2AC Security K [CPS GY]

Try or die for the affcollapse of leadership and influx of migrants trigger multiple scenarios for extinction We outweigh on timeframe and specificityprefer our particular scenarios over their abstract genocide claims Alt is counterproductive ignores oppression, lacks political strategy, and no one cares Terry O'Callaghan, lecturer in the school of International Relations at the University of South Australia, International Relations and the third debate, ed: Jarvis, 2002, p. 80-81
There are also a host of technological and logistical questions that plague George's scheme and make problematic his recommendations. For example, through what medium are those on the fringes of the international system going to speak to the world? Although it may be true that the third world has now been integrated into the global polity via the advent of technological innovations in communications, allowing for remote access to information sources and the Internet, it also remains true that the majority of those on the fringes continue to be disenfranchised from such mediums, whether as a result of a lack of economic resources, the prevalence of illiteracy, or social, cultural and political circumstances that systemically exclude, women (among others) from economic resources and certain political and social freedoms. Need we remind George that social, political, and individual autonomy is at a minimum in these parts of the world, and an intellectual approach as controversial as postmodernism is not likely to achieve the sorts of goals that George optimistically foreshadows. Indeed, on practical questions such as these, matters otherwise central to the success of postmodern visions, George prefers to be vague, suggesting instead that the intricacies of such details will somehow work themselves out in a manner satisfactory to all. Such a position reveals George's latent idealism and underscores how George's schema is an intellectual one: a theory of international politics written for other theorists of international politics. George's audience is thus a very limited and elite audience and begs the question of whether a senior, middle-class scholar in the intellectual heartland of Australia can do anything of real substance to aid the truly marginalized and oppressed. How is it possible to put oneself in the shoes of the "other," to advocate on his or her behalf, when such is done from a position of affluence, unrelated to and far removed from the experiences of those whom George otherwise champions? Ideals are all good and well, but it is hard to imagine that the computer keyboard is mightier than the sword, and hard to see how a small, elite, affluent assortment of intellectuals is going to generate the type of political momentum necessary to allow those on the fringes to speak and be heard! 1 . Moreover, why should we assume that states and individuals want to listen and will listen to what the marginalized and the oppressed have to say? There is precious little evidence to suggest that "listening" is something the advanced capitalist countries do very well at all. Indeed, one of the allegations so forcefully
alleged by Muslim fundamentalists as justification for the terrorist attacks of September I I is precisely that the West, and America in particular, are deaf to the disenfranchised and impoverished in the world. Certainly, there are agencies and individuals who are sensitive to the needs of the "marginalized" and who champion institutional forums where indigenous voices can be heard. But on even the most optimistic reckoning, such forums and institutions represent the exception, not the rule, and remain in the minority if not dwarfed by those institutions that represent Western, first world interests. To be sure, this is a realist power-political image of the current configuration of the global polity, but one apparently, and ironically, endorsed by George if only because it speaks to the realities of the marginalized, the imposed silences, and the multitude of oppressions on which George founds his call for a postmodern ethic. Recognizing such realities, however, does not

explain George's penchant for ignoring them entirely, especially in terms of the structural rigidities they pose for meaningful reform. Indeed, George's desire to move to a new "space beyond International Relations" smacks of wishful idealism, ignoring the current configuration of global political relations and power distribution; of the incessant ideological power of hyperindividualism, consumerism, advertising, Hollywood images, and fashion icons; and of the innate power bestowed on the (institutional) barons of global finance, trade, and transnational production. George seems to have little appreciation of the structural impediments such institutions pose for radical change of the type he so fiercely advocates. Revolutionary change of the kind desired by George ignores that fact that many individuals are not disposed to concerns
beyond their family, friends, and daily work lives. And institutional, structural transformation requires organized effort, mass popular support, and dogged single-mindedness if societal norms are to be challenged, institutional reform enacted, consumer tastes altered, and political sensibilities reformed. Convincing Nike that there is something intrinsically wrong with paying Indonesian workers a few dollars a week to manufacture shoes for the global market requires considerably more effort than postmodern platitudes and/or moral indignation. The cycle of wealth creation and distribution that sees Michael Jordan receive multimillion dollar contracts to inspire demand for Nike products, while the foot soldiers in the factory eke out a meager existence producing these same products is not easily, or realistically, challenged by pronouncements of moving beyond International Relations to a new, nicer, gentler nirvana. More generally, of course, what George fails to consider is the problem

of apathy and of how we get people to care about the plight of others. What do we with the CEOs of multinational corporations, stockbrokers, accountants, factory workers, and the unemployed, who, by and large, fail to consider the homeless and destitute in their own countries, let alone in places they have never isited and are never likely to visit? Moral indignation rarely translates into action, and apathy about the plight of others is a structural impediment as strong any idea , theory, or writing. What George's treatise thus fails to consider is how we overcome this, and how we get others to listen. He needs to explain how the social, political, psychological, and moral structures that define the parameters of existence for the many millions of ordinary citizens in the first world, and that deflects attention from the marginalized and the oppressed can be broken down. Unfortunately, there is little to indicate that George has thought much about this, suggesting that his commitment to postmodern theory is not likely to make much difference. In fact, in the academy the postmodern light is already beginning to dim in certain quarters, having registered scarcely a glimmer in the broader polity, where, if change was to ensue, it needed to burn brightly. Even among those versed in the nomenclature of scholarly debate, theorists of international politics remain skeptical of the value of postmodern discourse, by and large rejecting it. This does not portend well for postmodern visionaries and the future of postmodern discourse. But can George really be surprised by this? After all, his discourse indicts the "backward discipline" for complicity in crimes against humanity, calling for a repudiation of realism and with it a repudiation of the lifelong beliefs and writings of eminent theorists like Kenneth Waltz, Robert Gilpin, and Stephen Krasner who have otherwise defined the parameters of the discipline, its projects, and research agendas. Can George really expect discipline-wide capitulation to an intellectual

diaspora that would see theorists repudiate their beliefs and works in order to take up the creed of postmodernism, as vague, open-ended, and indeterminate as it is? Without a clear and credible plan of how to get from
"incarceration and closure" to intellectual freedom, creativity, and openness, George's postmodern musings have understandably attracted few disciples.

Epistemic critique replicates fascistic knowledge productiononly substantive debate breaks down dogma without collapsing into irrelevance Houghton 8 David Patrick Houghton, Positivism vs Postmodernism: Does Epistemology Make a
Difference? International Politics (2008), 45
As long ago as 1981, Yale Ferguson and Richard Mansbach effectively laid the influence of the dogmatic behaviouralism of the 1960s to rest in their book The Elusive Quest, signaling the profound disillusionment of mainstream IR with the idea that a cumulative science of IR would ever be possible (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1988). The popularity of the nave form of positivism, wed to a view of

inexorable scientific progress and supposedly practiced by wide-eyed scholars during the 1960s, has long been a thing of the past. Postmodernists hence do the discipline a disservice when they continue to attack the overly optimistic and dogmatic form of positivism as if it still represented a dominant orthodoxy , which must
somehow be overthrown. Equally, supporters of the contemporary or neo- version of positivism perform a similar disservice when they fail to articulate their epistemological assumptions clearly or at all. Indeed, the first error is greatly encouraged by the second, since by failing to state what they stand for, neo-positivists have allowed postmodernists to fashion a series of straw men who burn rapidly at the slightest touch. Articulating a full list of these assumptions lies beyond the scope of this article, but contemporary neopositivists are, I would suggest, committed to the following five assumptions, none of which are especially radical or hard to defend: (1) That explaining the social and political world ought to be our central objective , (2) That subjective

though our perceptions of the world may be many features of the political world are at least potentially explainable. What remains is a conviction that there are at least some empirical propositions, which can be demonstrably shown to be true or false, some underlying regularities that clearly give shape to IR (such as the proposition that democracies do not fight one another), (3) That careful use of appropriate methodological techniques can establish what patterns exist in the political world, (4) That positive and normative questions, though related, are ultimately separable, although both constitute valid and interesting forms of enquiry . There is also a general conviction (5) that careful use of research design may help researchers avoid logical pitfalls in their work. Doubtless,
there are some who would not wish to use the term positivism as an umbrella term for these five assumptions, in which case we probably require a new term to cover them. But to the extent that there exists an orthodoxy in the field of IR today, this is surely it. Writing in 1989, Thomas Biersteker noted that the vast majority of scholarship in international relations (and the social sciences for that matter) proceeds without conscious reflection on its philosophical bases or premises. In professional meetings, lectures, seminars and the design of curricula, we do not often engage in serious reflection on the philosophical bases or implications of our activity. Too often, consideration of these core issues is reserved for (and largely forgotten after) the introductory weeks of required concepts and methods courses, as we socialize students into the profession (Biersteker, 1989). This observation while accurate at the time would surely be deemed incorrect were it to be made today. Even some scholars who profess regret at the philosophically self-regarding nature of contemporary of IR theory, nevertheless feel

compelled to devote huge chunks of their work to epistemological issues before getting to more substantive matters (see for instance Wendt, 1999). The recent emphasis on epistemology has helped to push IR as a discipline further and further away from the concerns of those who actually practice IR. The consequent decline in the policy relevance of what we do, and our retreat into philosophical self-doubt, is ironic given the roots of the field in very practical political concerns (most notably, how to avoid war). What I am suggesting is not that IR scholars should ignore philosophical questions, or that such navel gazing is always unproductive, for questions of epistemology surely undergird every vision of IR that ever existed. Rather, I would suggest that the existing debate is sterile and unproductive in the sense that the various schools of thought have much more in common than they suppose;

stated more specifically, postpositivists have much more in common than they would like to think with the positivists they seek to condemn. Consequently, to the extent that there is a meaningful dialogue going on with regard to epistemological questions, it has no real impact on what we do as scholars when we look at the world out there. Rather than focusing on epistemology, it is inevitably going to be more fruitful to subject the substantive claims made by positivists (of all metatheoretical stripes) and postpositivists to the cold light of day. My own view, as the reader may have gathered already, is that

the empirical claims of scholars like Der Derian and Campbell will not often stand up to such harsh scrutiny given the inattention to careful evidence gathering betrayed by both , but this is a side issue here; the point is that
substantive theoretical and empirical claims, rather than metatheoretical or epistemological ones, ought to be what divides the international relations scene today.

Perm: do both. Case is a net benefitany risk that security can be productive outweighs the solvency deficit because the impact is extinction We control uniquenessviolence at unprecedented low now Pinker 11 Steven Pinker, experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist, and popular science author,
and Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard, Violence Vanquished, Wall Street Journal, 9/24/2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904106704576583203589408180.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopS tories Believe it or not, the world of the past was much worse. Violence has been in decline for thousands of years, and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in the existence of our species. The decline, to be sure, has not been smooth. It has not brought violence down to zero, and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children.
This claim, I know, invites skepticism, incredulity, and sometimes anger. We tend to estimate the probability of an event from the ease with which we can recall examples, and scenes of carnage are more likely to be beamed into our homes and burned into our memories than footage of people dying of old age. There will always be enough violent deaths to fill the evening news, so people's impressions of violence will be disconnected from its actual likelihood. Evidence of our bloody history is not hard to find. Consider the genocides in

the Old Testament and the crucifixions in the New, the gory mutilations in Shakespeare's tragedies and Grimm's fairy tales, the British monarchs who beheaded their relatives and the American founders who dueled with their rivals. Today the decline in these brutal practices can be quantified. A look at the numbers shows that over the course of our history, humankind has been blessed with six major declines of violence. The
first was a process of pacification: the transition from the anarchy of the hunting, gathering and horticultural societies in which our species spent most of its evolutionary history to the first agricultural civilizations, with cities and governments, starting about 5,000 years ago. For centuries, social theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau speculated from their armchairs about what life was like in a "state of nature." Nowadays we can do better. Forensic archeologya kind of "CSI: Paleolithic"can estimate rates of violence from the proportion of skeletons in ancient sites with bashed-in skulls, decapitations or arrowheads embedded in bones. And ethnographers can tally the causes of death in tribal peoples that have recently lived outside of state control. These investigations show that, on average, about 15% of people in prestate eras died violently, compared to about 3% of the citizens of the earliest states. Tribal violence commonly subsides when a state or empire imposes control over a territory, leading to the various "paxes" (Romana, Islamica, Brittanica and so on) that are familiar to readers of history. It's not that the first kings had a benevolent interest in the welfare of their citizens. Just as a farmer tries to prevent his livestock from killing one another, so a ruler will try to keep his subjects from cycles of raiding and feuding. From his point of view, such squabbling is a dead lossforgone opportunities to extract taxes, tributes, soldiers and slaves. The second decline of violence was a civilizing process that is best documented in Europe. Historical records show that between the late Middle Ages and the 20th century, European countries saw a 10- to 50-fold decline in their rates of homicide. The numbers are consistent with narrative histories of the brutality of life in the Middle Ages, when highwaymen made travel a risk to life and limb and dinners were commonly enlivened by dagger attacks. So many people had their noses cut off that medieval medical textbooks speculated about techniques for growing them back. Historians attribute this decline to the consolidation of a patchwork of feudal territories into large kingdoms with centralized authority and an infrastructure of commerce. Criminal justice was nationalized, and zero-sum plunder gave way to positive-sum trade. People increasingly controlled their impulses and sought to cooperate with their neighbors. The third transition, sometimes called the Humanitarian Revolution, took off with the Enlightenment. Governments and churches had long maintained order by punishing nonconformists with mutilation, torture and gruesome forms of execution, such as burning, breaking, disembowelment, impalement and sawing in half. The 18th century saw the widespread abolition of judicial torture, including the famous prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment" in the eighth amendment of the U.S. Constitution. At the same time, many nations began to whittle down their list of capital crimes from the hundreds (including poaching, sodomy, witchcraft and counterfeiting) to just murder and treason. And a growing wave of countries abolished blood sports, dueling, witchhunts, religious persecution, absolute despotism and slavery. The fourth major transition is the respite from major interstate war that we have seen since the end of World War II. Historians sometimes refer to it as the Long Peace. Today we take it for

granted that Italy and Austria will not come to blows, nor will Britain and Russia. But centuries ago, the great powers were almost always at war, and until quite recently, Western European countries tended to initiate two or three new wars every year. The clich that the 20th century was "the most violent in history"

ignores the second half of the century (and may not even be true of the first half, if one calculates violent deaths as a proportion of the world's population). Though it's tempting to attribute the Long Peace to nuclear deterrence, non-nuclear developed states have stopped fighting each other as well. Political scientists point instead to the growth of democracy, trade and international organizationsall of which, the statistical evidence shows, reduce the likelihood of conflict. They also credit the rising valuation of human life over national grandeura hard-won lesson of two world wars. The fifth trend, which I call the New Peace, involves war in the
world as a whole, including developing nations. Since 1946, several organizations have tracked the number of armed conflicts and their human toll world-wide. The bad news is that for several decades, the decline of interstate wars was accompanied by a bulge of civil wars, as newly independent countries were led by inept governments, challenged by insurgencies and armed by the cold war superpowers. The less bad news is that civil wars tend to kill far fewer people than wars between states. And the best news is that, since the peak

of the cold war in the 1970s and '80s, organized conflicts of all kindscivil wars, genocides, repression by autocratic governments, terrorist attackshave declined throughout the world, and their death tolls have declined even more precipitously. The rate of documented direct deaths from political violence (war, terrorism, genocide and warlord militias) in the past decade is an unprecedented few hundredths of a percentage point. Even if we multiplied that rate to account for unrecorded deaths and the victims of war-caused disease and famine, it would not exceed 1%. The most immediate cause of this New Peace was the demise of communism, which ended the proxy wars in the
developing world stoked by the superpowers and also discredited genocidal ideologies that had justified the sacrifice of vast numbers of eggs to make a utopian omelet. Another contributor was the expansion of international peacekeeping forces, which really do keep the peacenot always, but far more often than when adversaries are left to fight to the bitter end. Finally, the postwar era has seen a cascade of "rights

revolutions"a growing revulsion against aggression on smaller scales. In the developed world, the civil rights movement obliterated lynchings and lethal pogroms, and the women's-rights movement has helped to shrink the incidence of rape and the beating and killing of wives and girlfriends. In recent decades, the movement for children's rights has significantly reduced rates of spanking, bullying, paddling in schools, and physical and sexual abuse. And the campaign for gay rights has forced governments in the developed world to repeal laws criminalizing homosexuality and has had some success in reducing hate crimes against gay people.

States will always act to preserve security John Mearsheimer, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science at the University
of Chicago and co-director of the Program on International Security Policy, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001, p. 30-32 The first assumption is that the international system is anarchic, which does not mean that it is chaotic or riven by disorder. It is easy to draw that conclusion, since realism depicts a world characterized by security competition and war. By itself, however, the realist notion of anarchy has nothing to do with conflict; it is an ordering principle, which says that the system comprises independent states that have no central authority above them.4 Sovereignty, in other words, inheres in states because there is no higher ruling body in the international system.5 There is no government over governments.6 The second assumption is that great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability , which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly destroy each other. States are potentially dangerous to each other , although some states have more military
might than others and are therefore more dangerous. A states military power is usually identified with the particular weaponry at its disposal, although even if there were no weapons, the individuals in those states could still use their feet and hands to attack the population of another state. After all, for every neck, there are two hands to choke it. The third assumption is that states can never be certain about other

states intentions. Specifically, no state can be sure that another state will not use its offensive military capability to attack the first state. This is not to say that states necessarily have hostile intentions. Indeed, all of the states in the system may be reliably benign, but it is impossible to be sure of that judgment because intentions are impossible to divine with 100 percent certainty .7 There are many possible causes of aggression, and no state can be sure that another state is not motivated by one of them.8 Furthermore, intentions can change quickly, so a states intentions can be benign one day and hostile the next. Uncertainty about intentions is unavoidable, which means that states can never be sure that other states do not have offensive intentions to go along with their offensive capabilities. The fourth assumption is that survival is the primary goal of great powers. Specifically, states seek to maintain their territorial integrity and the autonomy of their domestic political order. Survival dominates other motives because, once a state is conquered, it is unlikely to be in a position to pursue other aims. Soviet leader Josef Stalin put the point well during a war scare in 1927: We can and must build socialism in the
[Soviet Union]. But in order to do so we first of all have to exist.9 States can and do pursue other goals, of course, but security is their most important objective. The fifth assumption is that great powers are rational actors. They are aware of their external environment and they think strategically about how to survive in it. In particular, they consider the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the behavior of those other states, and how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy for survival. Moreover, states pay attention to the long term as well as the

immediate consequences of their actions. As emphasized, none of these assumptions alone dictates that great powers as a general rule should behave aggressively toward each other. There is surely the possibility that some state might have hostile intentions, but the only assumption dealing with a specific motive that is common to all states says that their principal objective is to survive, which by itself is a rather harmless goal. Nevertheless, when the five assumptions are married together, they create powerful incentives for great powers to think and act offensively with regard to each other. In particular, three general patterns of behavior result: fear, self-help, and power maximization.

Value to life inevitable existence key to maximize it David Pizer 2001Argument that life has inherent value, July 8, http://www.cryonet.org/cgibin/dsp.cgi?msg=16930
Argument that life has inherent value 1. The concept of value comes from what living beings will pay for something. How much one being is willing to give in order to get something he wants is a way to think of the value of that thing. What a being is willing to pay for something depends on how much he desires that thing. So indirectly, desire is what actually sets the value of something. 2. In order to desire

something, the thing doing the desiring must be alive - it must be a living being. So value, the end of desire, is dependent on life. Only living things (living beings) can give value to something else. 3. In order for any first thing to
give something to a second thing, the first thing must first have it to give. So if only living things can give value, then living things must have value. 4. Desire can only come from, (and so must be in), living beings . So when living things desire something, that desire must be inherent in the living things. If desire in living things is what gives value to other things, and that desire is inherent in the living thing, then living things, or life, has inherent value in it. Or to say it another way: If an object gives something value, that object must have value in it as a quality to give. Example: For me to love my dog, I must first have love in me. For me to value my dog, I must first have value in me. 5. Put another way, i f a living being has some quality, that quality is a part of what makes that being what it is. 6.If life gives value to life, than one of the parts of life is value. Put another way, value cannot exist without life, so value is life and life is value . 7. If value is only relative, then saying life being valuable relative to life is the same as saying life has worth relative to life. Anything that is relative to itself is an unconditional part of itself and therefore has "inherentness". 8.THEREFORE, anyway you look at it, life is value and value is life - and

life has inherent value.

Modernity checks the impact Rosemary OKane, professor of comparative political theory at the University of Keele, Modernity, the Holocaust and politics, Economy and Society 26:1, 1997, pp. 58-59
Modern bureaucracy is not 'intrinsically capable of genocidal action' (Bauman 1989: 106). Centralized state coercion has no natural move to terror. In the explanation of modern genocides it is chosen policies which play the greatest part , whether in
effecting bureaucratic secrecy, organizing forced labour, implementing a system of terror, harnessing science and technology or introducing extermination policies, as means and as ends. As Nazi Germany and Stalin's USSR have shown, furthermore, those chosen policies of genocidal government turned away from and not towards modernity. The choosing of policies, however, is not independent of circumstances. An analysis of the history of each case plays an important part in explaining where and how genocidal governments come to power and analysis of political institutions and structures also helps towards an understanding of the factors which act as obstacles to modern genocide. But it is not just political factors which stand in the way of another Holocaust in modern society. Modern societies have not only pluralist democratic political systems but also economic pluralism where workers are free to change jobs and bargain wages and where independent firms, each with their own independent bureaucracies, exist in competition with state-controlled enterprises. In modern societies this economic pluralism both promotes and is served by the open scientific method. By ignoring competition and the capacity for people to move between organizations whether economic, political, scientific or social, Bauman overlooks crucial but also very 'ordinary and common' attributes of truly modern societies. It is these very ordinary and common attributes of modernity which stand in the way of modern genocides.

Rejecting predictions only produces intellectual and political conservatism that makes the impact inevitable Michael Fitzsimmons, defense analyst, The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning, Survival 48.4, Winter 2006/2007
It should follow, then, that in planning under conditions of risk, variability in strategic calculation should be carefully tailored to available analytic and decision processes. Why is this important? What harm can an imbalance between complexity and cognitive or analytic capacity in strategic planning bring? Stated simply, where analysis is silent or inadequate, the personal beliefs of decision-makers fill the void. As political scientist Richard Betts found in a study of strategic surprise, in an environment that lacks clarity, abounds with conflicting data, and allows no time for rigorous assessment of sources and validity, ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation ... The greater the ambiguity, the greater the impact of preconceptions.16 The decision-making environment that Betts describes here is one of political-military crisis, not long-term strategic planning. But a strategist who sees uncertainty as the central fact of his environment brings upon himself some of the pathologies of crisis decision-making. He invites ambiguity, takes conflicting

data for granted and substitutes a priori scepticism about the validity of prediction for time pressure as a rationale for discounting the importance of analytic rigour. It is important not to exaggerate the extent to which data and rigorous assessment can illuminate strategic choices. Ambiguity is a fact of life, and scepticism of analysis is necessary. Accordingly, the intuition and judgement of decision-makers will always be vital to strategy, and attempting to subordinate those factors to some formulaic, deterministic decision-making model would be both undesirable and unrealistic. All the same, there is danger in the opposite extreme as well. Without careful analysis of what is relatively likely and what is relatively unlikely, what will be the possible bases for strategic choices? A decision-maker with no faith in prediction is left with little more than a set of worst-case scenarios and his existing beliefs about the world to confront the choices before him. Those beliefs may be more or less well founded, but if they are not made explicit and subject to analysis and debate regarding their application to particular strategic contexts, they remain only beliefs and premises,

rather than rational judgements. Even at their best, such decisions are likely to be poorly understood by the organisations charged with their implementation. At their worst, such decisions may be poorly understood by the decisionmakers themselves.

We should employ state sovereignty when the particulars of a situation demands itthe alt is ethically irresponsible Jacques Derrida, Directeur dEtudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, and Professor of Philosophy, French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, 2004, For What
Tomorrow? A Dialogue With Elisabeth Roudinesco, p. 91-92
J.D.: A moment ago you spoke of regicide as the necessity of an exception, in sum. Well, yes, one can refer provisionally to Carl Schmitt (whatever one may think of him, his arguments are always useful for problematizing the political or the juridical; I examined this question in Politics of Friendship). He says in effect that a sovereign is defined by his capacity to decide the exception. Sovereign is he who effectively decides the exception. The revolutionaries decided that at that moment that it was necessary to suspend justice andin order to establish the law [droit] and to give the Revolution its rightsto suspend the rule of law [lEtat de droit]. Schmitt also gives this definition of sovereignty: to have the right to suspend the law, or the rule of law, the constitutional state. Without this category of exception, we cannot understand the concept of sovereignty. Today, the great question is indeed, everywhere, that of sovereignty. Omnipresent in our discourses and in our axioms, under its own name or another, literally or figuratively, this concept has a theological origin: the true sovereign is God. The concept of this authority or of this power was transferred to the monarch, said to have a divine right. Sovereignty was then delegated to the people, in the form of democracy, or to the nation, with the same theological attributes as those attributed to the king and to God. Today, wherever the word sovereignty is spoken, this heritage remains undeniable , whatever internal differentiation one may recognize in it. How do we deal with this? Here we return to the question of heritage with which we began. It is necessary to deconstruct the concept of sovereignty, never to forget its theological filiation and to be ready to call this filiation into question wherever we discern its effects. This supposes an inflexible critique of the logic of the state and of the nation-state. And yethence the enormous responsibility of the citizen and of the heir in general, in certain situationsthe state, in its actual form, can resist certain forces that I consider the most threatening. What I here call responsibility is what dictates the

decision to be sometimes for the sovereign state and sometimes against it, for its deconstruction (theoretical and practical, as one used to say) according to the singularity of the contexts and the stakes. There is no relativism in this, no renunciation of the injunction to think and to deconstruct the heritage. This aporia is in truth the very condition of decision and responsibilityif there is any. I am thinking for example of the incoherent but organized coalition of international capitalist forces that, in the name of neoliberalism or the market,31 are taking hold of the world in conditions such as the state form; this is what can still resist the most. For the moment. But it is necessary to reinvent the conditions of resistance. Once again, I would say that according to the situations, I am an antisovereignist or a sovereignistand I vindicate the right to be antisovereignist at certain times and a sovereignist at others. No one can make me respond to this question as though it were a matter of pressing a button on some old-fashioned machine. There are cases in which I would support a logic of the state, but I ask to examine each situation before making any statement . It is also necessary to recognize that by requiring someone to be not unconditionally sovereignist but rather soyvereignist only under certain conditions, one is already calling into question the principle of sovereignty. Deconstruction begins there . It demands a difficult dissociation, almost
impossible but indispensable, between unconditionality (justice without power) and sovereignty (right, power, or potency). Deconstruction is on the side of unconditionaliry, even when it seems impossible, and not sovereignty, even when it seems possible.

AT: Environmental Security (insert above if they read an environment link)

Environmental destruction IS an important impact, not because we presume a value or meaning in nature but because it is an other to which we owe responsibility Paul Wapner, associate professor and director of the Global Environmental Policy Program at American University. Leftist Criticism of "Nature" Environmental Protection in a Postmodern Age, Dissent Winter 2003
The third response to eco-criticism would require critics to acknowledge the ways in which they themselves silence nature and then to respect the sheer otherness of the nonhuman world. Postmodernism prides itself on criticizing the urge toward mastery that characterizes modernity. But isn't mastery exactly what postmodernism is exerting as it captures the nonhuman world within its own conceptual domain? Doesn't postmodern cultural criticism deepen the modernist urge toward mastery by eliminating the ontological weight of the nonhuman world? What else could it mean to assert that there is no such thing as nature ? I have already suggested the postmodernist response: yes, recognizing the social construction of "nature" does deny the self-expression of the nonhuman world, but how would we know what such self-expression means? Indeed, nature doesn't speak; rather, some person always speaks on nature's behalf, and whatever that person says is, as we all know, a social construction. All attempts to listen to nature are social constructions-except one. Even the most radical postmodernist must acknowledge the distinction between physical existence and non-existence. As I have said, postmodernists accept that there is a physical substratum to the phenomenal world even if they argue about the different meanings we ascribe to it. This acknowledgment of physical existence is crucial. We can't ascribe meaning to that which doesn't appear. What doesn't exist can manifest no character. Put differently, yes, the postmodernist should rightly worry about interpreting nature's expressions. And all of us should be wary of those who claim to speak on nature's behalf (including environmentalists who do that). But we need not doubt the simple idea that a prerequisite of expression is existence. This in turn suggests that preserving the nonhuman world-in all its diverse embodiments-must be seen by eco-critics as a fundamental good. Eco-critics must be supporters, in some fashion, of environmental preservation. Postmodernists reject the idea of a universal good. They rightly acknowledge the difficulty of identifying a common value given the multiple contexts of our value-producing activity. In fact, if there is one thing they vehemently scorn, it is the idea that there can be a value that stands above the individual contexts of human experience. Such a value would present itself as a metanarrative and, as Jean-Franois Lyotard has explained, postmodernism is characterized fundamentally by its "incredulity toward metanarratives." Nonetheless, I can't see how postmodern critics can do otherwise than accept the value of preserving the nonhuman world. The nonhuman is the extreme "other"; it stands in contradistinction to humans as a species. In understanding the constructed quality of human experience and the dangers of reification, postmodernism inherently advances an ethic of respecting the "other." At the very least, respect must involve ensuring that the "other" actually continues to exist. In our day and age, this requires us to take responsibility for protecting the actuality of the nonhuman. Instead, however, we are running roughshod over the earth's diversity of plants, animals, and ecosystems.
Postmodern critics should find this particularly disturbing. If they don't, they deny their own intellectual insights and compromise their fundamental moral commitment. Now, what does this mean for politics and policy, and the future of the environmental

movement? Society is constantly being asked to address questions of environmental quality for which there are no easy answers. As we wrestle with challenges of global climate change, ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity, and so forth, we need to consider the economic, political, cultural, and aesthetic values at stake. These considerations have traditionally marked the politics of environmental protection. A sensitivity to ecocriticism requires that we go further and include an ethic of otherness in our deliberations. That is, we need to be moved by our concern to make room for the "other" and hence fold a commitment to the nonhuman world into our policy discussions. I don't mean that this argument should drive all our actions or that respect for the "other" should always carry the day. But it must be a central part of our reflections and calculations. For example, as we estimate the number of
people that a certain area can sustain, consider what to do about climate change, debate restrictions on ocean fishing, or otherwise assess the effects of a particular course of action, we must think about the lives of other creatures on the earth-and also the continued existence
of the nonliving physical world. We must do so not

because we wish to maintain what is "natural" but because we wish to act in a morally respectable manner. I have been using postmodern cultural criticism against itself. Yes, the postmodernists are right: we can do what we want with the nonhuman world. There is nothing essential about the realm of rocks, trees, fish, and climate that calls for a certain type of action. But postmodernists are also right that the only ethical way to act in a world that is socially constructed is to respect the voices of the others-of those with whom we share the planet but with whom we may not share a common language or outlook. There is, in other words, a limit or guiding principle to our actions. As

political theorist Leslie Thiele puts it, "One

can't argue for the diversity of views of "nature" without taking a stand for

the diversity of nature."

State Good Derrida 1AR

Extend the Derrida evidence four reasons why their state bad args are dumb: 1. We can be for and against sovereignty advocating one state action doesnt mean we reject everything else 2. Totalizing the state as violent is a formalist impasse it presumes were just robots pressing buttons and obscures the moment of aporia in decisionmaking 3. Responsibility means we have to use the state sometimesif ethics are incalculable then we have to combat suffering through the state against our own intellectual misgivings 4. Capitalism is a DA to the alt complete rejection of sovereignty means its replaced by unrestricted corporations motivated by absolute profit which makes their offense inevitable