from the Battle of Seattle to Occupy Wall Street”, New
Political Science, Taylor and Francis)
Reform or revolution—the question Rosa Luxemburg famously posed in her 1900 pamphlet of that name—continues to vex Left social movements. The question still
names real ideological, organizational, and tactical differences. And yet the debate's persistent intensity tends to exceed these differences: Identity attachment more
we unpack two central mobilizations launched by
social movements in the past 15 years (The Battle of Seattle and Occupy Wall Street), and demonstrate how these
two relative successes can be largely attributed to an effective dynamism between radicals and reforme rs. By
dynamism we mean contributions arising from different activist wings and productively interacting to increase
overall movement power. This analysis is not meant to deny political difference and hawk false unity. Instead we want to challenge the luxury
of mutual dismissal with the actually existing benefits of movement dynamism. Real political differences should be
openly debated, but these debates should occur with the understanding that under current conditions, and for the foreseeable future,
dynamism between differing wings is central to movement success. Political economic events like elections and
crises condition the possibility for dynamism, but seeking it out even in inopportune times can strengthen a
movement's capacity to become a stronger political economic force itself . Movement dynamism can be nurtured
through ideological, organizational, and tactical openness to differing tendencies and constantly changing
circumstance. Our geographical focus is the United States. Current structural conditions in northern North America do not favor Left movements. The very
than political efficacy often powers the rigid rancor dividing movement wings. In this article,
concentrations of economic, political, and cultural power inspiring Occupy Wall Street (OWS) ensure that the forces arrayed against even modest regulative and
redistributive efforts are massive (witness the weakness of Dodd-Frank financial reform in the wake of extensive industry lobbying). Moreover the extent of military
power in advanced capitalist societies renders the insurrectionary path to revolution largely null—a development Friedrich Engels was already worrying about more
than a century ago.1 By no measure are Left movements on the precipice of a revolutionary situation in North America: be it insurrectionary or parliamentary. In fact
nobody really knows what a Left revolution in an advanced capitalist society looks like; it has never happened. Similarly game-changing reforms successfully
The
uncertainties of transformational and incremental strategies in advanced capitalist societies marked by massive
concentrations of power are conditions favoring social movement dynamism.2 Recent Left successes in Seattle and
New York can be explained by a totality of effort contributed by both reformers and radicals . Our ultimate claim is
that the North American Left will yield greater success by becoming more self-conscious about the concrete
benefits of movement dynamism. Before getting to our cases we briefly survey the existing literature on social movement dynamism. We then
subordinating capitalism to social values of care, solidarity, and ecological flourishing have been elusive since the advent of neoliberalism in the late 1970s.
historicize the radical/reform debate, accounting for its contours in twenty-first century North America.
Propagating multiple strategies even when they are in tension is the best option.
Higgins, Texas philosophy professor, 2013
(Kathleen, “Post-Truth Pluralism: The Unlikely Political Wisdom of Friedrich Nietzche”,
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-3/post-truth-pluralism)
Progressives are right that we live increasingly in a post-truth era, but rather than rejecting it and pining nostalgically for a return to a more
truthful time, we should learn to better navigate it. Where the New York Times and Walter Cronkite were once viewed as arbiters of public truths, today
the Times competes with the Wall Street Journal, and CBS News with FOX News and MSNBC, in describing reality. The Internet multiplies the perspectives and
truths available for public consumption. The
diversity of viewpoints opened up by new media is not going away and is likely to
intensify. This diversity of interpretations of reality is part of a longstanding trend. Democracy and modernization have brought a proliferation of worldviews and
declining authority of traditional institutions to meanings. Citizens have more freedom to create new interpretations of facts. This proliferation of
viewpoints makes the challenge of democratically addressing contemporary problems more complex . One consequence of
all this is that our problems become more wicked and more subject to conflicting meanings and agendas. We can’t agree on the nature of problems
or their solutions because of fundamentally unbridgeable values and worldviews. In attempting to reduce political
disagreement to black and white categories of fact and fiction, progressives themselves uniquely ill-equipped to address our current difficulties, or to advance liberal
values in the culture. A new progressive politics should have a different understanding of the truth than the one suggested by the critics of conservative dishonesty.
We should understand that human beings make meaning and apprehend truth from radically different standpoints
and worldviews, and that our great wealth and freedom will likely lead to more, not fewer, disagreements about the world. Nietzsche was no democrat, but the
pluralism he offers can be encouragement to today’s political class, as well as the rest of us, to become more self-aware of, and honest about, how our standpoint,
values, and power affect our determinations of what is true and what is false. In the post-truth era, we
should be able to articulate not one but
many different perspectives. Progressives seeking to govern and change society cannot be free of bias , interests, and
passions, but they should strive to be aware of them so that they can adopt different eyes to see the world from the
standpoint of their fiercest opponents. Taking multiple perspectives into account might alert us to more sites of
possible intervention and prime us for creative formulations of alternative possibilities for concerted responses
to our problems. Our era, in short, need not be an obstacle to taking common action. We might see today’s divided expert class and fractions public not as
temporary problems to be solved by more reason, science, and truth, but rather as permanent features of our developed democracy. We might even see this
proliferation of belief systems and worldviews as an opportunity for human development.
pragmatic action in the World.
We can agree to disagree and still engage in
A2: Focus on Assumptions
Reject their K prior claims-without comparing available options, their alternative is
politically useless.
Sikkink, Minnesota political science professor, 2008
(Kathryn, “The Role of Consequences, Comparison, and Counterfactuals in Constructivist Ethical Thought”,
http://www.polisci.umn.edu/centers/theory/pdf/sikkink.pdf)
Ethical arguments of these different types are ubiquitous and necessary. But because they are also slippery and open to manipulation and misuse, we also need to be very careful and precise about
how we go about using them. I would recommend that first we distinguish very carefully between the comparison to ideals and historical empirical comparison. I believe that many critical
constructivist accounts rely on the comparison to the ideal or to the conditions of possibility counterfactual argument. In almost every critical constructivist work there is an implicit ideal ethical
argument. This argument is implicit because it is rarely clearly stated, but it is found in the nature of the 36 critique. So, for example, in her discussion of U.S. human rights policy, Roxanne Doty
critiques a human rights policy carried out by actors who sometimes use it for their own self aggrandizement and to denigrate others. 42 The implicit ideal this presents is a human rights policy
that is not used for denigration or surveillance or othering those it criticizes or conversely, of elevating those who advocate it. What would be examples of such a policy? The book does not
provide examples. We do not know if examples exist in the world. So the implicit comparison is a comparison to an ideal – a never fully stated ideal, but one present in the critique of what is
wrong with the policies discussed. Nicolas Guilhot makes a similar argument in his recent book. The promotion of democracy and human rights, he argues, are increasingly used in order to
extend the power they were meant to limit. “The promotion of democracy and human rights defines new forms of administration on a global scale and generates a new political science.” He
historically examines how progressive movements for democracy and human rights have become hegemonic because they “systematically managed to integrate emancipatory and progressive
But
the book offers no alternative political scenario.
forces in the construction of imperial policies.”
once again,
In the final sentence of the book, the
author clarifies that “this book has no other ambition than to contribute to the democratic critique of democracy.” 43 In the introduction, he clarifies, “This book does not provide answers to these
Ethically, I
this is a cop-out. Politically and intellectually, I find it too comfortable and too easy. This critique has a crucial
role to play in pointing to hypocrisy (as Price highlights in the introduction). It could also serve as a catalyst for policy change in the
direction of policy that would include less surveillance or less cooptation of human rights discourse. But it is
unlikely to serve as a catalyst for new action or policy change unless it ventures something more than pure
critique, unless it risks a political or ethical proposal. Without that, it has the impact of delegitimizing any human
rights policy without suggesting any alternative. Any policy to promote human rights of democracy policy is shown to be
deeply flawed or even pernicious. It is portrayed as part of the problem, certainly not as offering any kind of solution. Human rights policy appears to make the situation
dilemmas. At most, its only ambition is to highlight them, in the hope that a proper understanding constitutes a first step toward the invention of new courses of action.”44
believe
worse, not better. The critique has the effect of telling us clearly what we do not want, what we can not support—human rights policies by imperfect and hypocritical actors like the U.S. In its
it also lumps human rights policy together with colonialism and does not provide any elements to
distinguish between one policy of surveillance and other. All are equally flawed. The ethical effect is to remove normative
support from existing policies without producing any alternatives. This is similar to what Price means when he says that “critical accounts
which do not in fact offer constructive normative theorizing to follow critique ironically lend themselves to being
complicit with the conservative agenda opposing erstwhile progressive change in world politics.” Neither Doty nor
Guilhot, for example, contrast two human rights policies to give examples of policies that are more of less hypocritical or
where there has been more or 44 Guilhot, p. 14. 38 less surveillance. They don’t contrast human rights policies or
democracy promotion policies to previous policies that were also hypocritical and self aggrandizing, but more
pernicious – e.g. national security ideology and support for authoritarian regimes in the third world. By presenting no contrasts, the critique would appear to say
that there is no ethical or political difference between a policy that supports coups and funds repressive
military regimes and a policy that critiques coups and cuts military aid to repressive regimes. These policies
would appear to be ethically indistinguishable. Indeed, by these standards, a realist policy (a la Kissinger) might be
preferable. Kissinger didn’t denigrate his authoritarianism allies. He took regimes as they were. He treated them as valuable allies.
He didn’t lecture them on how they should change. He also, in doing so, encouraged, in some cases, coups and mass
murder. But at least he didn’t “Other”. Doty and Guilhot give me no ethical criteria to distinguish between the policies of
the Kissinger administration, the Carter administration, and current Bush administration policy. Because the
comparison is an implicit ideal, never an empirical real world example, the critique is very telling and can delegitimize the
critiqued policy. But nothing is put in its place. So, it demobilizes any support we might have for any human
rights policy. It puts the analyst in an ethically comfortable position, but by not proposing any explicit
comparison, it demobilizes the reader. We learn what to oppose, to critique, but we don’t learn explicitly what to
support in its stead. The result can be political paralysis. One finds it difficult to act.
historical comparisons,
A2: Focus on Subjectivity
Effective democratic politics requires that the starting point be a site of mutual engagement
over changing laws, norms, or other practices that exist in the world---this requires
rejection of starting points that focus on the self. This solves their offense because social
mobilization around an external goal can enable self-transformation, but not the other way
around because it eliminates effective advocacy
Myers, Utah political science professor, 2013
(Ella, Worldly Ethics: Democratic Politics and Care for the World, pg 50-52)
By presenting arts of the self and collective citizen movements as variations on a single theme, Connolly’s writings conceal the unique
orientation that
democratic politics entails, which sets it apart from any reflexive self- relation. Associative democratic endeavors
are distinguished not only by the involvement of multiple actors but by the presence of a common object around
which they organize. Thus any movement between the micropolitics of self- constitution and the macropolitics of
transforming worldly habits, practices, laws, and norms is decidedly more complicated than Connolly’s framing indicates, because it
demands a turn away from oneself as the object of attention and toward a different and shared object of concern
that serves as a site of mutual energy and advocacy. This reorientation, I argue, is possible only if the self’s reflexive
relation with itself is initially activated by and remains tethered to a public matter of concern . If selftransformation is to move in a direction that enriches democratic subjectivity and readies one for participation in democratic contest, it must
be guided from the start by the claims and actions of democratic constituencies. There is simply no reason to believe or
hope that paying focused attention to oneself will enable rather than disable collective action unless the labors
of self- constitution are set in motion by a publicly articulated claim regarding shared conditions that resonates with that
individual, sparking reflection, examination, and transformation. For example, in the passage considered earlier in which Connolly describes the efforts undertaken by
an individual who confronts disparate elements within herself that concern death and dying, this reflexive activity is potentially politically meaningful because it was
For the work performed on the self to bear any democratic
significance, the self must be able, at some point, to divest itself from the rapport à soi and refocus on a public
matter as the primary object of concern. This divestment is made possible by the presence of a worldly problem
that captures the attention of that individual from the start and allows the self to shift out of concentrated work on
the self and into the pluralistic domain of democratic politics. This insight sheds light on those problems afflicting Connolly’s argument for
arts of the self. In those places where Connolly—wrongly, as I have contended—presents a reflexive relationship as the starting
point or origin of macropolitical endeavors, the questions of activation and effects loom large. What prompts someone to take
initiated by the appearance of new movements claiming a right to die.
up these all- important techniques of the self? Why would someone decide to engage in the strenuous arts of the self that, to Connolly, are indispensable to collective
democratic undertakings? Moreover, under what circumstances can care for the self, if pursued, be counted on to generate democratic virtues rather than vices? What
assures that self- intervention will result in styles of subjectivity that are especially well- suited to participation in associative projects? The answers to these queries,
as demonstrated above, turn on the fact that any self- care that might matter for democracy is sparked by and remains bound to public efforts that bring “matters of
fact” into view as common “matters of concern.” Tending to oneself in the manner Connolly advocates cannot come out of nowhere; it is spurred into practice by
publicly articulated claims that aim to elicit care, not primarily for a single self but for something defined as a public, contested matter worthy of citizen attention.
Reflexive practices of self- transformation that might be able to nourish associative forms of democratic action are dependent on public processes of politicization for
their activation and subsequent direction. If
we seek not just any ethics, but a democratic ethics, we are looking for an orientation
or mode of being that can inspire participation in associative efforts to shape worldly conditions. Therapeutic ethics,
focused as it is on the self’s relationship to itself, cannot be the source of such a spirit. Showing concern for oneself
and showing concern, in association with others, for a particular custom, norm, law, or practice are decidedly different
enterprises. Collective action on behalf of a public matter does not simply follow from care of the self , as the therapeutic
model sometimes suggests. Tending to the self can perhaps play a supportive role in readying people for the demands of democratic association and struggle. But to
do so, arts
of the self must be undertaken in response to and for the sake of collaborative arts that aim to make and
remake features of the world. The task of a democratic ethos is to nourish this distinctive form of care among
citizens.
Ethical projects of self-creation must be tethered from the outset to advocacy for
institutional change---the aff lapses into new-age individualistic therapy that demolishes
collective political action
Myers, Utah political science professor, 2013
(Ella, Worldly Ethics: Democratic Politics and Care for the World, pg 44-5)
artistry as an “essential preliminary to,” and
even the necessary “condition of,” change at the macropolitical level.104 That is, although Connolly claims that micropolitics and
Unfortunately, Connolly is inconsistent in this regard, for he also positions Foucauldian self-
political movements work “in tandem,” each producing effects on the other,105 he sometimes privileges “action by the self on itself” as a starting point and necessary
prelude to macropolitical change.
This approach not only avoids the question of the genesis of such reflexive action and its
possible harmful effects but also indicates that collective efforts to alter social conditions actually await proper
techniques of the self. For example, in a rich discussion of criminal punishment in the United States, Connolly contends that “today the
micropolitics of desire in the domain of criminal violence has become a condition for a macropolitics that
reconfigures existing relations between class, race, crime and punishment.”106 Here and elsewhere in Connolly’s writing the
sequencing renders these activities primary and secondary rather than mutually inspiring and reinforcing.107 It is
a mistake to grant chronological primacy to ethical self-intervention, however. How, after all, is such intervention,
credited with producing salient effects at the macropolitical level , going to get off the ground, so to speak, or assuredly
move in the direction of democratic engagement (rather than withdrawal, for example) if it is not tethered, from the
beginning, to public claims that direct attention to a specific problem, defined as publicly significant and
changeable? How and why would an individual take up reflexive work on the desire to punish if she were not
already attuned, at least partially, to problems afflicting current criminal punishment practices? And that attunement is
fostered, crucially, by the macropolitical efforts of democratic actors who define a public matter of concern and elicit the attention
of other citizens.108 For reflexive self- care to be democratically significant, it must be inspired by and continually
connected to larger political mobilizations. Connolly sometimes acknowledges that the arts of the self he celebrates are not themselves the
starting point of collaborative action but instead exist in a dynamic, reciprocal relation with cooperative and antagonistic efforts to shape collective arrangements. Yet
This tendency to prioritize the self’s
reflexive relationship over other modes of relation defines the therapeutic ethics that ultimately emerges out of Foucault’s and, to a
lesser degree, Connolly’s work. This ethics not only elides differences between caring for oneself and caring for
conditions but also celebrates the former as primary or, as Foucault says, “ontologically prior.” An ethics centered on
the self’s engagement with itself may have value, but it is not an ethics fit for democracy.
the self’s relation with itself is also treated as a privileged site, the very source of democratic spirit and action.
A2: Legalism Bad
Engaging in reform of a law does not legitimize its underlying ideology.
Ben-Naftali, COMAS jurisprudence and international law professor, 2003
(Orna, “'We Must Not Make a Scarecrow of the Law': A Legal Analysis of the Israeli Policy of Targeted Killings”,
36 Cornell Int'l L.J. 233, lexis)
Our analysis concludes that while a specific act of preemptive killing may be legal if it meets the above-specified requirements, the policy of state targeted preemptive
killings is not. Furthermore, some specific
acts of targeted killings may generate state responsibility, while others may
constitute a war crime entailing criminal accountability. These conclusions, emanating from the reading of the three legal texts applicable to the
context, and informed by a sensibility that coheres them, do not rest on a negation of the importance of the national interest in security. On the
contrary, these conclusions incorporate and express the way it should be balanced with a minimum standard of
humanity and against the relevant context.¶ This delicate, ever precarious balance is at the heart of the democratic
discourse. A democratic state is not a meek state. True, it is fighting with "one hand tied behind its back,"n342 as soberly observed by Chief
Justice Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court, but democratic sensibilities internalize this limitation on State power, not as a source of
weakness but as a sign of strength. Democracies require a public discourse forever alert to the importance of human rights, suspicious
of the way power is used, and committed to the rule of law. The legal culture, in turn, while not a substitute for this public discourse,
is never absent from it and indeed serves as a catalyst for its development. ¶ We therefore reject the notion that the policy of targeted
killings, designed by Israel as a way to combat terrorist attacks, is beyond the purview of the rule of law.n343 We also deny the purist position
suggesting that the legalistic nitty-gritty preoccupation with details entailed in the above discussion is likely to obscure
and legitimize a harrowing policy; n344 one that, on principle, should be condemned. n345 This position in fact maintains that the
legality or illegality of targeted state killings is not a legitimate issue of discussion ; that while an emergency situation may
exceptionally necessitate the deed, it should never be elevated to the sphere of the Word. n346 We appreciate the sensibility of this position, but, alas, do not
find it sensible. Indeed, nor would the people who consider themselves victims of the policy of targeted killings, and
appeal to the courts to intervene. n347 Purity belongs to the Platonic world of ideas; it is a necessary ideal to strive for,
even if forever unachievable in this all too fallible City of Man. n348 In the best of all possible worlds law would be superfluous;
in this world, it is a necessary, albeit insufficient means to achieve some possible betterment. This article hopes to
contribute to this modest goal
Totalizing rejection of the law sacrifices the immediate needs of those suffering from
violence. Using the law for its strategic effects while recognizing its inherent limitations
allows us to have short-term legal strategies that are not mutually exclusive with the alt
Smith, UC Riverside media and cultural studies professor, 2013
(Andrea, “The Moral Limits of the Law: Settler Colonialism and the Anti-Violence Movement”, Settler Colonial
Studies, Taylor and Francis)
At the same time, violence against Native women is at epidemic rates. The 1999 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, American Indians and Crime, finds that sexual assault among Native Americans is 3.5 times higher than for all other
races living in the US. Unlike other racial groupings, the majority of sexual assaults committed against Native American women are inter-racial.3 In particular, the majority of people who perpetrate sexual assault against Native
women are white. Because of the complex jurisdictional issues involving tribal lands, the majority of sexual assaults against Native women are committed with impunity. Depending on the tribe, non-Native perpetrators of sexual
assault on Indian reservations may fall out of state, federal and tribal jurisdiction. And tribes themselves have not developed effective means for addressing violence in their communities. The intersections of gender violence and
colonialism in Native women’s lives force Native anti-violence advocates to operate through numerous contradictions. First, they must work within a federal justice system that is premised on the continued colonisation of Native
nations. Second, they must work with tribal governments that often engage in gender oppressive practices. In addition, as Native studies scholar Jennifer Denetdale argues, many tribal governments act as neo-colonial formations that
support tribal elites at the expense of the community.4 Third, they must also address women who need immediate services, even if those services may come from a colonising federal government or a tribal government that may
perpetuate gender oppression. Given the logics of settler colonialism, it may seem to be a hopeless contradiction to work within the US legal system at all. In fact, many social justice advocates eschew engaging in legal reform for this
we are often presented with two dichotomous choices: short-term legal reform that addresses immediate
needs but further invests us in the current colonial system or long-term anti-colonial organising that attempts to
avoid the political contradictions of short-term strategies but does not necessarily focus on immediate needs. This
essay will explore possibilities for rethinking this dichotomous approach by rethinking the role of legal reform in
general
reason. Consequently,
. The essay foregrounds alternative approaches using a Native feminist analytic towards engaging legal reform that may have a greater potential to undo the logics of settler colonialism from within. As I have argued elsewhere, Native feminism as well as Native studies is not limited in its object of analysis.5 Rather, in its interest in addressing the intersecting
logics of heteropatriarchy and settler colonialism, it is free to engage with diverse materials. In looking then towards alternative strategies for undoing settler colonialism through the law, I contend that it is important to engage important work that might not seem to be directly about Native peoples or settler colonialism if this work helps provide new resources for how we could
strategically engage the law. Consequently, I engage the work of legal scholars and activists that address very different areas of law as a means to challenge some of the current assumptions that undergird both reformist and revolutionary approaches to the law. DECOLONIAL REALISM Critical race theorist Derrick Bell challenged the presupposition of much racial justice legal reform
strategies when he argued that racism is a permanent feature of society. While his work is generally cited as a critical race theoretical approach, I would contend that his work implicitly suggests a settler colonial framework for understanding legal reform. That is, many of the heirs of Derrick Bell do not follow the logical consequences of his work and argue for an approach to race and the
law that seeks racial representation in the law.6 However, Bell’s analysis points to the inherent contradictions to such an approach. Rather than seeking representation, Bell calls on Black peoples to ‘acknowledge the permanence of our subordinate status’.7 Espousing the framework of ‘racial realism’, Bell disavows any possibility of ‘transcendent change’.8 To the contrary, he argues that
‘[i]t is time we concede that a commitment to racial equality merely perpetuates our disempowerment’.9 The alternative he advocates is resistance for its own sake – living ‘to harass white folks’ – or short-term pragmatic strategies that focus less on eliminating racism and more on simply ensuring that we do not ‘worsen conditions for those we are trying to help’.10 While Bell does not
elaborate on what those strategies may be, he points to a different kind of reasoning that could be utilised for legal reform. In his famous story, ‘Space Traders’, aliens come to planet Earth promising to solve the world’s problems if world leaders will simply give up Black people to the aliens. This story narratively illustrates how thin white liberal commitments to social justice are. First,
the white people of course do give up Black people to the aliens without much thought. But what more dramatically illustrates this point is that the reader knows that, almost without a doubt, if this were to happen in real life, of course Black people would be given up. Within this story, however, is a little-commented scene that speaks to perhaps a different way to approach legal reform
within the context of white supremacy. Gleason Golightly, a conservative black economics professor who serves as an informal cabinet member for the President, becomes embroiled in a fight with the civil rights legal establishment about the best means to oppose the proposed trade. Golightly had previously pleaded with the President and his cabinet to reject it. When his pleas are not
heard, he begins to reflect on how his support for conservative racial policies in the interests of attaining greater political power had been to no avail. He realises the strategy behind his appeal to the President was doomed to fail. In retrospect, though [his] arguments were based on morality […] [i]nstead of outsmarting them, Golightly had done what he so frequently criticised civil rights
spokespersons for doing: he had tried to get whites to do right by black people because it was right that they do so. ‘Crazy!’ he commented when civil rights people did it. ‘Crazy!’ he mumbled to himself, at himself.11 Realising the error of his ways, Golightly interrupts this civil rights meeting in which activists plan to organise a moral crusade to convince white Americans to reject the
space traders proposal. Instead, he suggests that they should tell white people that they cannot wait to go on the ship because they have learned they are being transported to a land of milk and honey. White people, argues Golightly, so oppose policies that benefit Black people, even if they benefit white people, that they will start litigating to stop the space traders’ proposed plan.12 The
civil rights establishment rejects this strategy as a moral outrage and begins a racial justice campaign, ultimately to no avail. What this story troubles is social justice movements’ investment in the morality of the law. Despite the US legal system’s complicity in settler colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy since its inception, they advocate strategies for change that rest
on the presupposition that the law can somehow be made to support the end of sexism, racism and classism. Historically, as more radical racial and social justice organisations were either crushed or co-opted by the US governments during the 1970s, these movements shifted from a focus on a radical restructuring of the political and economic system to a focus on articulating identity
based claims that did not necessarily challenge the prevailing power structure.13 If groups were not going to directly challenge the state, they could then call on the state to recognise their claims to equality and redress from harms perpetrated by other social actors. Ironically, then, the same US government that codified slavery, segregation, anti-immigrant racism, and the genocide of
Bell suggests that it may be possible to
engage in legal reform in the midst of these contradictions if one foregoes the fantasy that the law is morally
benevolent or even neutral. In doing so, more possibilities for strategic engagement emerge. For instance, in the ‘Racial Preference
indigenous peoples, now becomes the body that will protect people of colour from racism. The fact that the US itself could not exist without the past and continuing genocide of indigenous peoples in particular does not strike liberal legal reformists as a contradiction.
Licensing Act’, Bell suggests that rather than criminalise racial discrimination, the government should allow discrimination, but tax it. Taxes accrued from this discrimination would then go into an ‘equality’ fund that would support
the educational and economic interests of African-Americans.14 As I have argued elsewhere, the law enforcement approach has been similarly limited in addressing the issues of gender violence when the majority of men do, or
express willingness to engage in, it.15 As a result, criminalisation has not actually led to a decrease in violence against women.16 Anti-violence activists and scholars have widely critiqued the supposed efficacy of criminalisation.17
As I will discuss later in this essay, Native women in particular have struggled with the contradictions of engaging the legal system to address the legacies of colonial gender violence. While there is growing critique around
criminalisation as the primary strategy for addressing gender violence, there has not been attention to what other frameworks could be utilised for addressing gender violence. In particular, what would happen if we pursued legal
strategies based on their strategic effects rather than based on the moral statements they propose to make? DISTRUSTING THE LAW Aside from Derrick Bell, because racial and gender justice legal advocates are so invested in the
morality of the law, there has not been sustained strategising on what other possible frameworks may be used. Bell provides some possibilities, but does not specifically engage alternative strategies in a sustained fashion. Thus, it may
be helpful to look for new possibilities in an unexpected place, the work of anti-trust legal scholar Christopher Leslie. Again, the work of Leslie may seem quite remote from scholars and activists organizing against the logics of settler
to disinvest in the morality of the law in a manner which is
often difficult for those who are directly engaged in social justice work to do. This disinvestment, I contend is
critical for those who wish to dismantle settler colonialism to rethink their legal strategies .
colonialism. But it may be the fact that Leslie is not directly engaging in social justice work that allows him
In ‘Trust, Distrust, and Anti-Trust’, Christopher Leslie explains that while the economic
impact of cartels is incalculable, cartels are also unstable.18 Because cartel members cannot develop formal relationships with each other, they must develop partnerships based on informal trust mechanisms in order to overcome the famous ‘prisoners’ dilemma’. The prisoner’s dilemma, as described by Leslie, is one in which two prisoners are arrested and questioned separately with no
opportunity for communication between them. There is enough evidence to convict both of minor crimes for a one year sentence but not enough for a more substantive sentence. The police offer both prisoners the following deal: if you confess and implicate your partner, and your partner does not confess, you will be set free and your partner will receive a ten-year sentence. If you
confess, and he does as well, then you will both receive a five-year sentence. In this scenario, it becomes the rational choice for both to confess because if the first person does not confess and the second person does, the first person will receive a ten-year sentence. Ironically, however, while both will confess, it would have been in both of their interests not to confess. Similarly, Leslie
argues, cartels face the prisoners’ dilemma. If all cartel members agree to fix a price, and abide by this price fixing, then all will benefit. However, individual cartel members are faced with the dilemma of whether or not they should join the cartel and then cheat by lowering prices. They fear that if they do not cheat, someone else will and drive them out of business. At the same time, by
cheating, they disrupt the cartel that would have enabled them to all profit with higher prices. In addition, they face a second dilemma when faced with anti-trust legislation. Should they confess in exchange for immunity or take the chance that no one else will confess and implicate them? Cartel members can develop mechanisms to circumvent pressures. Such mechanisms include the
development of personal relationships, frequent communication, goodwill gestures, etc. In the absence of trust, cartels may employ trust substitutes such as informal contracts and monitoring mechanisms. When these trust and trust substitute mechanisms break down, the cartel members will start to cheat, thus causing the cartel to disintegrate. Thus, Leslie proposes, anti-trust legislation
should focus on laws that will strategically disrupt trust mechanisms. Unlike racial or gender justice advocates who focus on making moral statements through the law, Leslie proposes using the law for strategic ends, even if the law makes a morally suspect statement. For instance, in his article, ‘Anti-Trust Amnesty, Game Theory, and Cartel Stability’, Leslie critiques the federal AntiTrust’s 1993 Corporate Lenience Policy that provided greater incentives for cartel partners to report on cartel activity. This policy provided ‘automatic’ amnesty for the first cartel member to confess, and decreasing leniency for subsequent confessors in the order to which they confessed. Leslie notes that this amnesty led to an increase of amnesty applications.19 However, Leslie notes
that the effectiveness of this reform is hindered by the fact that the ringleader of the cartel is not eligible for amnesty. This policy seems morally sound. Why would we want the ringleader, the person who most profited from the cartel, to be eligible for amnesty? The problem, however, with attempting to make a moral statement through the law is that it is counter-productive if the goal is
to actually break up cartels. If the ringleader is never eligible for amnesty, the ringleader becomes inherently trustworthy because he has no incentive to ever report on his partners. Through his inherent trustworthiness, the cartel can build its trust mechanisms. Thus, argues Leslie, the most effective way to destroy cartels is to render all members untrustworthy by granting all the possibility
of immunity. While Leslie’s analysis is directed towards policy, it also suggests an alternative framework for pursuing social justice through the law, to employ it for its strategic effects rather than through the moral statements it purports to make. It is ironic that an anti-trust scholar such as Leslie displays less ‘trust’ in the law than do many anti-racist/anti-colonial activists and scholars
who work through legal reform.20 It also indicates that it is possible to engage legal reform more strategically if one no longer trusts it. As Beth Richie notes, the anti-violence movement’s primary strategy for addressing gender violence was to articulate it as a crime.21 Because it is presumed that the best way to address a social ill is to call it a ‘crime’, this strategy is then deemed the
correct moral strategy. When this strategy backfires and does not end violence, and in many cases increases violence against women, it becomes difficult to argue against this strategy because it has been articulated in moral terms. If, however, we were to focus on legal reforms chosen for their strategic effects, it would be easier to change the strategy should our calculus of its strategic
effects suggest so. We would also be less complacent about the legal reforms we advocate as has happened with most of the laws that have been passed on gender violence. Advocates presume that because they helped pass a ‘moral’ law, then their job is done. If, however, the criteria for legal reforms are their strategic effects, we would then be continually monitoring the operation of
these laws to see if they were having the desired effects. For instance, since the primary reason women do not leave battering relationships is because they do not have another home to go, what if our legal strate gies shifted from criminalising domestic violence to advocating affordable housing? While the shift from criminalisation may seem immoral, women are often removed from
public housing under one strike laws in which they lose access to public housing if a ‘crime’ (including domestic violence) happens in their residence, whether or not they are the perpetrator. If our goal was actually to keep women safe, we might need to creatively rethink what legal reforms would actually increase safety. REVOLUTIONARY REFORMS As mentioned previously, there
has been insufficient evaluation of the strategic effects of legal strategies opposing gender violence. However, the work of Native anti-violence scholar and activist, Sarah Deer, points to possible new directions in engaging legal reform for the purpose of decolonisation. Deer notes that the issues of gender violence cannot be separated from the project of decolonisation. For instance,
currently, tribal governments are restricted to sentencing tribal members to three years in tribal prison for even major crimes such as rape. Much of the focus of the anti-violence movement has been on increasing the number of years tribal governments can incarcerate members. Because of this effort, the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 increased the length of sentences from one to
three years. However, Deer notes that prior to colonisation, violence against women was virtually unheard of, even though tribes did not have prisons.22 Instead, tribes utilised a number of social mechanisms to ensure safety for women and children, and none of these mechanisms are prohibited by federal legislation. Because the federal government restricts the amount of prison time
allowed for sexual offenders, tribes primarily call on the federal government to expand tribes’ ability to incarcerate. However, as a variety of scholars have noted, expanded sentencing has not actually led to decreased violence.23 Thus, rather than focusing their attention simply on incarceration, Deer suggests that tribes look to pre-colonial measures for addressing violence and begin to
adapt those for contemporary circumstances.24 At the same time, Deer notes that it is not necessarily a simple process to adapt pre-colonial measures for addressing violence. Unfortunately, many of the alternatives to incarceration that are promoted under the ‘restorative justice model’ have not developed sufficient safety mechanisms for survivors of domestic/sexual violence.
‘Restorative justice’ is an umbrella term that describes a wide range of programs that attempt to address crime from a restorative and reconciliatory rather than a punitive framework. As restorative justice frameworks involve all parties (perpetrators, victims, and community members) in determining the appropriate response to a crime in an effort to restore the community to wholeness,
restorative justice is opposed to the US criminal justice system, which focuses solely on punishing the perpetrator and removing him (or her) from society through incarceration. These models are well developed in many Native communities, especially in Canada, where the legal status of Native nations allows an opportunity to develop community-based justice programs. In one program,
for example, when a crime is reported, the working team that deals with sexual/domestic violence talks to the perpetrator and gives him the option of participating in the program. The perpetrator must first confess his guilt and then follow a healing contract, or go to jail. The perpetrator is free to decline to participate in the program and go through the criminal justice system. In the
restorative justice model, everyone (victim, perpetrator, family, friends, and the working team) is involved in developing the healing contract. Everyone is also assigned an advocate through the process. Everyone is also responsible for holding the perpetrator accountable to his contract. One Tlingit man noted that this approach was often more difficult than going to jail: First one must
deal with the shock and then the dismay on your neighbors faces. One must live with the daily humiliation, and at the same time seek forgiveness not just from victims, but from the community as a whole […]. [A prison sentence] removes the offender from the daily accountability, and may not do anything towards rehabilitation, and for many may actually be an easier disposition than
staying in the community.25 These models have greater potential for dealing with crime effectively because, if we want people who perpetuate violence to live in society peaceably, it makes sense to develop justice models in which the community is involved in holding him/her accountable. Under the current incarceration model, perpetrators are taken away from their community and are
further hindered from developing ethical relationships within a community context. However, the problem with these models is that they work only when the community unites in holding perpetrators accountable. In cases of sexual and domestic violence, the community often sides with the perpetrator rather than the victim. As Deer argues, in many Native communities, these models are
often pushed on domestic violence survivors in order to pressure them to reconcile with their families and ‘restore’ the community without sufficient concern for their personal safety.26 In addition, Native advocates have sometime critiqued the uncritical use of ‘traditional’ forms of governance for addressing domestic violence. They argue that Native communities have been pressured to
adopt circle sentencing because it is supposed to be an indigenous traditional practice. However, some advocates contend that there is no such traditional practice in their communities. Moreover, they are concerned that the process of diverting cases outside the court system can be dangerous for survivors. In one example, Bishop Hubert O’Connor (a white man) was found guilty of
multiple cases of sexual abuse but his punishment under the restorative justice model was to participate in a healing circle with his victims. Because his crimes were against Aboriginal women, he was able to opt for an ‘Aboriginal approach’ – an approach, many argue, that did little to provide real healing for the survivors and accountability for the perpetrator. Deer complains that there is
a tendency to romanticise and homogenise ‘traditional’ alternatives to incarceration. First, she notes traditional approaches might, in fact, be harsher than incarceration. Many Native people presume that traditional modes of justice focus on conflict resolution. In fact, Deer argues, penalties for societal infractions were not lenient – they entailed banishment, shaming, reparations, physical
punishment and sometimes death. Deer notes that revising tribal codes by reincorporating traditional practices is not a simple process. It is sometimes difficult to determine what these practices were or how they could be made useful today. For example, some practices, such as banishment, would not have the same impact today. Prior to colonisation, Native communities were so closeknit and interdependent that banishment was often the equivalent of a death sentence. Today, however, banished perpetrators could simply leave home and join the dominant society. While tribes now have the opportunity to divest from the US colonial system, many Native women remain under violent attack. They may need to use the federal system until such time that more advanced
decolonisation becomes possible. Thus Deer advocates a two-fold strategy: 1) The short-term strategy of holding the federal government accountable for prosecuting rape cases; and 2) encouraging tribes to hold perpetrators accountable directly so that they will eventually not need to rely on federal interference. This approach can be misread as a simple formula for reform. However, it is
important to remember that the project of prison abolition is a positive rather than a negative project. The goal is not to tell survivors that they can never call the police or engage the criminal justice system. The question is not, should a survivor call the police? The question is: why have we given survivors no other option but to call the police? Deer is suggesting that it is not inconsistent
to reform federal justice systems while at the same time building tribal infrastructures for accountability that will eventually replace the federal system. If we focus simply on community accountability without a larger critique of the state, we often fall back on framing community accountability as simply an add-on to the criminal justice system. Because anti-violence work has focused
simply on advocacy, we have not developed strategies for ‘due process’, leaving that to the state. When our political imaginaries are captured by the state, we can then presume that the state should be left to administer ‘justice’ while communities will serve simply as a supplement to this regime. To do so, however, recapitulates the fundamental injustice of a settler state that is founded on
slavery, genocide and the exploitation of immigrant labour. Further, we are unable to imagine new visions for liberatory nationhood that are not structured on hierarchical logics, violence and domination. We face a dilemma: on the one hand, the incarceration approach for addressing sexual/domestic violence promotes the repression of communities of colour without really providing
safety for survivors. On the other hand, restorative justice models often promote community silence and denial under the rhetoric of community restoration without concern for the safety of survivors. Thus, our challenge is to develop community-based models that respond to gender violence in ways that hold perpetrators accountable. Unfortunately, in this discussion advocates often
assume only two possibilities: the criminal justice system or restorative justice. When anyone finds faults with the restorative justice model, it is assumed that the traditional criminal justice approach must be the back-up strategy. Deer’s approach, by contrast, is to work with the criminal justice system while continuing to develop effective strategies for addressing violence. These will
eventually eliminate the need to rely on the criminal justice system. Of course, the trap of pursuing reforms is that they can create investment in the current US legal system and detract from building new systems of governance that are not based on violence, domination and control. At the same time, we are not going to go from where we are now to revolution tomorrow. Thus, it becomes
important to strategise around what may be called ‘revolutionary’ reforms. Other abolitionists have argued that the only reforms that should be supported are those that diminish the criminal justice apparatus. Other abolitions have argued that this approach leaves people vulnerable to the ‘crimes of the powerful’, such as rape and domestic violence.27 It is in this context that we can
understand Deer’s current projects. She has worked on building tribal infrastructure by encouraging and assisting tribes to develop tribal civil protection orders. Her strategy is not so much based on the rationale that civil protection orders will in themselves provide protection for women. Rather, by developing these orders, tribes gain the practice of developing their own systems for
addressing violence. Deer notes that this is one area that is not likely to be interfered with by the US federal government. At the same time, it is not an approach that is directly tied with investing tribes in the project of incarceration. Thus, it becomes a reform that tribal communities may adopt now as they develop creative responses for addressing violence. The reason for this suggested
reform is that many tribal governments incorrectly think that the federal government is already adequately addressing gender violence and do not take initiative to address it themselves.28 In the end, the importance of Deer’s recommendation is not so much an investment in that particular strategy, but the manner in which it encourages us to think of short-term strategies that are not
simply based on increased incarceration, strategies that will more likely fall under the federal radar screen so that tribal communities have more time to practice new ways of supporting accountability for violence. This will encourage communities to develop better decolonial practices in the future. As Deer notes, a ‘long-term vision for radical change requires both immediate measures to
address sexual violence and a forward-looking effort to dismantle the culture of rape that has infiltrated tribal nations’.29 At the same time, many other Native activists are engaging community accountability strategies that do not work with the current system at all. These strategies are not broadly advertised because these activists do not want to gain the attention of federal authorities.
Yet, many communities have developed informal strategies for addressing authorities. For instance, one man who assaulted a relative was banished from his community. As he was simply able to move to the city, tribal members would follow him to various work places, carrying signs that described him as a rapist. Again, this may be a strategy that we may or may not support. But the
Those who call for
decolonisation often do not effectively engage in any short-term reformist strategy, even though they may
save the lives of indigenous peoples who are currently under immediate attack. As a result, the immediate
needs of people often get sacrificed in favour of articulating seemingly politically-pure ideals.
point is that it is important to engage the experimental and ‘jazzy’ approaches for developing community-based accountability strategies.30 In his recent book X-Marks, Scott Lyons engages with Native activists and scholars who call for decolonisation as a central focus for organising.31
Conversely, those who do engage in short-term reform
strategies often decry the goal of decolonisation as ‘unrealistic’. In doing so, they do not critique the manner in which these strategies often retrench rather than challenge the colonial status quo. Lyons affirms the need for decolonisation, but notes that decolonization happens with pre-existing materials and institutions. He calls on Native peoples to think creatively about these institutions
and about the ways in which they can be deployed not just for short-term gains but for a long-term vision of liberation. BEYOND SHAMING THE SYSTEM Legal reformists who often focus on shaping the law to reflect their moral values and those who focus on extra-legal revolutionary strategies often share the same goal. Often the presumed ‘radical’ strategy adopted by social justice
groups is to engage in civil disobedience. While these groups ostensibly break the law, they often do so in rather ceremonial fashion; they essentially want to shame the system. People are supposed to get arrested, and those in power are supposed to be so shamed by the fact that an unjust system required people to break the law. The expectation is that they will then change the laws. Acts
of civil disobedience often are not targeted toward changing a policy directly or building alternative systems to the current one. Many Native groups in the southwest US, however, have developed an alternative framework for extra-legal social change. Rather than breaking the law to change the system, they propose to make Native communities ungovernable. For instance, during the
passage of SB1070, Native groups with the Taala Hooghan Infoshop, O’odham Solidarity Across Borders, and others occupied the Border Patrol Office.32 However, rather than engaging in the occupation with the expectation of getting arrested, they chained themselves to the building so that the office could not perform its work. This approach has continued with their efforts to stop the
US government’s desecration of the San Francisco Peaks through the construction of a ski resort. While they have not eschewed legal strategies for stopping this desecration, they have focused on preventing tourists from visiting the area so that the ski resort will no longer be economically viable. According to their promotional material on TrueSnow.org: For the last decade defenders of
the peaks have used every legitimate way they could think of to try to stop the US Forest Service from allowing treated sewage effluent to be sprayed on the Peaks to make snow. More than 20,000 people took part in the Forest Service Environmental Impact Statement process with letters and appeals asking them not to spray treated sewage effluent on the peaks to make snow. Thousands
of us went to Flagstaff City Council meetings to voice our opposition to the sale of treated sewer water for the project. Yet still they approved it – before even an environmental impact statement was done. They were the most clueless of all. Currently the Hopi tribe is seeking lawsuit against the city because of this treated sewage effluent sale. A group of tribes and environmental and
social justice organizations took a lawsuit all the way to the steps of the Supreme Court. The lawsuits have only called into question the legitimacy of what is loosely termed the ‘justice’ system. For it seems there is no justice in this system. It is just us, IN this system. There is also yet another lawsuit in play which I have termed ‘Save the Peaks Coalition vs The Snowbowl Movement’
which may have the possibility of stopping this project in the long term. But if we wait for a verdict, all the trees will be cut and the pipeline installed. This has not stopped the politically connected ski area from going ahead with their project right now and they have already clear-cut 100,000 trees (or more) and have already buried a few miles of pipeline along Snowbowl road. If they
lose in court they would be expected to repair the damages. How do you get back 400 year old trees? Greed and hatred seems to be Snowbowl's only motivation […]. But isn't there some way to stop it? Well we could hit them where it hurts! In the pocketbook. If you live in the Fort Valley area of Flagstaff you must see by now how little Arizona Snowbowl really cares about the
‘economic benefits’ it brings our fair town. I know some of us had a good deal of trouble even going to work when the snow was good and Snowbowl was busy. The traffic jam was incredible. Stretching more than 15 miles. They took our livelihood away and hope to make that a daily occurrence by having a ‘predictable’ ski season using sewer water to make snow. This jam up gave us
an idea! Why don't we do the same thing? Arizona Snowbowl does not own the mountain, and it is perfectly legal to drive up to the area for any permitted public lands use. This means hiking, camping, praying, skiing, sitting, loving, mushroom hunting, etc. So what do I do? It is time to stop waiting for a government entity, an environmental group, or any of the people you have come to
expect to save the peaks for us. The time has come to show them how much power the people have! And believe me, you are the most powerful people in all of the world! You! Yep you! You can do it! All summer the Arizona Snowbowl is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for scenic skyrides, food, and alcohol. They do get a pretty good business up there and it would have an impact if
the mountain was just ‘too busy’ with people doing all the other things our Public Forests are for. There is nothing illegal about it and it would send a clear message to the forest service that we don't need Snowbowl to ‘recreate on the mountain’. Heck, we don't even need a ski area up there to ski! In essence, take a vacation. Just do it up on the peaks and don't use Snowbowl. Our
government officials are forgetting what ‘all power to the people’ really means. You cannot wait any longer for someone else to save the peaks for you. It will take of all us together to do this. So what are you waiting for? Pack a lunch this Saturday morning and Converge on the Peaks!33 What these activists suggest is to divest our moral investment in the law. This will affect not only
what legal reforms we may pursue, but what revolutionary strategies we might engage in. Rather than engaging in civil disobedience to force legislators to change laws to conform to our moral principles, we might be free to engage creatively in strategies that build political and economic power directly. CONCLUSION In the debates prevalent within Native sovereignty and racial justice
movements, we are often presented with two seemingly orthogonal positions – long-term revolutionary extra-legal movements or shortterm reformist legalist strategies. Short-term legal strategies are accused of investing activists within a white supremacist and settler colonial system that is incapable of significant change. Meanwhile, revolutionaries are accused of sacrificing the
. Native women’s lives are at stake now – they cannot
wait for the revolution to achieve some sort of safety. At the same time, the short-term strategies often adopted to address gender violence have often increased violence in Native women’s lives by buttressing
immediate needs of vulnerable populations for the sake of an endlessly deferred revolution. The reality of gender violence in Native communities highlights the untenability of these positions
the prison industrial complex and its violent logics. While this reformist versus revolutionary dichotomy suggests two radically different positions, in reality they share a common assumption: that the only way to pursue legal reform is
to fight for laws that that reinforce the appropriate moral statement (for instance, that the only way to address violence against Native women is through the law and to make this violence a ‘crime’). Because the US legal system is
inherently immoral and colonial, however, attempts to moralise the law generally fail. It is not surprising that the response to these failures is to simply give up on pursuing legal strategies. However, the works of Derrick Bell,
We can challenge the assumption that the law will
reflect our morals and instead seek to use the law for its strategic effects. In doing so, we might advocate for
laws that might in fact contradict some of our morals because we recognize that the law cannot mirror our morals
anyway. We might then be free to engage in a relationship with the law which would free us to change our
strategies as we assess its strategic effects. At the same time, by divesting from the morality of the law, we then will also
simultaneously be free to invest in building our own forms of community accountability and justice outside
the legal system. Our extra-legal strategies would go beyond ceremonial civil disobedience tactics designed to shame a system that is not capable of shame. Rather, we might focus on actually building the political
Christopher Leslie, and Sarah Deer, while working in completely different areas of the law, point to a different approach.
power to create an alternative system to the heteropatriarchal, white supremacist, settler colonial state.
Legal restraints work AND legal approaches don’t stifle revolutionary potential
Scheuerman, Indiana political science professor, 2006
(William, “Carl Schmitt and the Road to Abu Ghraib”, Constellations, 13.1, project muse)
To be sure, there are
intense conflicts in which it is naïve to expect an easy resolution by legal or juridical means . But the argument suffers from a
troubling circularity: Schmitt occasionally wants to define “political” conflicts as those irresolvable by legal or juridical
devices in order then to argue against legal or juridical solutions to them. The claim also suffers from a certain
vagueness and lack of conceptual precision. At times, it seems to be directed against trying to resolve conflicts in the courts or juridical system narrowly understood;
at other times it is directed against any legal regulation of intense conflict. The former argument is surely stronger than the latter. After all, legal devices have undoubtedly
played a positive role in taming or at least minimizing the potential dangers of harsh political antagonisms . In
the Cold War, for example, international law contributed to the peaceful resolution of conflicts which otherwise might
have exploded into horrific violence, even if attempts to bring such conflicts before an international court or tribunal
probably would have failed.22 Second, Schmitt dwells on the legal inconsistencies that result from modifying the traditional state-centered system of international law by
Yet this argument relies on Schmitt’s controversial model of politics, as outlined eloquently but unconvincingly in his famous Concept of the Political.
expanding protections to non-state fighters. His view is that irregular combatants logically enjoyed no protections in the state-centered Westphalian model. By broadening protections to include
them, international law helps undermine the traditional state system and its accompanying legal framework. Why is this troubling? The most obvious answer is that Schmitt believes that the
traditional state system is normatively superior to recent attempts to modify it by, for example, extending international human rights protections to individuals against states. 23 But what if we
refuse to endorse his nostalgic preference for the traditional state system? Then a sympathetic reading of the argument would take the form of suggesting that the project of regulating irregular
combatants by ordinary law must fail for another reason: it rests on a misguided quest to integrate incongruent models of interstate relations and international law. We cannot, in short, maintain
Every
modern legal order rests on diverse and even conflicting normative elements and ideals, in part because human
existence itself is always “in transition.” When one examines the so-called classical liberal legal systems of nineteenth-century England or the United States, for
core features of the (state-centered) Westphalian system while extending ambitious new protections to non-state actors. This is a powerful argument, but it remains flawed.
example, one quickly identifies liberal elements coexisting uneasily alongside paternalistic and authoritarian (e.g., the law of slavery in the United States), monarchist, as well as republican and
communitarian moments. The same may be said of the legal moorings of the modern welfare state, which arguably rest on a hodgepodge of socialist, liberal, and Christian and even Catholic (for
In short, it is by no means self-evident that trying to give coherent
legal form to a transitional political and social moment is always doomed to fail. Moreover, there may be sound
reasons for claiming that the contemporary transitional juncture in the rules of war is by no means as incongruent as
Schmitt asserts. In some recent accounts, the general trend towards extending basic protections to non-state actors
is plausibly interpreted in a more positive – and by no means incoherent – light.24 Third, Schmitt identifies a deep tension between
example, in some European maternity policies) programmatic sources.
the classical quest for codified and stable law and the empirical reality of a social world subject to permanent change: “The tendency to modify or even dissolve classical [legal] concepts…is
general, and in view of the rapid change of the world it is entirely understandable” (12). Schmitt’s postwar writings include many provocative comments about what contemporary legal scholars
describe as the dilemma of legal obsolescence. 25 In The Partisan, he suggests that the “great transformations and modifications” in the technological apparatus of modern warfare place strains
on the aspiration for cogent legal norms capable of regulating human affairs (17; see also 48–50). Given the ever-changing character of warfare and the fast pace of change in military technology,
it inevitably proves difficult to codify a set of cogent and stable rules of war. The Geneva Convention proviso that legal combatants must bear their weapons openly, for example, seems poorly
attuned to a world where military might ultimately depends on nuclear silos buried deep beneath the surface of the earth, and not the success of traditional standing armies massed in battle on the
open field. “Or what does the requirement mean of an insignia visible from afar in night battle, or in battle with the long-range weapons of modern technology of war?” (17). As I have tried to
Schmitt is probably right to argue that the enigma of legal obsolescence takes on special significance in the
seems uninterested in the slightest possibility that we might successfully adapt the
process of lawmaking to our dynamic social universe. To be sure, he discusses the “motorization of lawmaking” in a fascinating 1950 publication, but only in
order to underscore its pathological core.27 Yet one possible resolution of the dilemma he describes would be to figure how to
reform the process whereby rules of war are adapted to novel changes in military affairs in order to minimize the
danger of anachronistic or out-of-date law. Instead, Schmitt simply employs the dilemma of legal obsolescence
as a battering ram against the rule of law and the quest to develop a legal apparatus suited to the special problem of
irregular combatants.
show elsewhere, these are powerful considerations deserving of close scrutiny;
context of rapid-fire social change.26 Unfortunately, he
A2: Neolib Causes War
Reduces conflict-last 3 decades prove.
Tures, LaGrange political science professor, 2003
(John, “Economic Freedom And Conflict Reduction: Evidence From The 1970s, 1980s, And 1990s”,
http://www.freetheworld.com/papers/John_Tures.pdf)
The last three decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of market-based reforms and the profusion of
economic freedom in the international system. This shift in economic policy has sparked a debate about whether free markets are superior to state
controls. Numerous studies have compared the neoliberal and statist policies on issues of production capacity, economic growth, commercial volumes, and
egalitarianism. An overlooked research agenda, however, is the relationship between levels of economic freedom and violence within countries. Proponents of the
statist approach might note that a strong government can bend the market to its will, directing activity toward policies necessary to achieve greater levels of gross
domestic product and growth. By extracting more resources for the economy, a powerful state can redistribute benefits to keep the populace happy. Higher taxes can
also pay for an army and police force that intimidate people. Such governments range from command economies of totalitarian systems to autocratic dictators and
military juntas. Other economically unfree systems include some of the authoritarian “Asian tigers.” A combination
of historical evidence, modern
theorists, and statistical findings, however, has indicated that a reduced role for the state in regulating economic
transactions is associated with a decrease in internal conflicts. Countries where the government dominates the
commercial realm experience an increase in the level of domestic violence . Scholars have traced the history of revolutions to explain
the relationship between statism and internal upheavals. Contemporary authors also posit a relationship between economic liberty and
peace .Statistical tests show a strong connection between economic freedom and conflict reduction during the
past three decades.
Neolib boosts freedom and peace-strong statistical support.
Soysa et al., Norwegian University of Science and Technology professor, 2011
(Indra de, “Does Being Bound Together Suffocate, or Liberate? The Effects of Economic, Social, and Political
Globalization on Human Rights, 1981–2005”, KYKLOS, Vol. 64 – February 2011 – No. 1, 20–53, ebsco)
There is a large volume of research on human rights and their determinants, but theoretical models and empirical evidence on the effects of globalization on the extent
of human rights are sparse. The empirical evidence on this subject that does exist assess very simple dimensions of globalization, typically measures such as the level
of trade openness or the penetration of FDI (Hafner-Burton 2005). Instead of these commonly-used proxies of globalization, we
use an index that
aggregates several factors that in combination capture how globalized a country is along three main dimensions —
economic, political, and social globalization (Dreher et al. 2008). As far as we are aware, no study has estimated how differentially these three dimensions of
globalization affect government respect for human rights and the degree of political terror, an important normative policy concern as well as a crucial aspect of future
socio-political development. We employ
panel data for 118 countries for which there is complete data (94 developing and 24
developed countries) over the period 1981–2005 (25 years). Our results are easily summarized:globalization and the
disaggregated components along economic, social, and political dimensions predict higher human rights, controlling for a host of
other factors. These results are robust to instrumental variables techniques that allow us to assess the endogenous nature of the relationship between
human rights and globalization. The results support those who argue that increased globalization could build peace and social
progress, net of all the other factors such as democracy and higher levels of income.
A2: Social Injury First
Concrete strategies are a better actualization of agency than staking individual absolutist
positons.
Zanotti, Virginia Tech political science professor, 2014
(Laura, “Governmentality, Ontology, Methodology: Re-thinking Political Agency in the Global World”,
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 38.4, project muse)
In a similar vein, in a refreshing reading of realism, Brent Steele has highlighted
the problematic aspects of assessing political agency
based upon actors’ intention and focused on contexts as the yardstick for assessing political actions. 79 For Steele, ‘‘as
actors practice their agency within the space of a public sphere, intentionality—at best—becomes dynamic as new
spaces in that sphere open up. Intentions, even if they are genuine, become largely irrelevant in such a dynamic, violent, and
vibrant realm of human interaction.’’ 80 In shifting attention from ‘‘intention’’ to the context that made some actions
possible, Steele sees agency as a ‘‘redescription’’ of existing conditions, rather than the total ‘‘rejection’’ of or
‘‘opposition’’ to a totalizing ‘‘script.’’ As a consequence, Steele advocates ‘‘pragmatist humility’’ for politicians and scholars as well. 81 In summary,
in non-substantialist frameworks, agency is conceptualized as modest and multifarious agonic interactions, localized tactics, hybridized engagement
and redescriptions, a series of uncertain and situated responses to ambiguous discourses and practices of power aimed at
the construction of new openings, possibilities and different distributive processes, the outcomes of which are
always to an extent unpredictable. Political agency here is not imagined as a quest for individual authenticity in
opposition to a unitary nefarious oppressive Leviathan aimed at the creation of a ‘‘better totality’’ where subjects
can float freed of ‘‘oppression,’’ or a multitude made into a unified ‘‘subject’’ will reverse the might of Empire and
bring about a condition of immanent social justice. By not reifying power as a script and subject as monads endowed with freedom
non-substantialist positions open the way for conceptualizing political agency as an engagement imbricated in praxis. The
ethical virtue that is called for is ‘‘pragmatist humility,’’ that is the patience of playing with the cards that are dealt to us, enacting
redescriptions and devising tactics for tinkering 82 with what exists in specific contexts. Conclusion In this article, I have
argued that, notwithstanding their critical stance, scholars who use governmentality as a descriptive tool remain rooted
in substantialist ontologies that see power and subjects as standing in a relation of externality. They also downplay
processes of coconstitution and the importance of indeterminacy and ambiguity as the very space where political
agency can thrive. In this way, they drastically limit the possibility for imagining political agency outside the liberal
straightjacket. They represent international liberal biopolitical and governmental power as a homogenous and totalizing
formation whose scripts effectively oppress ‘‘subjects,’’ that are in turn imagined as free ‘‘by nature.’’ Transformations of power
modalities through multifarious tactics of hybridization and redescriptions are not considered as options. The complexity of
politics is reduced to homogenizing and/or romanticizing narratives and political engagements are reduced to total
heroic rejections or to revolutionary moments.
Material consequences and tradeoffs must be prioritized-any alternative frame fails in the
context of public policy
Isaac, political science professor Indiana University, 2002
(Jeffrey, “Ends, Means, and Politics, Dissent Magazine, Spring 2002)
Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part,
involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To
accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means
that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond
moral- ity. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught,
an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind
of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one’s intention does not ensure the
achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised
parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any
moral good beyond the clean con- science of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and
injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerless- ness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why,
from the standpoint of politics—as opposed to religion—pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it
refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much
about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action,
that is most significant. Just as the alignment with “good” may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of “good”
that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one’s goals be
sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge
these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates
those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
Politics DA Answers
Won’t Pass – 2AC
Won’t pass and Obama’s push fails
Rowland, Fox News, 6-4-15
(Kara, ‘Obama struggling to sway Dems on trade push, as unions crank up opposition”,
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/04/obama-struggling-to-sway-dems-on-trade-push-as-unions-crank-upopposition/)
President Obama, despite launching a full-court press to woo skeptical Democrats, is struggling to cobble together
the votes for his trade agenda in the House -- as union leaders ramp up their own pressure campaign to kill it. The socalled fast-track trade bill -- which would limit Congress' ability to amend future trade deals negotiated by the White House -- cleared the Senate last month with the
help of 14 Democratic senators. But
the White House faces an even bigger lift in the House, where progressive lawmakers
aligned with labor groups are urging their colleagues to oppose the Trade Promotion Authority bill. The issue has
flipped the script in Congress, with Republican leaders backing it and rank-and-file Democrats largely opposed.
Democratic leaders remain officially undecided, as the president fights for the 218 votes needed to pass. House GOP
leaders have said they are confident they'll be able to push TPA through this month. But even Speaker John Boehner acknowledged this week that supporters are still
short of the necessary votes. "I
don't think we're quite there yet," the Ohio Republican said Wednesday in an interview on Fox News Radio's
Republican
leaders expect most of their caucus to vote for fast-track, they stand to lose several dozen votes and are relying on
House Democrats to make up the difference. "The president could have done more over the past couple of years to bring Democrats along, but the
"Kilmeade & Friends," adding that he expects to see TPA on the floor in the next couple weeks and predicting it will eventually pass. While
unions, frankly, have outflanked him," Boehner said. "Fast-track" is a major priority for the president, who hopes to soon complete work on the Trans-Pacific
Partnership, a 12-nation free-trade agreement that would need to be ratified by Congress. Obama has been burning up the phone lines and top administration officials
have lobbied Hill Democrats in person during repeated briefings. While House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi remains officially undecided on TPA, she has not
whipped her members against the bill. But
her members are facing heavy pressure from labor groups, including public criticism
by AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka. The AFL-CIO has been particularly critical of California Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, who has come out in favor
of fast-track. The group is running a television ad against the two-term lawmaker, accusing him of being willing "to do anything to keep his job, including shipping
your job overseas." In a statement, Trumka said the ad is "a message to Ami Bera and every other politician that the trade debate is enormously important to working
families ... we expect our representatives in Congress to vote against rubber stamping a corporate-driven trade policy that delivers extra profits for global corporations
at the expense of good-paying jobs for working people." The
pressure, though, is starting to stir a backlash among Democrats.
Won’t Pass – 1AR
All Dems oppose TPA and GOP doesn’t want to give Obama authority.
Ferrechio, Washington Examiner, 6-1-15
(Susan, “Obama's new enemy on trade: Bipartisanship”, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamas-new-enemyon-trade-bipartisanship/article/2565214)
In the House, TPA faces near-universal opposition among Democrats. And even though Republicans control the
majority, they will lose a number of votes from conservatives who don't want to give Obama any more executive
authority in the wake of Obama's recent directives on immigration. Some Republicans may also peel away from the bill because they
oppose renewing Ex-Im and were angered by McConnell's pledge to take up a bill to renew it as part of the deal to
move the trade bill. That promise has made it harder for House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., and House
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to change the minds of Republicans on trade. These
factors have left the GOP leadership short on votes for TPA. It will take 217 votes to pass the legislation, and Republicans control 245
votes, but dozens of GOP members are known to be opposed. "The vocal majority of my constituents are against it," said Rep. Tom
Massie, R-Ky. "I'm leaning no." For now, Republicans are saying the momentum is on their side, and they hope to have the numbers by the time the
vote happens, which could be as early as next week. "Whip Scalise and Chairman Ryan are continuing to work shoulder-to-shoulder to grow the vote, and things are
moving steadily in the right direction," a top leadership aide told the Washington Examiner. But it's taking a real effort on the part of Republicans to clear the House
hurdle. Ryan has already started a campaign to sell the notion of trade to skeptics. Ryan published a pro-TPA article on the Fox News website Thursday outlining the
benefits of the legislation, which he said "puts Congress in the driver's seat," on trade deals by requiring new pacts adhere to 150 negotiating objectives. The problems
Republicans face as they try to win over their caucus have prompted some to call on Obama to get more Democrats on board. "This is an opportunity for the president
to step up and provide leadership in his conference," Scalise said. "Because one thing we don't see is that strong push by the administration to bring more Democrats
to support this initiative as well." But
the picture is much worse for Obama on the Democratic side. Obama can count on a
little more than a dozen House Democrats to back the bill, out of 188. Obama clearly favors the legislation, but he has been notoriously
uninterested in working closely with congressional lawmakers over the years, even within his own party. This has weakened his ability to find Democratic support.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the bill is too far-reaching and suggested shortening the measure's three-year authorization, which she called
"carte blanche for fast track." That three-year timeframe has the potential to give a Republican president a chance to reach trade agreements should the GOP contender
win the White House in 2016. House Democrats were also hoping the Senate bill would include an amendment sponsored by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Debbie
Stabenow, D-Mich., that would hold accountable any trade pact country that is deemed to be manipulating its currency. But that amendment, opposed by both Obama
and GOP leaders, failed in a 48-51 vote. Democratic
support for trade deals has faltered over the years, in large part because
unions oppose them. Democrats say they feel betrayed by the North American Free Trade Agreement, signed by
President Clinton in 1993 and backed by many Democratic lawmakers. They say NAFTA and subsequent deals killed U.S.
manufacturing jobs and lacked enforcement of the rules, leaving American workers at a disadvantage and increasing the trade deficit. Those arguments have
languished for nearly a decade, and have prevented the negotiation of any significant trade agreements. The two parties have recently found some common ground in
their opposition to the secrecy surrounding these trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership now being negotiated between the United States and 11 Pacific
Rim nations. Lawmakers are only allowed to view the trade deal text in a locked room and cannot leave with notes or copies. The White House is nonetheless
optimistic it can get House Democrats to support the bill, which would let Obama negotiation trade deals that can't be amended, and can only be approved or rejected
by Congress. White House spokesman Josh Earnest last week pointed to the 14 Senate Democrats who voted in favor the bill as a sign there is room for more
Democrats to support the bill. "We've been preparing the ground in advance of House consideration of this legislation and we're certainly going to be making a case
that's consistent with the case that we made in the United States Senate that yielded the support of about a third of the Democrats in the Senate," Earnest said. But
some of those Democrats agreed to back the bill only after McConnell pledged to allow a vote to extend the ExportImport Bank. Speaker of the House John Boehner is making no such promise, in part because of the staunch
opposition from many of his GOP rank-and-file. Boehner said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., asked him if he
would bring the temporary extension to the floor following a promise by McConnell to take it up in the upper
chamber in June. "She contacted me and I told her I would not make that commitment," Boehner told reporters last
week.
Obama’s PC doesn’t do anything
Condon, National Journal, 6-2-15
(George, “Barack Obama's Base Has Tuned Him Out”, http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/barack-obamas-base-tuned-him-out-trade-20150602)
The White House is trying to turn up the heat on wavering House Democrats so far unwilling to side with President
Obama on the multination Pacific trade deal he is negotiating. Obama will appear on local TV stations Wednesday to pressure fence-sitters,
and the White House has made clear he won't forget who helped the president in this time of need. But his target audience has tuned him out.
Nothing in the president's second term has better demonstrated his lame-duck status than his uphill fight for Trade
Promotion Authority, a political reality that is being effectively hammered home by his erstwhile allies in the
progressive movement who are determined to beat him and are no longer concerned that they could weaken a fellow
Democrat in the White House. "Labor unions and progressives will be around for many election cycles to come. And
President Obama won't be on the ballot anymore," is the pointed message of Adam Green, one of the most effective and influential progressive
leaders in Washington. Green is cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), a 950,000-member organization that grew out of MoveOn.org.
PCCC is one of several liberal groups that will hold what Green calls "a massive day of action" on the trade fight Wednesday, to include the release of 2 million
signatures opposing TPA. Robert Borosage, president of the liberal Campaign for America's Future, said the groups do not want Democrats in Congress to
underestimate the impact of their vote here. "We want people to understand that this is not one of those free votes where you can make up your mind and there are no
consequences," he told National Journal. "This is a vote where virtually the entire activist base of the Democratic Party is mobilized against this and against a
president they respect and like, because they think this is a fundamental question for our country about the structure of our economy going forward. Green is pushing
the same message. "This impacts so many millions of jobs that this vote will not be forgotten. It will be around for years. There is arguably no bigger vote that will
impact more American jobs than this [Trans-Pacific Partnership] fast-track vote." Borosage, Green, and leaders of the AFL-CIO all say this could mean progressive
opposition to incumbent Democrats in next year's primaries. Already, Rep. Ami Bera, a two-term congressman from a marginal district in Sacramento, California has
been targeted. The California Labor Federation has called his support for Obama's TPA "a slap in the face to those who worked so hard to elect him." No primary
opponent has surfaced yet, but Bera, without sufficient funds, easily could lose to a Republican. The Campaign for America's Future has taken aim at the 13
Democrats who supported TPA in the Senate, putting out a flyer with "SHAMEFUL" in large red letters over their pictures and the lament that "these Democratic
senators voted to shut out America's workers from the trade debate." At least one of those senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon, could face a primary challenge because of
that vote. "Democrats have been pretty coddled by their base," said Borosage, noting that Republican activists have been less swayed by arguments that they could
cause a seat to flip to the opposition. "I think the base has to be increasingly assertive. Not on every vote, but on major questions, people have to face consequences.
That doesn't mean we're going to go out and primary every senator. But I think one or two of these congresspeople are going to get primaried." What
is
amazing is how irrelevant an incumbent president of the United States is to this debate at the grassroots. Basically,
the anti-trade coalition sees no reason to waste energy attacking a lame-duck president, whose mind is made up on
this issue, who has been an ally in many past battles, and who could once again return to the good graces of the
activists when this fight is concluded. They also feel a sense of liberation now that Obama can't run again.
"Especially now that he is not running for reelection, there is no real necessity for having his back, particularly when
he's on the wrong side of the majority of Americans," Green said. The White House insists Obama will not fade quietly into the
background. He will conduct interviews with TV stations from Dallas, El Paso, Seattle, Sacramento, and San Diego—all homes of pro-trade Democrats—on
Wednesday. And press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama will have the back of any Democrats who face challenges because they supported him on trade. "The
president believes that he's got a strong case to make, and if it becomes necessary for the president to make that case in the context of a Democratic primary contest,
the president's committed to those members of the House of Representatives that face that kind of pressure that the president will stand with them," Earnest said.
Earnest was less clear about what it means to stand with them, contending that it is not yet time to say if Obama will campaign in their districts. "I don't want to
foreshadow any tactics right now," he said. The press secretary warned against underestimating the clout of the president. "There's ample data to point you to that
indicates the influence that the president has among Democratic voters all across the country," Earnest said. "And having the strong support of the most popular figure
in Democratic politics for your reelection I think most Democrats are going to find beneficial to their congressional campaigns." But
make no mistake,
while liberal and labor activists may not be doing what Obama wants, they are still paying attention—as witnessed
when the president criticized a liberal icon, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, telling Yahoo's Matt Bai that "Elizabeth is, you
know, a politician like everybody else" whose arguments on trade "don't stand the test of fact and scrutiny." "People
were outraged," recalled Green. "We actually had our highest number of people calling Congress against the TPP
when it was done in reaction to the president attacking Elizabeth Warren in such a petty way. It was like, really?
You're going to attack the one person willing to take on corporate power? ... He took this issue that could have
otherwise been wonky and made it very personal. It was definitely counterproductive for him." Borosage was more
philosophical about the attack. "That was just hardball," he said. "Politics is not beanbag. You put the gloves on when you're in a fight. So I didn't hold that against the
president. I just think his position is wrong."
Won’t pass due to labor opposition and mistrust of Obama.
Weisman, New York Times, 6-1-15
(Jonathan, “HEADLINE: Obama's Trade Deal Faces Bipartisan Peril in the House”, lexis)
WASHINGTON -- The
bruising battle over President Obama's push for the power to negotiate two potentially farreaching trade pacts will shift this week to the House, where the White House faces entrenched opposition from
Democrats and the stirring of rebellion from the Republicans' right flank. Advocates of the trade bill from both parties say they are
gaining strength since it passed the Senate just before the Memorial Day break. But that 62-to-37 vote -- while bipartisan -- was not the
overwhelming victory House supporters had hoped for. And those advocates concede they do not yet have the
votes to hand the White House trade promotion authority , which would allow Mr. Obama to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership
trade accord, knowing Congress could vote for or against it but not amend or filibuster it. (Another trade deal, involving Europe, is also being negotiated but is not
expected to be completed until after Mr. Obama leaves office.) Only
17 Democrats out of 188 have come out in favor of so-called fasttrack authority -- and many of them are being hounded by labor and environmental groups to change their minds.
Opponents of the trade deal say just seven Democrats remain truly undecided. Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the minority leader, who has yet to declare
her position, has told House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio that he will have to produce 200 Republican votes to win the 217 he needs. In other words, she is not
promising a single new convert. ''We're not quite there, but we're getting close,'' said Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Ways and
Means Committee and co-author of the trade legislation. But Mr. Obama, he added, ''needs to deliver some votes. It's just that clear.'' The president needs the authority
to finish up the Pacific accord, the largest trade deal in a generation, linking 12 nations -- including Canada and Chile in the Americas, and Japan and Australia across
the Pacific -- in a pact that would not just further cut generally low tariffs on goods but also put in place investment rules for roughly 40 percent of the global
economy. The White House says, moreover, that the deal is an essential element in America's strategic posture in Asia vis-à-vis the rising power of China. Most
congressional Democrats are skeptical. They argue that since the North American Free Trade Agreement was
approved in 1993, such accords have only hastened the flow of manufacturing jobs overseas and pressured wages
downward through international competition. Corporations, their executives and shareholders have prospered, but
globalization has helped hollow out the middle class, many Democrats say. By contrast, most Republicans conceptually side with
President Obama, contending that the forces of globalization are inevitable and that trade deals like the T.P.P. will help open foreign markets to American goods and
services. They support the White House's effort to forge deals that protect intellectual property from theft and promote investor rights through strong international
rules, which are seen as crucial to expanding opportunities for a wide range of American industries, including aircraft, entertainment, pharmaceuticals and insurance.
But in the current hyperpartisan atmosphere of Washington, concept does not necessarily translate to votes.
Many of the most conservative Republicans simply do not want to give this president anything. Representative Dave
Brat, a Virginia Republican who was an economics professor before he upset the former House majority leader Eric Cantor last year, said trade was good and tariffs
were bad. But he is still furious that Mr. Obama tried to use an executive order to stop the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the United States
illegally. ''We just got through with an end-run around the Constitution,'' he said, fuming. ''I'm leaning heavy no.'' Representative Gary Palmer of Alabama, another
conservative Republican freshman, said he liked the idea of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But, he added, ''If the president won't abide by the Constitution, what gives
you any confidence he'll abide by T.P.P.?'' Representative John C. Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, echoed those fears. ''As a rule, conservatives are free-traders. I'm
a free-trader,'' he said. ''But we have a president who for every inch of authority we give, he takes a mile.'' Even Donald Trump has waded into the debate, blasting
Congress for empowering the president and insufficiently addressing the issue of currency manipulation by some of America's trading partners. ''Free trade only works
if you have smart leaders and great negotiators,'' he said in an unsolicited telephone interview on Friday. ''We're checkers players against grandmaster negotiators.''
Republican leaders say such voices represent a fringe in the party. After all, trade promotion has been embraced by longstanding conservative voices like the anti-tax
gadfly Grover Norquist and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. But they cannot afford to lose much of that fringe, given the firm Democratic position. With
organized labor, environmental groups and liberal advocacy organizations like MoveOn.org opposed to the bill, Democratic leaders say they are in no position to
deliver votes for Republican leaders, even if their own standard-bearer in the White House is adamantly behind the measure as well. The A.F.L.-C.I.O. began running
attack ads against one Democrat, Representative Ami Bera of California, who came out for trade promotion authority and who has twice used union muscle to eke out
narrow victories in his swing district. Less pointed pressure ads are going up in 17 other Democratic districts. ''It doesn't make any sense for our members to make a
career-changing vote'' to let Republican members off the hook, a senior Democratic leadership aide said. That has Republicans -- and the president -- in a bind.
Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said that as written, the trade promotion legislation lets
Congress ''turn off'' fast-track approval if a trade deal comes back having failed to meet the standards demanded in the bill. But in reality, he said, the process for
shutting down fast-track is so byzantine, it is nearly impossible to do. Such a resolution would first have to go through the House Ways and Means Committee and
Senate Finance Committee, which tend to be pro-trade, before it could be considered by the House and Senate. Mr. Jordan and a handful of like-minded colleagues
plan to amend the trade bill to make it easier for Congress to halt fast-track. ''I understand economics. I understand comparative advantage. I understand livestock
producers in Ohio who want to sell pork in Japan,'' said an exasperated Mr. Jordan, whose vote could influence a dozen or more conservatives. ''But I've got a real
problem here.'' Mr. Ryan, the manager of the bill, said there was no way he could allow such an amendment. That would make the House's trade bill different from the
Senate's, prompt a negotiating conference between the chambers and force both to have to vote all over again. ''If we go to conference, that would kill T.P.A.,'' Mr.
Ryan said, referring to fast-track authority. That could mean it will be up to the president. Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York and one of Mr.
Obama's main vote getters, said port-city Democrats and Congressional Black Caucus members could make all the difference. Republican leaders have told wavering
conservatives that trade promotion is not about trusting President Obama. It is about putting strict guidelines and demands on trade negotiations upfront. Besides, they
say, the trade promotion authority bill would last three years, with an option for a three-year extension, well beyond this president's final term. Mr. Meeks's
explanation to African-American lawmakers is the opposite: Conservatives, out of spite, are trying to deny the first black president the same trade authority every
modern president but Richard M. Nixon has enjoyed. ''There are some folks who aren't doing things on merits,'' Mr. Meeks said. ''It's to deny this president.'' That
pitch is running into a wall of union leaders and liberal activists who want Democrats to stand firm. Activists
delivered cotton swabs to Mr. Bera's office over the break to tell him to clean out his ears. They delivered screws to
the office of Representative Mike Quigley, a pro-trade Democrat from Illinois, supposedly representing jobs lost
because of unfair trade practices. Signs have sprouted up around the Portland, Ore., district of Representative Earl
Blumenauer, a Democrat, criticizing his support of the bill. ''These are tough, tough debates, the passion, the
politics,'' said Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, who has tried to round up more votes for the
president. ''Outside of an authorization of military force, votes probably don't get tougher than trade.''
No Backlash – 2AC
NSA disclosures sustains public opposition and makes reform more palpable.
Greenwald, Guardian columnist, 2013
(Glenn, “Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy”, 7-29,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/29/poll-nsa-surveillance-privacy-pew)
The article describes how opposition to the NSA, which the paper says was recently confined to the
Congressional "fringes", has now "built a momentum that even critics say may be unstoppable, drawing
support from Republican and Democratic leaders, attracting moderates in both parties and pulling in some of
the most respected voices on national security in the House." It describes how GOP Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner - a
prime author of the Patriot Act back in 2001 and a long-time defender of even the most extremist War on Terror
policies - has now become a leading critic of NSA overreach. He will have "a bill ready when Congress returned from its August recess that
would restrict phone surveillance to only those named as targets of a federal terrorism investigation, make significant changes to the secret court that oversees such
programs and give businesses like Microsoft and Google permission to reveal their dealings before that court." Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren is quoted this way:
"There is a growing sense that things have really gone a-kilter here". Yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Democratic
Sen Dick Durbin, one of Obama's closest Senate allies, said that the recently revealed NSA bulk record collection program "goes way too far". The strategy for the
NSA and its Washington defenders for managing these changes is now clear: advocate their own largely meaningless reform to placate this growing sentiment while
doing nothing to actually rein in the NSA's power. "Backers of sweeping surveillance powers now say they recognize that changes are likely, and they are taking steps
The primary problem enabling out-of-control NSA
spying has long been the Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress. That's an ironic twist given that those
were the committees created in the wake of the mid-1970s Church Committee to provide rigorous oversight, as a
response to the recognition that Executive Branch's surveillance powers were being radically abused - and would
inevitably be abused in the future - without robust transparency and accountability. But with a few rare and noble exceptions, the
to make sure they maintain control over the extent of any revisions," says the NYT.
Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress are filled with precisely those members who are most slavishly beholden to, completely captured by, the
intelligence community over which they supposedly serve as watchdogs. Many receive large sums of money from the defense and intelligence industries. There is a
clear and powerful correlation between NSA support and amounts of money received by these members from those industries, as Wired's Dave Kravets adeptly
documented about last week's NSA vote and has been documented before with similar NSA-protecting actions from the Intelligence Committee. In particular, the two
chairs of those committees - Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House - are such absolute loyalists to the NSA and the
National Security State generally that it is usually impossible to distinguish their behavior, mindset and comments from those of NSA officials. In sum, the Senate and
House Intelligence Committees are the pure embodiment of the worst of Washington: the corrupting influence of money from the very industries they are designed to
oversee and the complete capture by the agencies they are supposed to adversarially check. Anything that comes out of the leadership of those two Committees that is
labeled "NSA reform" is almost certain to be designed to achieve the opposite effect: to stave off real changes in lieu of illusory tinkering whose real purpose will be
to placate rising anger. But
that trick seems unlikely to work here. What has made these disclosures different from past
NSA scandals - including ones showing serious abuse of their surveillance powers - are the large numbers of the
NSA's own documents that are now and will continue to be available for the public to see, as well the sustained,
multi-step nature of these disclosures, which makes this far more difficult for NSA defenders to predict, manage and
dismiss away. At least as much as they are shining long-overdue light on these specific NSA domestic programs, the NSA disclosures are changing how
Americans (and people around the world) think about the mammoth National Security State and whether it can and should be trusted with unchecked powers
exercised in the dark.
Those public opinion shifts aren't going to disappear as the result of some blatantly empty
gestures from Dianne Feinstein and Mike Rogers masquerading as "reform".
Millennials are changing the political dynamics against NSA surveillance—reduces
backlash.
Romero, ACLU executive director, 2015
(Anthony, “Op-Ed With millennials gaining influence, surveillance reform is inevitable”, 4-20,
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0421-romero-millennials-privacy-20150421-story.html)
The message to the authorities could not be clearer: Snowden is not going away. A large and important segment of
our society sees Snowden as hero and whistleblower — and its members are the future. In late February, the American Civil Liberties
Union commissioned a global poll surveying millennials (18- to 34-year-olds) in 10 countries, including the United States, about their opinions of Snowden and what the effect of his disclosures
The poll showed that in every
country surveyed — Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Spain and
the U.S. — millennials have an overwhelmingly positive opinion of Snowden. In continental Europe, 78% to 86%
has positive opinions of him. Even in the United States, where the Justice Department has charged Snowden with
espionage, 56% view him favorably. The poll also found that millennials believe Snowden's disclosures will benefit privacy rights. In Germany, Italy, Spain and the
will mean for privacy. The results confirmed that surveillance reform, like marriage equality, will come about because of generational change.
Netherlands, 54% to 59% said they thought Snowden's actions would lead to more privacy protection. It might seem counterintuitive to think that Snowden's disclosures will lead to greater
privacy protections when many of the governments in the countries polled are insistent on maintaining or enhancing their abilities to spy on their citizens. Canada, France and the Netherlands are
considering expansive surveillance powers similar to the Patriot Act, and Australia already has enacted such a law.
Though surveillance reform may confront
resistance in the near term, millennials have made it clear that they don't want government agencies tracking
them online or collecting data about their phone calls. In the United States, millennials will surpass the baby
boomer generation this year, and by 2020, they will represent 1 out of 3 adults. As they grow in influence, so
too will the demand to rein in the surveillance state. Conventional wisdom says that the young and idealistic grow up and shed their naive ideals as they
confront the real world. By that logic, as millennials age, they will recognize the need for the surveillance state to keep us safe from terrorism. But given the lack of evidence
that mass surveillance works — President Obama's own review group concluded that the National Security Agency's
call-records program never played a pivotal role in any investigation — it is unlikely this generation of digital
natives will shed a fundamental commitment to the free exchange of information. Their ethos — that the Internet should be a place where
people are free to share knowledge and ideas without government interference — is already reflected in tech culture. Technology companies, compelled by profit and principle, recognize how
governments continue to violate their citizens' trust with secretive surveillance practices, and some have responded by providing encryption measures for their customers to circumvent it. Last
month, the Reform Government Surveillance coalition, which includes Google, Apple, AOL, Facebook, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers calling for the
It's important to remember how fast even the most entrenched beliefs can change. Not so
long ago, the majority of Americans opposed same-sex marriage. In 2003, the Pew Research Center found that 59%
of the U.S. population opposed same-sex marriage. But that same year, 51% of millennials supported it. Since then,
support for it has increased every year, in every age group. Federal legalization of same-sex marriage now appears
inevitable.
government to end the bulk collection of data.
No Backlash – 1AR
Obama has political cover now from the Freedom Act
Gerstein, Politico, 2014
(Josh, “The limits of President Obama’s power on NSA reform”, 1-13, http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/nsasurveillance-limits-102081.html)
In some ways, it matters little to the White House what Congress does on the surveillance front. A legislative
stalemate would essentially leave the current call-tracking program in place until June 2015, when PATRIOT Act
provision used to authorize it is set to expire. And any reform bill Congress passes would provide political cover
for Obama if national security hawks later fault reforms for contributing to the government missing signs of
a looming terrorist attack.
TPP Not Key – 2AC
Status quo integration solves stability and TPP would increase trade.
Blustein 2014
Paul, nonresident fellow in global development at the Brookings Institution, Globalization, economic
interdependence, and new trade agreements, June 23 2014 http://www.swpberlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/projekt_papiere/BCAS2014_Paul_Blustein.pdf
The world is not where it was in the 1950s, when trade was seriously impeded by barriers that had been erected
during the protectionist era of the 1920s and 30s. The Kennedy Round, Tokyo Round and Uruguay Round of global trade
negotiations reduced those obstacles to a small fraction of their previous dimensions. True, a few "peak tariffs" remain, on goods such as light
trucks in the United States; dairy products in Canada; and rice, beef and wheat in Japan. But the number of such items pales by comparison to the
list of sectors in which trade is virtually free. Average tariffs in the United States are now 3.4%, and in Japan, 4.6%. I'm well aware that the TPP,
in particular, is touted as being much more than a tariff-reduction exercise; it is envisioned to cover services, regulations, intellectual property
rights and state-owned enterprises, among other things. Powerful multinational corporations support the TPP because they want
rules in these areas changed in their favor. But that hardly means the rest of us ought to share their enthusiasm. The overall
economic impact would surely be a lot closer to "modest" than "major". Although I can't pretend to offer quantitative evidence
to back up my views, the fancy economic models purporting to show substantial GDP gains from PTA's should be taken
with huge grains of salt, based on past experience with such models and the obvious bias of the modelers. An anecdote
may help illustrate my point. When I went to Australia in 2007, 1 asked business people whether the 2004 U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement
was helping Australian firms increase sales in the U.S. market. Since the U.S. economy is much larger than Australia's, I thought surely the deal
would be giving some sort of boost to Aussie exporters. But almost everywhere I went, the reply was the same: no, the U.S. market was
pretty much wide open already, so we haven't gained anything substantial (sheepmeat being one noteworthy exception). Even
economic officials at the U.S. embassy in Canberra admitted they hadn't heard of a single example of an Australian company that had clearly
benefited from the lowering of barriers. One Australian organization that had strongly backed the deal promised to send me a survey of
Australian firms documenting numerous "case studies" of companies picking up new business in the United States, but when I got the survey, it
turned out that most of the respondents shrugged off the impact as insignificant. In addition to the fact that trade barriers are pretty
low already, there's another key reason limiting the benefits of PTA's. They are laden with "'rules of origin,"
designed to make sure that products receiving duty-free treatment aren't actually made in some other country outside
of the pact. These rules are inevitably lengthy and detailed— specifying, for example, how much of a garment's fabric and stitching must be
Mexican-made to qualify for duty-free treatment at the U.S. border under NAFTA. Compliance can be so onerous, thanks to the
paperwork required to clear customs without paying duty, that many firms simply bear the financial burden of paying the
modest tariffs. Partly for this reason, only a small fraction of the goods Singapore ships to the United States—somewhere on the order or 5 to
10 percent—come in under the terms of the U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. In Southeast Asia, a similarly small portion of
trade takes place under the terms of the longstanding PTA among members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN). In sum, PTA's aren't going to make enough of a difference in the amount of Asia Pacific economic
integration to change the odds of geopolitical tensions boiling over . If the existing degree of integration proves
inadequate to prevent military conflict, that will be quite a testament to the incompetence of our leaders and
diplomats.
TPP Not Key – 1AR
Doesn’t change the geopolitics of Asia.
Blustein 2014
Paul, nonresident fellow in global development at the Brookings Institution, Globalization, economic
interdependence, and new trade agreements, June 23 2014 http://www.swpberlin.org/fileadmin/contents/products/projekt_papiere/BCAS2014_Paul_Blustein.pdf
The geopolitical case for the TPP is that it will keep the United States anchored in Asia. Without the TPP, the
argument goes, China will increasingly use its mounting economic power to set regulations for a host of key sectors
in the region, and these regulations will be aimed at boosting the fortunes of Chinese companies rather than fostering
open competition. U.S. firms will gradually lose interest in what they perceive as a rigged market, the result being a
lessening of America's economic stake in the region—and ultimately the withdrawal of the U.S. military from Japan,
South Korea, and the western Pacific. The best way to ensure against such a scenario unfolding is for the United
States to forge a trade agreement with a number of countries in the region that is both broad and deep. This
argument has considerable merit. I wonder, however, whether the threat of China's desire, and ability, to exercise
major influence in the international regulatory sphere is overblown. I vividly remember hearing similar concerns
raised in the 1980s and 90s about Japan, whose mercantilistic economic system was deemed in certain quarters to be
incompatible with the American one. Fears abounded that Tokyo would end up writing all the important rules for
commerce in the Asia Pacific, which would then come under the total domination of Japanese keiretsu. The fact that
those fears failed to materialize, and that the Japanese are now seen as critical partners in the effort to protect the
western-style rules system, doesn't necessarily mean that the same will happen with China. But it does suggest that
assumptions about this issue ought to undergo pretty rigorous examination. Even supposing the Chinese are hellbent
on becoming the region's rule-setters, another question is whether a TPP deal would help much in stopping them.
Trade agreements are inherently static, and often become outdated in the face of economic and technological
change. Consider the WTO's Information Technology Agreement: When signed in 1997, it was hailed as freeing
trade in the world's cutting-edge sectors, but a few years later, realization dawned that many of the goods covered by
the deal had become obsolete or soon would be. Similar problems would presumably plague a TPP. If so, the impact
on China's rule-setting ambitions would be commensurately limited.
Asia Pivot Fails – 2AC
Asia pivot fails – TPP is necessary but not sufficient – laundry list of other issues outweigh
Frost, Senior Advisor to the East West Center and a Visiting Distinguished Research
Fellow at the National Defense University, 1-8-15
(Ellen, was formerly Counselor to the U.S. Trade Representative and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, “In
Asia, U.S. Economic Leadership Is Under Attack,” http://nationalinterest.org/feature/asia-us-economic-leadershipunder-attack-11994?page=show)
One of the explicit goals of the Obama administration’s policy of “rebalancing” to the Asia Pacific region is elevating
economic statecraft as a pillar of foreign policy. Completion and ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and a precedentsetting U.S.-China bilateral investment treaty would contribute substantially to that objective, but they are not enough to reverse a
worrisome erosion of U.S. economic leadership in Asia and the world. China has been quick to take advantage of
this trend. The political-economic imperative facing U.S. policymakers on Asia has three elements : (1) strengthening the
bilateral economic component of the rebalance with key countries, thereby boosting the credibility of the U.S. commitment to Asia; (2) supporting
high-standard regional economic integration in Asia and across the Pacific while successfully managing U.S.-China rivalry; and (3)
restoring and strengthening the global institutions responsible for international trade and financial governance, which have a direct bearing on Asia.
These three challenges need to be addressed simultaneously and urgently, as U.S. and Western economic leadership and
associated postwar institutions are increasingly under siege. U.S. Leadership of Postwar Institutions: A Slow Crisis of Legitimacy To many
Asians, the “Western” economic model no longer looks as attractive as it once did . Ongoing economic stagnation in
Europe and Japan, Wall Street’s role in triggering the recent global recession, and the burgeoning income inequality
associated with free-market reforms play badly in Asia. U.S. and allied-led international financial institutions, notably
the World Bank, the IMF, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), are also losing some of their attractiveness. The top
leadership of these three institutions is still informally restricted to candidates from the U nited States, Europe, and
Japan, respectively. China and developing countries remain glaringly underrepresented in the allocation of shares (and hence voting
power). In the ADB, for example, the United States and Japan currently hold about 15.7 percent of the shares each, while China has only 6.5 percent. For some
Asians, the slew of conditions imposed on Western-backed loans are burdensome and unsuitable for poor countries . One
condition after another has been added to loan packages, targeted at environmental protection, treatment of indigenous peoples, prevention of fraud and corruption,
and other safeguards sought by Western lenders, particularly the United States. Small wonder that China wants its own bank—and sees a diplomatic advantage in
creating one. Doubts about the United States Asian
governments favor robust U.S. economic engagement with their region, but they harbor doubts
about the credibility of the rebalance. Their skepticism stems in large part from the combination of U.S. budget cuts
and failure to disengage from direct or indirect war-fighting in the Middle East. The premise of the “pivot” (as the
rebalance was originally called) was that as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, the U.S. could transfer newly freed up resources
and political attention to the Asia-Pacific. But now that security in Iraq and Syria has broken down and the U.S.
military is lending support to the fight against Islamist militants, Asians believe that the Obama administration is unable to
extricate itself from the Middle East quagmires and is thus incapable of devoting the hoped-for level of resources to
Asia. In the current U.S. political and budgetary environment, some extremely effective “soft power” tools, such as scholarship
programs and English-language training, are facing cuts or bare-minimum increases. The budget for Asia-related development assistance and other economic
programs is rising, but it starts from an extremely low base compared to military-related outlays. Personnel slots at the State Department and
USAID reflect the same shortfall. Trade is another concern. The U nited States still maintains steep barriers against lowtechnology imports from some of the poorest countries in the world . Clothing and shoes, for example, account for only about 5 percent of
U.S. imports, but they account for roughly half of collected tariffs. According to data analyzed by Progressive Economy, a policy-oriented research institution, U.S.
tariffs on imports from Cambodia (mostly clothing) are 18 times higher than average tariffs imposed on a wide variety of imports from the United Kingdom. Countries
like Cambodia and Lao PDR are years and years away from qualifying for either the TPP or a far-reaching free-trade agreement with the United States. Still
another source of Asian dismay is the behavior of the U.S. Congress . Like many Americans, Asian leaders deplore the
polarization and political dysfunction that led to a U.S. government shutdown and cancellation of presidential trips.
They note with dismay the long and thus far fruitless struggle to obtain Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), assumed to be a prerequisite for Congressional approval of
a final TPP agreement. Also disturbing
to Asians is the difficulty of securing authorization for timely U.S. payment of
replenishments to multilateral development banks. Congressional failure to act on legislation authorizing the United
States to vote in favor of IMF reforms, including quota reform, is particularly damaging to Asian perceptions of the United
States. Because of a partisan political impasse over campaign financing, the bill has languished in the U.S. Congress for three years. U.S. foot-dragging has
undermined not only the credibility of U.S. financial officials but also American economic leadership more generally.
The Rise of “Rival Regionalisms” Given this fairly dismal international economic landscape, it is not surprising that a set of new or revived
organizations—spearheaded or heavily supported by China and Russia—have started to challenge the existing regional and
global order. One is Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Union, aimed at enhancing Russia’s security and offsetting the pull of the European Union.
Another is the New Development Bank established by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). A third example,
and the one most relevant to Asia, is
China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). All three are examples of “rival
regionalisms,” designed to reduce Western influence and allow governments to escape from U.S.-inspired
conditionality. Implicit in this trend is resentment of U.S. domination. As Mr. Putin remarked bitterly, when the Cold War ended
Americans “decided to…reshape the world to suit their own needs and interests.” Speaking to a mostly Central Asian and Middle Eastern audience in May 2014, Xi
Jinping called for a new Asian security architecture, from which the United States would presumably be excluded. Stressing that “we all live in the same Asian
family,” he declared that it is time for Asia to establish “common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security.” In a not-so-veiled reference to the United
States and its allies, he added, “To beef up and entrench a military alliance targeted at a third party is not conducive to maintaining common security.” In short, the
United States faces a slow-burning threat to its legitimacy as an political-economic leader in the Asia Pacific. What
can U.S. policymakers in the Executive Branch and the Congress do—bilaterally, regionally, and globally—to counter this trend? Three actions stand out:
1. Strengthening the Bilateral Economic Component of the Rebalance The most immediate priorities are Congressional passage of TPA and the
successful conclusion and ratification of the TPP. But those steps are not enough.
Asia Pivot Fails – 1AR
Asia pivot is only hype – no material impact
Lyon, fellow at Australian Strategic Policy Institute and executive editor of The Strategist,
1-16-15
(Rod, “The Real Problem With America's Rebalance to Asia: A Crisis of Expectations,”
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-real-problem-americas-rebalance-asia-crisis-expectations-12050)
The US rebalance (née ‘pivot’) dates from the first term of the Obama administration. So at the start of 2015 it seems quaint still to
be writing a blog post on the policy. But around the region, and even within the US, it’s a policy about which people remain
uncertain. Some critics describe it as merely the name for Obama’s Asia policy, but in private conversations I’ve
heard harsher judgments. So let me put down here a set of assessments about the rebalance. The policy itself emerged from an early policy
review undertaken by the Obama administration to identify where the US was overweight and underweight in its international commitments. The
answer was that it was overweight in Europe and the Middle East, and underweight in Asia—underweight across a range of dimensions including
the diplomatic, military, economic and institutional. For those who want to see what is—and isn’t—occurring under the rebalance, I’d
recommend doing more than reading the CSIS report. Have a look at two other US sources. The first is the presentation that US Deputy Secretary
of Defense, Bob Work, gave to the Council on Foreign Relations at the end of September 2014. In that presentation, Work provided a robust
defence of the efforts being made to enhance US military capacities across the region. The four largest defense construction projects since the
Cold War are all located in Asia. By 2020, 60% of US air and naval forces will be based in the region. And that’ll include the newest equipment,
like the F-35s, the P-8s, and the Zumwalt-class destroyers. In Work’s view, the rebalance is occurring but its effects are somewhat diluted by an
even larger global shift within the US defense force—after Afghanistan and Iraq, a smaller emphasis on forward-deployed forces and a larger one
on reconstitution of US surge-force capabilities. The second source is the majority staff report prepared for the US Senate Foreign Relations
Committee back in April 2014. That report looked in greater detail at the non-military side of the rebalance—including diplomacy and aid—and
in general found a set of policy instruments that were even less well-resourced than the military effort. The East Asia and Pacific Bureau in the
State Department, for example, had 12% less funding in 2014 than it had back in 2011. So yes, the rebalance exists. But it struggles
for oxygen, in part because of the broader strategic baggage carried by the president . Moreover, substantial parts of the
rebalance will take time to unfold—it’s not designed to address allies’ and partners’ demands for instant
gratification and constant assurance. And, even when it’s run its course, the rebalance isn’t going to restore the
regional status quo ante China’s rise. It’s that last point that highlights the extent to which the rebalance faces
what we might call a crisis of expectations. Since different people believe it was meant to do different things, they
judge it by different standards. Some of those metrics strike me as unrealistic. For example, it’s perfectly true that even after the
rebalance is completed, the US’ position in the region won’t be restored to what it was in the glory days of the 1990s. But the rebalance was
never intended to do that. It wasn’t meant to reverse the rise of the Asian great powers, nor to roll back the tides of history. Similarly, the
rebalance was never intended to suggest that the US was happy to ignore what went on in Europe and the Middle East. Washington might have
thought it was overweight in those areas, but it certainly didn’t think they were irrelevant. So have events in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq
distracted the US from Asia? Of course. But the US is a global player, not just a regional one. The rebalance, even if
successful, is merely one variable in a shifting strategic landscape . By itself, it won’t return the US to the position
of the ‘indispensable player’ in Asia. Still, its principal value lies in the fact that the policy strengthens Washington’s ties to Asia. And
that’s why Australia should want the rebalance to succeed: because its various components—including a comprehensive TPP agreement, a
military reorientation into the region, and US membership of key regional institutions—will mean a US more closely engaged with both our and
the region’s strategic future.
Winners Win – 2AC
Winners win – Obama needs to stay on the offensive
Avlon, Daily Beast, 12-19-14
(John, “The Liberation of the Lame Duck: Obama Goes Full Bulworth,”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/19/the-liberation-of-the-lame-duck-obama-goes-full-bulworth.html)
This is one liberated lame duck. At his year-end, pre-Hawaii press conference, we caught a rare glimpse of peak Obama. He was cool,
optimistic, and culturally attuned (at least by presidential standards)—dropping references to Seth Rogen while slamming Sony’s cowardly
decision to pull The Interview and dismissing outsize fears of the “insecure” North Korean regime. After a brutal first 10 months of
2014, capped by another midterm election shellacking, expectations of a deflated lame duck have been dashed .
Instead, we’ve seen a defiant president playing political offense in what he called “the fourth quarter” of his
presidency. The sometimes-exhausted center has come off the bench. President Obama has been known to fantasize
with staffers about going full Bulworth—a reference to the subversive 1998 Warren Beatty comedy—kicking away the formal
restraints of the Oval Office to finally do and say what he really means. But this president is a self-monitoring man, and his
version of getting really crazy has more to do with pushing progressive policy than coked-up rapping about socialism like the eponymous Senator
Jay Bulworth. Just look at this week’s bold decision to break with 50 years of presidential precedent in Cuba and you
see a commander in chief unwilling to simply mark time in office . Moreover, the Cuban breakthrough comes at a time when the
political costs of action are less toxic to future Democratic presidential candidates. President Obama narrowly won the Cuban-American vote in
South Florida in 2012. Demographic changes are making that community less dogmatic, even through the Castro regime remains an oppressive
dictatorship. People trump politics and increased engagement is likely to prove more effective than continuing a policy that’s failed to show
positive results for 50 years. Free from the constraints of having to undergo another election , President Obama is taking
executive actions on everything from immigration to climate change. In the process, he’s drawn fire from Republicans
who are indignant that the president is not taking their wishes into account. This is not just about his legacy; it’s
about him feeling liberated enough to act boldly and take steps with long-term implications rather than just leaving
thorny issues to the next president. But despite the president’s press-conference assurances that “I take Speaker Boehner and Leader
McConnell at their word that they want to get things done,” the cost of this liberation is that it dramatically increases the degree
of difficulty of finding common ground with the new Congress . Still, you can’t really blame the guy. The president is
making a rational judgment based on his previous six years in office that Republican olive branches and promises to
end gridlock represent little more that the latest Beltway game of Lucy and the Football. After all, almost every time
he’s reached out to Republicans on policy in the past—from liberal-alienating proposals
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/05/house-liberal-leader-say-no-to-the-grand-bargain/] to reforming
entitlement programs in the context of a grand bargain to the adoption of what had previously been a Republican
plan to reform health care—he’s been attacked as being a Marxist or a monarch or worse. His frustration is rooted in the
fact that President Obama sees himself as essentially an Eisenhower Republican in terms of policy. This notion no doubt makes Republicans gag
and gasp, but it’s a self-image bolstered by historic analysis by the respected political scientists at VoteView that show him to be the most
moderate Democrat since WWII. However, in a time where narrative outweighs facts amid overheated partisan passions, even stats are suspect
and fail to carry much weight. Instead of reacting to Republican proposals, President Obama is forcing Republicans to react
to him. And while this might poison the well even further, a more tepid response would have likely resulted in
stalemate and lost opportunities. One of the gambles this onetime poker player is making is that Republicans’ rational self-
interest might propel them to the bargaining table on core issues ranging from trade deals to tax reform. One of the
most persistent myths in American politics is the media-fueled concept of the lame duck. While departing powers
have less political capital than incoming presidents, the reality is that President Obama is still leader of the free world
for the next two years. And while the media attention flows toward 2016–in part fueled by the fantasy that the next
man or woman will magically come in and change everything—the noisy cavalcade of contenders will be competing
for the mere chance to have the power that Obama does for the next two years. Much can be accomplished even
without the cooperation of a conservative Congress. Would more kumbaya moments between parties be better for
the country? You bet. But are they likely to occur given the current polarization of our parties and the persistent attempt
to delegitimize this president? Not so much. The prospect of a happy warrior in the White House might just
reinvigorate the stale state of policy debates in Washington. And while it’s true that President Obama risks alienating
reasonable Republicans and therefore doom any chance of further legislative achievements in his administration , it’s
equally true that the best defense in politics is playing offense. President Obama has already succeeded in framing the policy
debate in D.C. while forcing prospective 2016 candidates to react to his actions. At the very least, its refreshing to see the president get
off the mat with a smile on his face and put to rest the persistent myth that the leader of the free world is a helpless
giant in the last quarter of his term.
Winners Win – 1AR
Winners win – keeps the GOP off-balance
Waldman, Washington Post, 12-22-14
(Paul, “Is President Obama reinventing the bully pulpit?,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plumline/wp/2014/12/22/is-president-obama-reinventing-the-bully-pulpit/)
President Obama’s policy change on Cuba was remarkable in many ways, not least because it came as such a surprise.
The administration managed to keep the negotiations secret, then made a dramatic announcement on an issue that most people in politics hadn’t
given much thought to in years. The result, particularly for a lame-duck president supposedly on the ropes after his party
lost the midterm elections, was striking: Everyone was suddenly talking about Obama’s action — a widely popular
one, it should be noted — and Republicans were stunned. In his last two years in office, Obama seems to be creating a new
version of the bully pulpit, one that takes executive action as the starting point but depends on Republicans playing
their role. And what is that role? It’s equal-parts outrage and legislative nitpicking. To wit: Opponents of President Obama’s
diplomatic opening toward Cuba began plotting for the long road ahead to block the administration’s new policy, focusing on areas where
congressional consent is necessary. The most likely targets are funding for new diplomatic operations in Havana as well as the requirement for
Senate confirmation of an ambassador, and while the issue has divided Republicans, key conservatives with long anti-Castro records occupy
powerful positions in Congress and could thwart Obama’s overtures toward Cuban President Raúl Castro. In other words, Obama seized the
agenda, saw his initiative dominating the front pages and television news discussions and sent Republicans in
Congress scrambling to find some legislative barrier they can throw in his path . The conflict, then, ends up pitting an
active, forceful president against a reactive bunch of legislators spending their time devising arcane (and mostly
fruitless) procedural schemes. They might be able to do something like holding up the confirmation of an ambassador,
but that won’t keep the policy change from moving forward, and it will probably make them look petty and resentful
in the process. This could well be the template for much of the next two years . As Glenn Thrush writes, Obama is “diving
headlong into what amounts to a final campaign — this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to the
scoreboard, and — last but definitely not least — to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered
Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top.” Moves like the Cuba change — or his executive actions
on immigration and climate change — infuriate Republicans both because of their substance and because they shut them out
of the process, leaving them able to do nothing but try to find some way to thwart what the president has initiated.
Congress always takes secondary status to the president in political conflicts, but when the agenda no longer
revolves around legislation, they’re degraded much further . While they may be able to force some issues into the
news by passing legislation, Obama can do it much easier — and unlike them, he can actually see his actions take effect.
Ironically, by moving the idea of significant legislation on major issues from an unlikely prospect to a virtual
impossibility, the Republican takeover of Congress may have actually enhanced the power of Obama’s bully pulpit.
I’m sure that driving Republicans crazy gives Obama some satisfaction, but the political benefits are far more
significant. My guess is that hidden on someone’s laptop in the White House is a calendar of the next two years with
one presidential initiative after another marked out in carefully spaced intervals, timed to keep hold of the national
agenda, accomplish goals that have been either underdeveloped or ignored before now, and create howls of rage
from his opponents. If you were John Boehner or Mitch McConnell, what would you do about it? Many
conservatives would insist they have to fight Obama more forcefully. But how?
Winners win – the element of surprise enhances Obama’s leverage
Thrush, Politico, 12-19-14
(Glenn, “Operation Revenge,” http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/obama-midterms-political-enemies113704_full.html#.VKQbSHv_Gts)
Obama’s turnaround in recent weeks – he’s seized the offensive with a series of controversial executive actions and
challenges to leaders in his own party on the budget — can be attributed to a fundamental change in his political
mindset, according to current and former aides. He’s gone from thinking of himself as a sitting (lame) duck, they tell me, to a
president diving headlong into what amounts to a final campaign – this one to preserve his legacy, add policy points to
the scoreboard, and – last but definitely not least – to inflict the same kind of punishment on his newly empowered
Republican enemies, who delighted in tormenting him when he was on top. The pivot isn’t necessarily about embracing the Real Barack
Obama (that’s always been a pretty elusive persona) or even about aspiring to the Clintonian ideal of a second-term president leveraging
executive power into political muscle. It’s not a matter of superficially emulating a campaign, as he’s done fecklessly in the past, by hitting the
road for another round of low-impact speeches or Steve Kroft sit-downs. It’s a campaign between Obama’s ears — a
competitor rediscovering his love of competition, the refocusing of a sedentary, atrophied presidency through
the lens of a dynamic campaign – and winning. “He needs to run, to compete – or more to the point, he needs someone to
run against,” a former top Obama adviser told me. He’s got that now, in a Republican-controlled Capitol Hill. Obama, a
political counterpuncher who often needs a slap in the face to wake up, got a gut-shot in November. The Democrats’
staggering loss in the midterms – like his disastrous performance in the first presidential debate against Mitt Romney in 2012 – seems to have
jolted him to the realization that he’ll have to act boldly to preserve what he’d assumed was a settled legacy. (The Supreme Court’s decision to
scrutinize the funding mechanism of the Affordable Care Act, in particular, has sent a shudder through the West Wing and provided an
unexpected challenge from another hostile branch of government.) While it might seem crazy to compare a wiser and wizened president entering
his seventh year in office to the callow, Next Big Thing of his U.S. Senate days, Obama is now inhabiting the psychological head-space of his
early career on the national political scene. Now as then, he can legitimately describe himself as an underdog. He feels at liberty to address any
topic he chooses on his own terms — race, for instance — and, most importantly, he’s increasingly untethered from what he views as a petty,
geriatric Democratic establishment he originally crusaded against as a presidential candidate in 2007. Obama is sure to strike the usual let’swork-together tone at Friday’s press conference, but it’s clear to anyone who follows him closely that the president is trying to
escape from the Washington sausage works and define his own agenda. “'Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose'
— Barack and Bobby McGee,” says former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry. “President Obama is free to take the risks and use executive
authority that will either make him a much more popular president with rising approval rates or get him impeached by a Republican Congress that
won’t be able to control itself. We can contemplate the possibility of each result while smoking a Cuban cigar.” Former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich says Obama’s newly aggressive stance – exemplified by his unilateral moves on immigration and Cuba – poses an early challenge to
new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and to House Speaker John Boehner, who are trying to re-shape the GOP into a party that can
actually run a government. “Mitch and Boehner have to deal with the fact that Obama is becoming bolder and more radical,” Gingrich told me a
few days before Obama announced his move to normalize relations with Cuba. Extremism is in the eye of the beholder, and Obama says he’s just
taking action to deal with fundamental problems that a gridlocked, hopelessly partisan Congress won’t address. His executive action on
immigration and his Cuba move this week represent only the highest-profile unilateral steps he’s taken this year. Under the direction of White
House Counselor John Podesta, a former Clinton chief of staff who has spurred the president to use executive power, Obama has issued dozens of
orders and lower-profile memoranda redefining U.S. policies on emissions and wilderness area protections, created a new class of retirement
accounts for low-income workers, capped student loan payments and toughened some firearms background checks. But to push this agenda – to
create a campaign to sell it – Obama needs a campaign team, and that he doesn’t have at the moment. In the past year, he’s spoken only
intermittently with the advisers who helped propel him to the Oval Office – especially David Axelrod and David Plouffe. “The sense,” says one
member of the Obama campaign alumni association, “is that POTUS feels like he’s figured out this campaign thing and doesn’t need the political
guys.” Stu Stevens, a top adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, says that’s a mistake: “There’s been a real brain drain. Obama was always
surrounded by a certain campaign group. … Those were his best political advisers and they are not involved and that is detrimental to him. They
understood him and they were good. They were the ones who kept him in line when he was hit by sudden bouts of conscience or went off on one
of his social-justice tangents worthy of a 1980s Occidental College student.” Yet Obama’s current objectives are anything but vague – thanks, in
large measure, to Podesta – a human policy machine who’s planning an exit in early 2015. Obama’s bucket list, White House officials say,
includes new incremental proposals – legislative or executive – on climate change and immigration. A major piece of unfinished business that
vexes Obama is the continued operation of the Guanatanamo Bay detention center, and he’s likely to pursue its piecemeal breakup. Earlier this
month his staff convinced the government of Uraguay to take six Gitmo prisoners, and he’s likely to seek more deals along those lines. In
addition, people familiar with the West Wing’s plans say Obama is looking at the possibility of instructing the Federal Election Commission and
Internal Revenue Service to tighten campaign finance laws and regulations, although they are uncertain how far they can go without running
afoul of the courts. But the truth of the matter is that Obama’s very good 2014 could turn into a check-mated 2015. The
House isn’t likely to pass anything significant – or veto-proof – on immigration, but Republicans can, and likely will,
block his Cuba policy by upholding the embargo and refusing to fund line items like the cost of building and staffing
an embassy in Havana. “Congress is going to be a very different place than it was during the last few weeks if this
year — there are still a lot of things that are on the president’s list that has go through Congress,” says former Obama
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “The question for the White House is not ‘What?’ it’s ‘How?’ … There’s two lists: The list
of things you have to convince others to do and the list of things you can do without other people. They are going
through the last list first.” That’s where the campaign mindset will serve him well. The hallmark of Obama’s two
presidential campaigns – especially in 2008 – was a rigorous internal discipline that often gave him the element of
surprise in launching new policy initiatives, attacks or bold pronouncements (His 2008 Philadelphia race speech, delivered in
the middle of the primary fight, was a classic, unexpected, Obamaian bold stroke). At the moment, he seems to have regained a touch
of the old audacity and stealth: The Cuba decision, unlike the immigration order, wasn’t leaked and hit like a political
lightning bolt, scrambling the 2016 Republican field and forcing a rare clear position from Hillary Clinton.